Image of the Fendahl
The Psi Powers Series
Interference
Damaged Goods (audio)
Damaged Goods
Psi Powers Part Eight
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Image of the Fendahl The Psi Powers Series Interference Damaged Goods (audio) |
Virgin Books Damaged Goods Psi Powers Part Eight |
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| Author | Russell T. Davies |  |
| ISBN# | 0 426 20483 2 | |
| Published | 1996 | |
| Cover | Bill Donohue |
| Synopsis: The Quadrant is a troubled housing estate in Thatcher's Britian and a new drug is taking more of a grip than anyone could guess. However, some of the residents of the Quadrant have some special gifts, but a very determined woman is moving ever closer... |
A Review by Tom May 10/5/98
"There's a deadly new drug on the streets, and it's killing to a plan."
Damaged Goods is the first NA I've read for a while, and because of it, I really do want to read more NA's. The action is mainly set in and around a troubled Thatcher's Britain Tower Block, The Quadrant, in the year 1987.
The Quadrant, and it's very ordinary inhabitants hold many secrets, and their wall of silence hinders the Doctor in his bid to discover the nature of the horror. A lot of the story is based around a resurrected drug dealer, Simon Jenkins, aka The Capper. He is partly controlled by a dissembodied warlike intelligence from the ancient past. This though, as in Human Nature, takes back seat to the emotions of the leading characters.
The Doctor is very well written here, both wistful and forceful, and much is made of the power of the Seventh Doctor's eyes, and their stare. This was the first time I'd read Roz and Chris, the companions, and they seem well-versed in the Doctor's activities, bot not as good as Benny or Ace. There are too many important characters to recount properly so I'll just say that they are three-dimensional, have depth and are real. Each and every character has his/her story to tell, and does it superbly. Themes such as Homosexuality, Money/Love, and above all, the power of memory, are put across excellently.
This isn't a good book for anyone to start off with, as it is very graphic and harrowing at times. Drugs, violence, alcohol, expletives, sex and death all come in to play, and it's in a different world to the TV Series, it's real life. Only in Survival and perhaps The Curse of Fenric, was there realistic characterisation for the time the stories were set in. Survival shows urban Britain as dull, lifeless and dangerous, yet doesn't go as far as Damaged Goods, a truly great book in it's own right.
The style the story is told in is excellent, as are the epilogues, and it's sad to see that Russell T. Davies hasn't added further novels to the Doctor Who canon. 9/10
A Review by Sean Gaffney 16/9/99
Damaged Goods is excellent. Unpleasant to read at times, but still excellent. It reminded me of an episode of Cracker in that regard, you don't want to watch but you're fascinated.
PLOT: Brilliant. I kept expecting the Eviiil, eviiil from the dawn of time to take over, and it did for a moment. But in the end, it was the small, everyday tragedies of the Quadrant that were the real plot of the book, and the villain ended up being a very real woman, not a mad creature.
THE DOCTOR: Despairing at times. I've never seen him so desperate. We see him losing his subtleties, something that he said he was surprised about at first, and he is totally foxed until the very end, leading to the somewhat melancholy postscript.
ROZ: Very well done, as we see Roz' wish for order once again being ridiculed by the Doctor. We see a much softer Roz in this book, and she's all the better for it. I'll miss her.
CHRIS: An enigma, as usual. Very few authors have been able to get a handle on Chris, who only works when his fresh-faced youth approach is soured by events. He seems to walk through a cloud in this book.
OTHERS: There are so many important minor figures, it's hard to count. Russell gives all the minor characters in the Quadrant some character development, allowing them their moment in the sun. Done especially well are David and Harry. Also, despite all the death at the end, I was relieved to see Monica Jeffries survive, have her baby, live with her family, and have her son become a Doctor repoting to Harry Sullivan himself. Little happy, rewarding things like this. I love 'em.
VILLAIN: Well, not really. Eva is an attempt at the tragic figure; it's a relief to see a woman so mad that even the Doctor's rhetoric doesn't get through. Eva is totally dolally, and the sympathetic way this is shown is another big plus.
OTHER: It's interesting that, contrary to the Paul Cornell Doctor, Russell gives us a Doctor who isn't cool, who thinks that wicked is in style (and Ace was out of date by Remembrance), who doesn't know the Pet Shop Boys. It makes him more alien. Lots of great spot-the-ref moments, by the way.
OVERALL: Except for Chris, this is a truly cracking book in every way. If you liked Gareth's NAs, or Mark Gatiss', you might hate it. But I loved it.
9/10.
An interview about Damaged Goods by Sanda Rodgers 24/9/00
One could of course just move on. If not I suppose that no one would
read them, but it does suggest that if you are cool enough you would know
and if you knew you could be part of this great group of - what Whoites,
Whoees ?
