Island of Death
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| Author | Barry Letts |
|---|---|
| Series |
Doctor Who book: Past Doctor Adventures |
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Release number
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71 |
| Subject | Featuring: Third Doctor Sarah, UNIT |
| Set in | Period between The Five Doctors (in the Third Doctor's timeline) and The Monster of Peladon |
| Publisher | BBC Books |
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Publication date
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July 4, 2005 |
| Pages | 281 |
| ISBN | |
| Preceded by | Match of the Day |
| Followed by | Spiral Scratch |
Island of Death is a BBC Books original novel written by Barry Letts and based on the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It features the Third Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith.
When Sarah’s associate Jeremy Fitzoliver disappears, nobody at work particularly cares. However, Sarah investigates on behalf of Jeremy’s worried mother, and soon finds that Jeremy has joined a New Age cult near Hampstead Heath. The cultists worship a being called the Skang, and at their ceremonies, they share a drink that makes them suspiciously happy. Sarah recognises their leader, Alex Whitbread, as a former right-wing government official who was fired for corruption, but Brother Alex refuses to discuss his change of heart and haughtily informs Sarah that their group’s founder, Mother Hilda, is currently in Bombay. He refuses to let Sarah take his photograph or let her into the inner sanctum, but Sarah later climbs out onto the building’s second-storey ledge and snaps a photograph of the sanctum—which seems to contain a strange, demonic statue of a reptilian insect creature with a large proboscis.
Sarah’s editor, Clorinda, refuses to authorise a full investigation, but Sarah takes a sample of the Skangites’ drink to UNIT HQ for the Doctor to analyse. At first, he is more concerned with his attempts to communicate telepathically with goldfish, but when he sees her photograph of the Skang statue he agrees to analyse the liquid sample. Sarah returns to her office, but can’t concentrate on her work and ends up leaving late with her assignments unfinished. As she crosses Hampstead Heath on her way home, she realises that she’s being followed—and when she catches a glimpse of her pursuer, she recognises it as the Skang. Fortunately, the Skang is frightened off before it can attack her by the sudden arrival of an old man walking his dog. Meanwhile, the Doctor visits the Hampstead Heath police station to ask whether they have found any emaciated bodies in the vicinity; they have indeed found several bodies reduced to mere skin and bones, and they demand to know what the Doctor knows about the situation. He is eventually forced to call on Sergeant Benton to bail him out.
The next morning, the Doctor confirms that the cultists’ drink contains a psychotropic drug, and the Brigadier agrees to investigate the possibility of alien involvement. However, the Skangites have packed up and left, presumably planning to join their fellows in Bombay. Sarah calls in her vacation time at work and joins the Doctor and the Brigadier, who intend to take the TARDIS straight to Bombay; however, the ship’s temporal governor is playing up, and after a couple of failed attempts to reach Bombay it nearly flings them all into the timeless space before the Big Bang. The Doctor manages to get them back to UNIT HQ, where the irritated Brigadier books them passage to Bombay via British Airways. The Doctor takes the temporal governor with him in order to conduct repairs, and on the way, he tells Sarah that the creature in her photograph resembles certain insects that inject their digestive fluids into their victims, liquefy their internal organs, and literally drink their victims alive. There is no need for him to explain that the “statue” in the cult building was not a statue, or what happened to the emaciated bodies on the Heath.
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