Rags (Doctor Who)
.jpg) |
|
| Author | Mick Lewis |
|---|---|
| Series |
Doctor Who book: Past Doctor Adventures |
|
Release number
|
40 |
| Subject | Featuring: Third Doctor Jo |
| Set in | Period between The Mutants and The Time Monster |
| Publisher | BBC Books |
|
Publication date
|
March 2001 |
| Pages | 251 |
| ISBN | |
| Preceded by | Bunker Soldiers |
| Followed by | The Shadow in the Glass |
Rags is a BBC Books original novel written by Mick Lewis and based on the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It features the Third Doctor and Jo.
On the windswept wilds of Dartmoor, a going-nowhere punk band pulls off the road while their driver, Doc, answers a call of nature by the standing stones. The van is struck by a Range Rover driven by a group of drunken upper-class students from Exeter, and the minor accident becomes a major brawl as the punks and toffs lay into each other, driven by class hatred. Doc, watching it all from the tor, sees an old bone dagger buried in the earth, and, driven by some unnatural feeling of hatred, he pulls it free and buries it the chest of one of the students. As the blood soaks into the standing stones, something which has slept for centuries wakes, and the fight becomes bloody and deadly. Soon all of the fighters are dead, but that's just the start of it. Drawn by the violence, thugs from a nearby village arrive with a cattle truck, and it isn't just the standing stone which they load into the back. The tour to end all tours is about to begin...
The Doctor is taking advantage of a rare quiet time at UNIT to work on the dematerialisation circuit when the TARDIS sensors pick up a powerful energy surge from Dartmoor. He and Jo set off to investigate, and track the disturbances to a small village near Dartmoor prison. The cattle truck has driven over the moors to Princetown, drawing the attention of the local slacker Nick, his lover Sin Yen, and their friends Jimmy and Rod. Four players emerge from the back of the cattle truck, musicians like a cross between punks and wandering mummers—and their songs are raw musical wounds of violence and hatred which sweep the crowd into a frenzy. A riot breaks out in the prison, and the cons at the work farm turn on their guards, dragging them in front of the cattle truck and brutally slaughtering them. Nobody lifts a finger to stop them, and the village constable is trampled and killed as the audience riots in celebration of the deaths. Even Jo is caught up in the madness of the moment...
When the band stops playing, the riots stop as well, and the audience, shaken, withdraws to the pub. Night seems almost to seep out of the cattle truck rather than falling naturally, but when the Doctor tries to investigate he is driven off by the roadies—thugs who are rumoured to be involved in Satanic rituals in the nearby villages. Journalists arrive in town to cover the murders, and reporter Charmagne Peters finds herself strangely drawn to the story. She once visited Romania as a young woman, and vowed to become a journalist after seeing the horrific conditions in which the sewer urchins of Belgrade lived. She can't explain why this particular story touches her so personally, but she vows to follow it to the end.
...
Wikipedia