I don't like science fiction any better than I liked this book but I
did find that it was well written. This was a surprise. As well written as
much mystery fiction and certainly not as bad as some. Better than I
expected. Literate literature - a tony category certainly - has prose that
is tasty, that tells you something about words and rhythm and feeling and
complexity. This doesn't, but neither do potato chips and I like those
too.
I didn't actively dislike the book although I wouldn't have finished it
left to my own devices. I found the gory science fiction style
transformations and risings from the dead gratuitous and superfluous and
ugly to contemplate. I suppose that they fall into the "oh cool" category
for others but I find it hard to imagine why.
This was the best part. I liked the three compatriots - Doctor Who and
the two others whose names you either remember or have checked in the
book. I found Dr. Who to be an attractive character - appealing, amusing
and morally upright - but thinking back I believe that those attributes
were really only barely sketched in, perhaps with the use of a few telling
and touching adjectives, probably averted to in each of the series.
Nonetheless it worked. I liked him and the others and the relationship
between them, although that was only averted to and was another point that
might have pulled you in to read more of the series. But it would be too
much work to read all the rest of the junk - from my point of view- just
to find out about the characters who are so little described.
I always like having a strong woman character - although kept
numerically in balance by two male characters. Don't want to go too far? I
thought the gay identification of Chris was left just a bit vague in a
sort of "is that really what's happening" sort of way which might be
understood to be either titillating or self protective on the part of the
series - or perhaps just a bit too cool/correct.
Graphic sexually? Can't remember and am too lazy to go back and look.
What part exactly and why do you remember the book in such detail anyway?
Oh right - all that gay male sex I suppose.
I thought the graphic horror, if that is what it is , was gross. No
other word describes it and it seems childish, male and off putting to me.
I suppose that lots of adults, some female, have good reason to like it
though. That is when I thought I would put it down and would have if I
hadn't promised to read and review it - with a bit of prodding.
No. No. But it did make me think of Clockwork Orange.
This book has themes?
The review master has developed an excellent set of questions, but the
exam is too long for the time the credits available.
A Review by Graeme Burk
9/7/01
The big event for Doctor Who fans in the nineties, at least in
North America, was supposed to have been May 14, 1996 when the TV Movie made its debut. How wrong we were.
The Fox TV movie was a brilliantly cast, brilliantly directed,
un-brilliantly written muddle of a production that blazed as brief as an
atomic flash but dissipated impotently into nothingness, leaving a legacy
of discontinued licensing agreements and the same 30 or so photos of Paul
McGann to be used on merchandise.
It isn't even the best Doctor Who of the 1990s. Which was odd,
since I sort of expected the TV Movie to have a
decent shot at this title, seeing it was the only new TV story. But by the
time 1996 closed, it was clear there was a far better contender for that
title present.
I speak, of course, of Damaged Goods.
Damaged Goods for the non-cognoscenti, is a novel by the
pre-Queer As Folk Russell T Davies, set in a council estate in the inner
city of East End London in the 1980s. It's populated by profoundly flawed
creatures like Bev Tyler, a 14 year-old girl dealing with profound
insecurities and pregnancy scares; Harry Harvey, a bigoted homophobe who
goes cruising for sex with other men in the nearby Smithfield graveyard;
Mrs Hearn, a dear old biddy who gave up her freedom when she married 50
years ago and has always regretted it. Then there's the Capper, a brutal
thug from the neighbourhood who, one day, douses himself with petrol and
immolates himself, only to be resurrected as a creature of pure evil-in
the same graveyard where Harry is looking for anonymous sex, no less.
Did I mention this was a Doctor Who book?
Make no mistake, this is Doctor Who. The fact that it uses
Trainspotting as a literary source rather than, say, The Prisoner of Zenda
or The Hands of Orlac is just a sign of how the series can evolve. It
isn't that broad a stretch when you think about it. The last televised
Doctor Who story, Survival was the first
Doctor Who story to ever see a housing estate; Ghost Light has a considerable backstory in Ace's friend
Manisha getting firebombed by racist yobs. Doctor Who was entering
the 1990s acknowledging for the first time that urban Britain existed as
something other than a place for Autons to massacre people in the high
streets.
Given this trend, who knows, Damaged Goods could have happened
on telly - admittedly minus some of its more adult trappings (although
minus not that many - pre-watershed viewing in Britain also evolved in the
nineties). Especially since, at the heart of this book is what is at the
heart of so many of the best Doctor Who stories - a morality play,
a cunning use of metaphor, and a good opportunity to scare grown-up
children.
Strip away the urban decay that makes up Damaged Goods'
trappings and you find a very basic morality play of the sort that not
only Doctor Who filches from, but the sort that makes up good
literature. Eva Jerricho, a spoiled, deeply wounded and callous woman,
tries to buy things to fill the void in her life - including her own
child, whom she purchased from Bev Tyler's mother. The child turns out to
be sickly and she wants to return him in exchange for child's twin, who is
in perfect health - rather like her habit of creating 'damaged goods' out
of things Eva buys from the shops and returning them. It's not that far
off from the morality plays of stories like The Caves of
Androzani, except that author Davies ups the ante a little. His
morality play is not just about materialism at the cost of people, but how
materialism gets mixed-up with maternalism as though they were
interchangeable - a rather disturbing but incisive critique at that.
