Book Club: Nightshade

Books Book Club
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Time for another book! We are going to read together Nightshade

There is also an audio adaptation of this novel!

Please discuss below - no need to finish it first, discuss as you go along but please add spoiler tags for anything that could be considered a spoiler!

If you’ve previously read the book and want to join in the discussion, that’s great too!

Participating in the Book Club will earn you a badge :medal_sports:

Just for fun, add your rating here:

Select your rating (out of 10):
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I have started this and read around half of the book. I liked what I read. But then I got a lot to do at work and have not read anything in a couple of weeks.

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I have also read about half of this, and so far, I like it a lot. It’s an atmospheric story with a meta-level narrative, interesting characters and very readable prose. I’m probably going to finish this in a couple of days.

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We’ve made it!

As of now, having read 30-40 odd Doctor Who books, Nightshade remains my absolute favourite, being one of only two to receive a 10/10 rating from me.

And I think the main reason for that is that Nightshade is just my sort of book: cosmic horror in a low-key setting that gets progressively more insane and terrifying as it goes on.

It’s a book that expertly explores Seven, so already it’s getting my top marks as he’s probably my favourite incarnation from a character study standpoint.

Ace also gets a nice little subplot. It’s not as convincing of a romantic endeavour is it will be with Jan in Love and War but Robin is an interesting enough character and that ending really hurts.

The Sentience is one of my favourite understated antagonists, just this thing, this mass that preys on people’s memories, even taking the form of Susan at one point to fool the Doctor. Seeing it form into townsfolks’ dead daughters and deceive a priest by taking the form of Jesus is wildly entertaining and it makes for a horrifying villain.

Pretty much all of our character here are great, which makes it all the worse when most of them suddenly and horrifically die. Seriously, so many character lost their lives here, it turns strangely bloodthirsty in the final act.

And the strangest thing of all is that this is written by Mark Gatiss. In fact, it’s the first book by Mark Gatiss, a writer who I don’t think goes outside the box, always writing very by the numbers Doctor Who, stories, very template-like narratives with a generic alien monster to fight, not something ripped out of a Lovecraft novella.

But Nightshade isn’t like that, Nightshade is weird, it’s scary and it’s wonderful. It’s one my favourite depictions of Seven, with an absolutely petrifying tone and a real grim style to it that never feels like it’s going out of the bounds of Doctor Who like some other VNAs.

Nightshade is a near-perfect book to me, and having read it about two years ago now, I am desperately searching for something to surpass it. I want to feel what I felt when reading Nightshade again, and I think that alone is a testament to how much I adore it.

10/10

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And so we have reached the point where I think the VNAs come into their own.

I agree with a lot of what you write.
Nightshade is a fantastic book, and really well written by Mark Gatiss.
It’s true that Mark Gatiss doesn’t stray too far from the “template” of Doctor Who, but basically I think that is because he really gets the premise and what it is that makes Doctor Who tick being the massive fanboy that he clearly is. He has written this one, An Adventure in Space and Time, and the short Mockumentary Global Conspiracy - sometimes I really feel like Mark Gatiss gets a bad rap within fandom, he has done some stellar stuff :slightly_smiling_face:

Slight spoiler for the next VNA:

But I find the little romance with Robin a thousand times more believable than the one with Jan in Love and War (more on that next month😉), this feels somewhat realistic which I never get with Jan.

Love and War next!!! :heart_eyes:

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I deeply love most of Nightshade, it’s a perfect cozy atmosphere book with some good horror too. The conceit of Edmund Trevithick and the Nightshade show is such a good idea to put in Doctor Who, and really well realized.

I have only two things I remember disliking about Nightshade. One is that the one use of the n-word in the book is pretty gratuitous and unnecessary. While the book itself is strongly criticizing the racism of the character who uses it, the fact that it was that particular slur doesn’t really make sense, and the fact that that’s lampshaded doesn’t make things better; in a book written by a white writer it still comes off as an “edgy for the sake of being edgy” choice. At least from my (also white) perspective. :woman_shrugging:

My other complaint has to do with the very end (not the climax of the book but afterward), which involves the Doctor acting incredibly out of character and completely removing Ace’s agency in her choice to leave, with no reason for this ever given, and the situation is never addressed again. It’s extremely jarring, makes no sense, and while I love most of the rest of the book, I cannot consider that ending canon.

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It’s been a thousand years since I read this (and I still need to listen to the audio adaptation) but I do know I enjoyed it. Trevithick - who is basically based on Professor Quatermass - is a great character and the whole ‘spooky goings on in an English village’ is quintessential Doctor Who. I also like the contrast with the radio telescope and it’s operators.

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I knew it! You’re a Time Lord as well! The Doctor Delta! Or, perhaps you’re the Master? No! You’re the Rani!

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He’s definitely Goronwy!
The Time Lord Known as The Beekeeper :honeybee:

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Rumbled.

Untitled

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I loved Nightshade when I read it a couple months ago, @Speechless explains it well here. It’s a real 10/10. I look forward to reading it one Christmas, a cozy read with mystery and horror, and some lovely insight into the Seventh Doctors character. Definitely the best Doctor Who story Gatiss has written, I don’t like many of his TV episodes but this is sublime.

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This might be a slight tangent but, a few years after the book was published, there was an album called Pharos released by a group called Cybertech.

Most of the music was inspired by the New Adventures novels. One of the tracks was called the Nightshade TV theme. As the theme to an entirely fictitious TV series it’s quite good. Now, every time I re- read the book, I have this piece of music in my head.

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Oh yes, I forgot about that. I have the CD on a shelf (or maybe in a box) upstairs but can’t remember the last time I listened to it! Time to dig it out. The Wilderness Years really did spur on fan creativity down some really interesting routes.

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Thank you for sharing, just jumped through a couple of tracks and will give it a proper listen sometime. What a fascinating little tangent!

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By the way, Nightshade was the first VNA where a short prelude was released in Doctor Who Magazine (#190).

They ran until Human Nature (VNA #38).

Usually pretty inconsequential to the book so noone is really missing out by not reading them, they mainly give a little precursor to the tone or atmosphere of the book proper.

:slightly_smiling_face:

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And they’re all listed on the site for easy rating and reviewing :slight_smile:

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I didn’t know the preludes are in the Guide! I’m going to check them out now!

By the way, here’s the Poparena video on Nightshade:

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I just finished reading this for the first time.

I’m glad it was recommended to me, I was probably going to skip it and go straight to Love and War but it was worth reading!

I loved the horror elements, it had some pretty huge stakes and I really liked the characterisation of Seven deciding to retire and that he just gets pulled into another disaster to solve.

The villain was effective, creepy, and cleverly dealt with (although I did see the ending coming before the Doctor did, which makes me think I’m smarter than him… maybe I am :laughing:)

The only thing I didn’t really like was all the stuff with Ace. I understand that maybe the trauma that she has been through would make her want to give it up, and may have affected her feelings for Robin, and I like the parallels with Susan, but I felt it went way too fast and the idea that she would give up everything and live in this little village in the 60s (which has just been devastated and loads of people killed) was a bit unbelievable to me. Also I prefer her being queer-coded. But it was a good ending. Poor Ace can never get a break.

Looking forward to the next one!

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Finally something we all recommend lives up to your expectations!!

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I know right, come on guys do better…! :wink:

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