This is tied up in the use of metaphor in the novel. Eva ends up
transformed into a monster that is in turn driven by another monster: a
lithopedian, a miscarried foetus which has calcified in her womb and
become telepathic. It's monster-as-metaphor, something Doctor Who
has been doing since its creation. Drugs are also used as metaphor. In
Damaged Goods there's cocaine that carries within its molecular
structure the constituent elements to create an Evil Since The Dawn of
Time. Critics often pooh-pooh the New Adventures for using drugs in its
storyline, as though it were advocating them. And yet, here the message is
clear: do drugs, become transformed into an ancient Gallifreyan attack
weapon gone horribly wrong. Even Nightmare of Eden
didn't go that far.
The TV series was great at taking our fear of the unknown, or our fears
of what humankind has done and masking them in scary clothes. Damaged
Goods takes the darkest parts inside humanity and makes them an
external force, and it's scary. The last third of a book - perhaps the
only book out of the hundred or more published which doesn't let the
reader down with the d?ouement - is dark stuff akin to works like Neil
Gaiman's Sandman story "24 Hours". It's bleak and it's utterly horrific in
how it kills off so many of these little people we have grown to care
about - but at the centre of it is the Doctor, staring down the
unstoppable evil, being utterly heroic as he always does.
That said, it's the sort of a story which could have been looked like a
checklist of clich? that offend people most about the New Adventures had
it been in the hands of any other writer. What makes Damaged Goods
work is that it's written with some of the best prose ever witnessed
within the range. Prose that is evocative, haunting, thoughtful and scary.
Prose that knows which questions it will ask and knows which ones it will
answer.
In short it's good storytelling.
The best of Doctor Who in each decade was about pushing the
boundaries of what the previous decade had done - taking on new
storytelling techniques, new ideas, new cultural influences and adding it
to the mix. That's what made Doctor Who so great when it was being
done by Lambert and Whitaker, by Wiles and Tosh, by Sherwin and Bryant, by
Hinchcliffe and Holmes and by Cartmel. At the same time, it doesn't forget
the essential "magic" of Doctor Who: good storytelling, imaginative
ideas, evocation of mood and setting, horror and the absurd.
Damaged Goods did that and so much more. Damaged Goods
is, for my money, the best Doctor Who of the 1990s.
A Review by Mike Morris
28/8/01
Two things. Firstly, Damaged Goods is a good Doctor Who
novel. Not one I enjoyed, but certainly good. However, I'm going to be a
little overly-negative here, because I feel the "Damaged Goods is great"
side have already made their case. Secondly, there's spoilers coming, so
you've been warned.
Damaged Goods reminds me of The Daemons.
No, honestly. I'm not saying the Gallifreyan-killer-thingy that hides in a
line of coke is anything like Azal Last of the Daemons. Rather, it's in
the question of why it's so popular. The
Daemons is popular because it took Doctor Who a new area, the
area of occult-worship; an area where it was so comfortable that we
wondered why it had never been done before. And Damaged Goods
finally immersed Doctor Who into grim, gritty, housing-estate
reality, somewhere it had threatened to go on many occasions (Survival being the obvious candidate) but never quite
managed. It was a revelation to see just how comfortable Doctor Who
was in this brave new world.
But - and here's the rub - The Daemons just isn't
all that good. Once the initial shock of devil-worship wears off, it's
tacky, badly-acted, cosy, with a terrible conclusion and a hugely
unlikeable Doctor. Similarly (although not to the same degree), Damaged
Goods is not - in my opinion - the amazing tome it's supposed to be.
Gritty doesn't necessarily mean good, or indeed worthy. Gritty just means
gritty. And after so many loving descriptions of men sewing up their own
chests, of stone foetuses (anyone know what the plural of foetus is?)
clawing through a woman's womb, of blood dripping from between women's
legs, all this and a million-and-one nasty deaths, I finished the book and
was left wondering; what was it all for?
The answer, the obvious answer, is; nothing. Nothing at all.
And in a way this is valid. Of course it is. I've said before that,
when you're dealing with a bloke who saves planets, adopting the 'shit
happens' approach to life is a bit perverse; but in the hostile,
real-world environment that Damaged Goods adopts, it's more
acceptable. The Doctor's victories can be smaller, because the opposition
he faces is greater. It isn't the kind of thing I want from my Doctor
Who, it's not why I started watching the programme, if things
continued in this vein I'd stop reading. Arguments can, I suppose, be made
that it shouldn't be done, but I'm not going to make them here. Let's
accept that it's a valid approach.
Well, fine, but Damaged Goods doesn't go down this road with the
conviction it needs. Instead, coming out of all the destruction is, is, a
cure for AIDS.
This is mentioned in a single paragraph at the end, replete with a
Harry Sullivan namecheck. It comes via a ludicrously implausible gay sex
scene earlier on, that had me wondering at the time why this had been
thrown in; it felt like a crowd-pleasing cor-get-just-how-radical-this-is
gesture. No, it's the lead-in to a throwaway reference that's just plain
crass. Imagine the Doctor discovering a cure for cancer and think how
saccharinely grotesque that storyline would be. This isn't any better. A
cure for AIDS just isn't the sort of thing an author should throw in at
the end of a story because he doesn't have the guts to follow through the
logical consequence of this story; that the Doctor will lose. There's
something irredeemably tasteless about marrying a disease that's reaching
epidemic proportions in Africa, and a time-travelling eccentric with a
dimensionally-transcendental police box. An AIDS theme might just be made
to work if dealt with seriously over the course of a novel, but its use
here horrified me.
And suddenly, with a single paragraph, the world that I had been
reluctantly sucked into just came crashing down around me. Damaged
Goods fell to pieces. It suddenly felt self-important and nasty. The
use of The Quadrant, and of drug-dealers, felt like a look-at-me cheap
attempt to be seen bringing Doctor Who into a brand new
oh-so-socially-relevant world. The violence, the knifings and the
home-made surgery wasn't a commendable attempt at reality, it was
meaningless goriness and violence. The hopeless ending, where more or less
everybody dies, wasn't a grim and realistic finale, it was a boring way of
hammering home the 'reality' that Damaged Goods is so proud of
itself for creating.
If the Doctor is going to exist in the world of social reality, his
victories have to be real as well, not throwaway references that are
grotesquely tasteless. If the Doctor had saved just one person, just one,
in a way that had meaning, then that would have been sufficient and
wonderful and beautiful. But, no matter how heroic the Doctor is at the
climax (and he really is) he doesn't save anyone. In fact, he's made to be
every bit as ineffectual as in any EDA (it amazes me that Interference is criticised for this, whereas it's
perfectly acceptable here. At least the Doctor wins in Interference). But, of course, he's Time's Champion
folks, so he's never really ineffectual. And then there's the
sickening AIDS cure at the end, just to reassure us that hey, everything's
fine, everything was really necessary.
Damaged Goods does not, in truth, have great themes or deep
meanings. It's pulpy horror in a socially realistic setting, but that
doesn't make it meaningful. This is acceptable; what isn't acceptable is
that it has ideas above its own station, which leads to it being tasteless
and pretentious at points.
That's enough. I like Damaged Goods. The points that have
been made in its favour are valid, and I accept them. The prose is
understated and lovely, the characters are magnificent, the villain is
beautifully human. The way that it all stems back to a small and
understandable sin is gorgeous. There's huge amounts of pathos, and
there's so many understated, strong characters in here. But it's nowhere
near the standard of some of the other, better known 'greats' of the
Virgin line, for the reasons I've outlined above. Rags has far more moral courage than Damaged
Goods; it has no illusions about its meaninglessness. What I've
referred to is no more than undercurrent to Damaged Goods, but it's
enough to stop this story being great and relegate it to the ranks of the
interesting.
I just felt that needed saying.
A Review by Finn Clark
14/12/01
Whoah there! I knew this was Graeme Burk's nomination as Best
Who o' the Nineties, so I went in with a certain level of
anticipation, but even so... that's something else. As brutal and
evocative as Henrietta Street, perhaps more so.
Child prostitution, gay sex galore, cocaine, lovingly described
ultra-violence and all of it within a story that's completely and utterly
Whoish. My eyes were on stalks. This book is both shocking and
beautiful, sometimes both simultaneously.
It's full of terrific stuff. Mrs Jericho is an astonishingly rich,
deep, damaged character and a jaw-dropping 'monster' that in any other
book would be the highlight by several gazillion light-years... yet
Davies's other characters aren't overshadowed by her at all. She's just
part of the tapestry.
Russell T. Davies is writing about the little people, but he takes
pains to emphasise that despite the mundane setting, everything still
matters. The Doctor's speech on page 56 might be the best in the
NAs. Don't be fooled by the deceptive ease with which the author makes us
care about what happens - this is something difficult he's made look
effortless.
As the latest instalment of the Psi-Powers Arc it's not so great,
though. Yet again the ongoing element introduced in the previous book gets
no more than a shoehorned cameo, downplayed in favour of this book's
ideas. Here it's the N-forms. Never has it been more obvious that an
"arc" was constructed around a bunch of mostly unrelated submissions.
However it doesn't matter, because by the time you finish this book you
don't care about anything but the events therein. It's a magnificent,
awful tragedy. It's as shocking as a Mortimore, but always Whoish because
of its focus on the people. You knew and cared about them all (though the
Skinners don't get quite the screen time they deserved; Russell perhaps
forgot that a fleeting image on TV burns itself into the memory more
vividly than a fleeting line in a passing paragraph). Believe the hype.
This might be hard to read at times and a lot more adult in its subject
matter than some would like Doctor Who to be, but it's one of the
finest novels yet published that bears the logo.
A Review by Terrence Keenan
11/10/02
Damaged Goods is a collection of violent clashes. Gritty Drama
and Science Fiction/Horror; subjective viewpoints with omniscient
narrators; powerful weapons from strange dimensions and the desires of one
unhinged woman; appearances and the reality underneath.
It's a deliberate choice on Russell Davies' part. Usually, other
writers who have taken this route have made attempts to blend their
diverse elements together, hiding the seams (Unnatural
History is a prime example of this), however, Davies seems to use the
collisions of style as spring boards of creativity. Other reviewers have
discussed "Magical Realism" in terms of the works of Paul Magrs, but you
can see the same concept played out in Damaged Goods, but with
weird science replacing the fairy tales and fantastical elements normally
associated with Magic Realism.
Damaged Goods, the title, is also a recurring theme. We see this play
out in all the characters: Winnie with her midnight deal, Eva with her
psychosis, Harry with his closeted desires, Roz with her frustration of
being left out of the loop, Bev's unknown hatred of her Mum, Gabriel's psi
powers, the Doctor in his inability to get involved with the locals of the
quadrant, and his despair at not being able to solve things before the
damage is done. Roz assumes at the end of the novel that the Doctor knew
of the impending chaos and slaughter the N-Form would cause, but Davies
hints that the Doctor wants to prevent it from happening at all.
Similar to what Simon Messingham does in The Face
Eater, Davies allows us to really get to know the principal
characters: Bev, David, Harry, Winnie, Eva; developing them, having us
know who they are and what makes them tick. Eva is a woman on the verge of
a breakdown. It's her dementia that is a catalyst in the damage caused by
the N-Form laced cocaine. David and Harry are the first realistically
portrayed gay characters in the Virgin Line. What makes it better is that
their sexual orientation is not their sole justification for existing, but
is used as a catalyst for how they interact with the other players and
events in Damaged Goods. This not only miles away from Paul
Cornell's feel-good epilogue character changes in Human
Nature, but also shows how such characters should be handled.
The regulars are all right. The Doctor is in mysterious mode (boring)
but not to the point where it annoyed me. I like how he had a hard time
connecting with the residents of the Quadrant, and how he confronts the
enemy head on in the end (which is how it should be done). Roz, in her
penultimate story, is kept on the sidelines. She's okay, but doesn't do
much until the end. Chris Cwej goes on a wild goose chase for drugs, but
has a great moment where he and David talk about sexuality. Double bonus
points for no TARDIS crew angsting.
The N-Form is begging to be done in an anime (Japanese styled
animation) format. Davies does a commendable job describing the N-Form in
the book. It could never be done convincingly in the television format.
The concept is well executed, and is one of the better monster creations
in the books. The N-Form reminded me of the Cenobites of the Hellraiser
series, but more technological. The Capper is an interesting red herring,
seemingly important, but in reality a plot catalyst, like Eva's madness
and the cocaine.
The epilogue -- It bothered me. Well, not all of it, but the section
about the HIV cure. It didn't fit with all the tragedy, and felt like a
sop as to some form of a happy ending.
My other complaint about Damaged Goods was that for all the deep
characterization we get, I felt a detachment from the narrative. In fact,
it was the detachment that gave me a few days pause before I sat down to
write out my review. For all the tragedy Davies tosses at us -- the Tyler
Family is destroyed, the Quadrant is levelled -- I never felt anything,
which I found disconcerting, especially because of the effort made to
define the characters and have their concerns become mine. In the early
chapters, I was definitely into the stories of Bev, Eva, Winnie, Harry,
David, Gabriel and the others. But by the end, when the N-Form forces
itself into reality and the slaughter commences, I cared less and less
about them. In a strange move, although bold, the one character you
thought would make it intact, Bev, dies in the Doctor's arms (after the
requisite "Bastard" namecalling), and it didn't upset me.
I like Damaged Goods. I wanted to like it more. I think it's one
of the better example of how you can tell any time of story within the
Doctor Who format. But I wanted to like this book more, and it's a
shame that I couldn?t for the reasons I listed.
Easily the Worst Novel I've Ever Read by Isaac
Wilcott
30/4/03
I'm one of those people who keeps every single book he ever buys, even
the ones he didn't like. My shelf space is very limited, so many books
reside in boxes, though carefully preserved and taken out now and again to
"cycle" them with ones on the shelf, or reread them. I enjoy almost all of
what I read and seem to have less exacting standards for fiction than most
people. I'm very forgiving of authors for their peculiarities and faults,
and effortlessly enjoy what is despised by the more-critical majority.
It should come as a great surprise to everyone, then, that I absolutely
loathe Damaged Goods. More than loathe -- there are no words to
describe how much revulsion on a mental and spiritual level this novel
aroused. It's by far the worst novel I've ever read, and this is coming
from someone who's read thousands. I read it about five years ago -- it's
taken me that long to cool down enough to write this more level-headed
review.
At first this book struck me as ridiculous if nothing else. But around
page 100, when it became clear that things were not beginning to brighten,
it passed the RIDICULOUS point and became MONOTONOUS. By page 150 it had
reached the THIS AUTHOR IS OBVIOUSLY DEEPLY DISTURBED point. By page 200 I
was literally gagging and sick at heart.
What, you may ask, provoked this response? Page after page after page
of carefully and lovingly described death and devastation, torment and
rage, mutilation and horror, pain and suffering, perversion and
manipulation -- on and on and on and on and on. Nothing else. All the
characters were the lowest, basest dregs of humanity, doing the worst
imaginable things to each other and to themselves. No love, no hope, no
joy -- only suffering and death.
I love gratuitous violence as much as the next man, but honestly! This
(so-called) novel is nothing but gratuitous violence. For instance
there is one scene where a woman murders her husband in an excessively
grisly fashion, for no better reason than the dead infant inside her womb
"told her to." That's what I think happened, anyway; Davies didn't
seem too keen to let the readers know what was going on, beyond drenching
us in blood. If you're going to have your characters run amuck, at least
provide a credible explanation.
Presenting violence and its consequences realistically is one thing,
but this is wallowing in it, loving it, and holding it up as a wonderful
experience. Never before have I encountered such an attitude taken to the
extremes presented here. No matter what his stated rationale may be, the
author (I hate to say it) is apparently a very sick individual, who adores
and glorifies blood and pain, wrapping himself up in a warm blanket of
hate and death. Absolutely sickening.
This book is also unoriginal and dull, arising, no doubt, from the
repetition of the above-mentioned mayhem. And the few variations of
horrifying death presented are nothing new: there are all sorts of
automated killer machines from ancient Gallifrey (yawn) rearing their ugly
cross-dimensional heads by erupting from the bodies of various cocaine
addicts (gag, yawn) taking possession of people to function as operators
(yawn) and devastating much of London after the joining between mad-woman
and machine exponentially increases the savagery of each (yawn). All of
this happens without anyone noticing, apparently. Thousands die, and yet
somehow by the end of the book it's all fobbed off as "well, just a
typical day in the shadier districts of London." It makes UNIT's emergency
evacuation of London in Invasion of the
Dinosaurs seem believable by comparison.
I was determined to finish reading this novel, and I did. I then
promptly tore it in half, then into tiny bits, and threw it into the
garbage where it obviously originated. This is the only novel I have ever
intentionally mistreated, damaged, or thrown away, and it deserved it.
Ptui.
A Review by Andrew McCaffrey
28/3/04
Despite the continued release of massively restored old adventures onto
DVD, over the course of the next twelve months Damanged Gods will
almost certainly be the Doctor Who story most revisited by fans.
The reason is obvious. When author Russell T Davies wrote Daaged
Goods in 1996, he was simply a promising newcomer who had some
relatively impressive television credits to his name. Since then, his
career has done nothing but rise. He produced, created and wrote Queer as
Folk, Touching Evil, and The Second Coming, was nominated for Sainthood,
saved the humpbacked whale from extinction, caused the breakup of the
Spice Girls, tricked a Martian invasion fleet to fly into the sun, and was
named Producer of the still unseen Doctor Who TV revival. For
Doctor Who fans, the last of these accomplishments is naturally the
most important.
I never got around to reading Damaged Goods when it was first
published; as with many of the books of this era (through no fault of
their own) I found myself simply far too busy to get around to it. I knew
of its impressive reputation and was pleased when I eventually secured a
copy. So when I finally opened the cover I already knew that this Davies
guy would be The Producer, The Writer And Main Pooh-Bah Of Doctor
Who. I found myself giving the book more scrutiny than I otherwise
would have, simply to see if I could find clues as to what sort of series
he will create based on what he had written here.
Upon completion of the book, I realized that this approach is, of
course, absolute nonsense. What I didn't get out of the book was that the
new series will feature two ex-cops as companions, or will take place in a
London housing estate, or will feature big, evil monsters from Gallifrey's
past. What I did take away was the book's fabulous attention to detail,
Davies' ability to create sympathetic, flawed, interesting characters, and
his talent for pulling them all into an engaging plot that gives each
person an important part to play.
Doctor Who on television almost always worked when it had
interesting and believable characters. Whether the characters were
realistic was another matter entirely, and while the concepts sometimes
dovetailed, this, I feel, was rare. Sharaz Jek (to pick an example
totally at random) is a fascinating creation whose obsessive behavior is
believably conveyed. But you couldn't imagine him at the far future's
equivalent of a supermarket, because within the actual story of The Caves of Androzani it made more sense to have a
collection of archetypes rather than someone you would expect to meet on
the street (or in any place outside the confines of the story being told).
Davies manages to express both in his only Doctor Who novel (so
far), which is a fantastic bonus as far as I'm concerned. His characters
are interesting, believable, and also realistic. This formula certainly
wouldn't be appropriate (or possible) for every Doctor Who story,
but here it works, and thanks to Davies' skills, it works extremely well.
Damaged Goods is fantasy grounded in realism, which can't be an
easy thing to successfully pull off.
Getting to the book itself, one of the first wishes I have is that
hopefully with the new series in production, Davies will find some spare
time to write some more novels (or novelisations), because his prose is
wonderful. His sense of timing, his ability to effectively pace the
story, and his sense of setting the proper atmosphere is superb. A scene
with a dead corpse returning to life is exactly the right amount of creepy
and sinister. It's nicely evocative of those Hinchcliffe-era horror
stories without containing anything that feels like a retread or a copy.
Pieces of it reminded me at times of the psychological horror/thrillers
that Stephen Gallagher wrote in his post-Doctor Who days.
Although the story is great from cover to cover, I found myself most
enjoying the little things that the book did. Little moments of humanity
liberally scattered through the sections of pure horror... and, of course,
the novel's themes. In Damaged Goods, the dead past never really
leaves the living present. Apart from the obvious zombie
rising-from-the-dead parallels, there's a depressed middle-aged man who
talks to the voice of his dead wife in his head, and secrets from
character's pasts that never quite seem to go away. Constant and subtle
repetitions of the book's themes go a long ways towards making the book
coherent and powerful. The "damaged goods" of the title conveys a theme
that is shockingly horrific. The more I thought about the book's content,
the more I appreciated it. Revelations towards the end echo subject
matter introduced earlier, making me gasp not only at the twist, but also
at how deviously it subverted and built upon the seemingly innocuous prior
passages.
So, what can we take from Damaged Goods to look towards how the
new Doctor Who series will turn out? The subject matter, the
number of continuity references, the balance of humor to drama? No. At
the moment, we just can't make meaningful predictions without making them
so general as to be worthless. The only important thing to take from
Damaged Goods is that Russell T Davies is a damn good writer, and
if he writes half as well for Doctor Who today as he did eight
years ago, then I expect to be very pleased with the results. If you had
told me six months ago the new producer for TV Doctor Who was named
"Russell", I think I would have been ill. But reading Damaged
Goods has given me a lot of hope that Davies is the right Russell for
the job.
A Review by Richard Radcliffe
24/10/04
I missed this book when it was released in 1995. The New Adventures
lost much of their interest, and this tale of council flats and drug use
would have been avoided back then. There's a certain Russell T Davies as
the writer however though - and this book is back in fashion again. And
so, thanks to a good friend, I was able to acquire a copy - not to keep,
to borrow.
Damaged Goods is indeed a tale of council flats and drug use.
There's plenty of other controversial material in here too - prostitution,
gay sex and mass violence amongst them. And yet I couldn't help but be
captivated by much of it. I went in to the book, expecting to be offended,
but emerged with yet more admiration for RTD - who without doubt is the
single biggest reason we are getting a new show in 2005.
What RTD does here is make the commonplace extraordinary - and that for
me is the essence of Who. It is something he will undoubtedly bring
to the new series in 2005. The local council estate becomes as alien an
environment as anything the Doctor has ever encountered. The players in
the novel feel real, yet extraordinary. RTD fleshes them out wonderfully
well, with appetites and passions on their sleeves.
I also found the Doctor's portrayal interesting. I had forgotten just
how mysterious and detached the 7th Doctor had become. I read the New
Adventures sporadically in the mid 90s, but have not read one since I read
Lungbarrow, about a year after its release. So that
makes a good 8 years without this type of Who novel. What a complex
character he had become now - the great chess player, who sacrifices his
pawns when needed, and that's quite a lot of times.
I also enjoyed reading about Chris and Roz. I can only recall Terrance
Dicks' excellent Shakedown, as a book that brought
them alive for me. As the Doctor sent them on errand after errand, so I
understood this period of Who better. Chris and Roz were pawns,
just as everyone else was, but they were closer to the action for us.
The writing style is fluid and fascinating. The whole story flies by.
The monster admittedly is not that good, but the way it affects the
players in the book is what strikes a chord here. RTD writes beautifully,
and that makes me even more excited about the new series. In 2005 I am
sure we will be in for a treat, that will fulfill our expectations, and
maybe even go beyond.
It was silly to miss Damaged Goods 9 years ago, but the anomaly
has been corrected. This is an excellent book, and I would love to see it
reprinted so I can acquire my own copy. This one has to go back to my mate
(who ironically didn't like it all that much!). 9/10
Come In, Mr. Davies... by Matthew Kresal
3/9/15
Almost twenty years years ago, and nearly a decade before he became the
man who regenerated Doctor Who on TV for a new century, Russell T
Davies made his first contribution to the series in an entirely different
medium. At a time when Doctor Who was off the air and being
continued via the Virgin book ranges, a then up-and-coming Davies would
write what is still his only novel for the New Adventures. With it having
been recently adapted as an audio drama by Big Finish, now seemed an
opportune moment to finally take it off the shelf and read what is often
regarded as one of the best books to come out of the Virgin New
Adventures.
The thing that struck me most while reading this is the same thing that
struck me while watching the Davies era of New Who: The man can write
great characters. There simply isn't a single badly written character in
the whole book and Davies proves his ability to get a character across so
simply and effectively on TV is there on the printed page as well. There's
Rita, the cocaine-addicted waitress we meet in chapter two for example,
who appears for that single chapter but is so well defined that you almost
feel like you know her by the time it's over. With his ability to do that,
Davies really fleshes out the full supporting cast once the story shifts
to its main setting as we're introduced to the troubled Tyler family; the
ruthless and resurrected drug dealer the Capper; the old woman Mrs. Hearn,
who holds many secrets; and the upper-class Eve Jericho. These are just
some of the characters we meet in the space of 263 pages. Each and every
one of them is fleshed out, explored and delved into as we discover just
who they are and the role they have to play in the events unfolding. The
results are at times remarkable with the cliche of "characters that leap
off the page" being more than applicable under the circumstances.
Then there's the setting: the Quadrant housing estate in London, 1987.
It's hard not to think of it as a predecessor of sorts to the Powell
Estate but it's far more than that. The Quadrant is almost a character in
its own right: the seemingly ordinary hiding something extraordinary
underneath. It's a place full of secrets with people almost hidden away,
tension hanging in the air almost continuously. The Doctor at one point
sums up each of the flats found in the Quadrant as being like a fortress,
an apt description of perhaps the most down-to-earth setting you'll ever
encounter in a Doctor Who book. Yet, like he would do nearly a
decade later, Davies proves that the extraordinary often lies just beneath
the surface if we're willing to look for it.
What really separates Damaged Goods from the rest of Davies'
Who writing (and why he stopped it being reprinted ahead of the
show's return in 2005) is just how adult and dark it is. While the council
estate setting and character situations are definitely familiar to those
of us who came to know Rose Tyler and the Powell Estate, Davies handling
of those familiar elements is anything but. The story revolves around
drugs, something that would be a major taboo even now for the New Series,
with emphasis placed on the less-than-sunny lives and times of those in
the Quadrant with sex, expletives and violence all being front and center.
While the social issues being explored here are familiar Davies territory,
the tone of the novel isn't so much Doctor Who but that of
Torchwood (especially the bleak but brilliant Children of Earth). This is Davies doing what he
never did on TV and what some are still crying out for even now: a
non-family-friendly Doctor Who.
Yet, while Davies is famous for his characters and characterizations
and he creates a good sense of atmosphere, there is one fault of his that
is here. The man is infamous for his plots, lack thereof and infuriating
endings. The plot is an ultra-slow burner even at 263 pages with it being
at times almost more of a portrait of life on a housing estate than a
science-fiction novel. Then suddenly, with fifty or so pages left, the
plot explodes and begins to rush by at an incredible pace and with
elements that firmly remind us that this is in fact a Doctor Who
story. Yet by then it's almost too late to salvage the plot as the finale
turns into something of a precursor to that of The
Next Doctor thirteen years later. If you're looking for Davies to do a
good plot to go with his characters, this isn't the place to go at all.
There's another side-effect of that focus as well. The three "main"
characters of the book (the seventh Doctor, Chris and Roz) seem like
supporting characters at times as the book seems to focus more on Davies'
own creations. It's almost like reading a Doctor-lite story at times as,
until those last fifty pages or so, the Doctor and companions seem to
wander about almost aimlessly inside the novel. Yet, once again, Davies
proves his ability to write strong characters, especially in his capturing
of the seventh Doctor, who comes across incredibly well when he does
appear. Indeed, reading Damaged Goods felt less at times like
reading a Doctor Who novel than reading that very thing Davies is
often accused of turning the New Series into: a soap opera, with Davies
often seems swept up in his characters and their backstories at the
expense of anything else.
At the end of the day, Damaged Goods features all the hallmarks
of Davies' later writing for when the show came back. Both for the good
and bad. Good in the form of characterizations but bad in that the plot is
slow to unfold and then is over with in a flash. Yet it's also far darker
than virtually anything Davies gave his in his nearly five years as show
runner on the New Series. While I can't quite sing its praises as others
have done both here and elsewhere, I can recommend it at the very least as
a curiosity and at best as Davies' only novel.