Doctor Who BBCN12 - The Price of Paradise

by Doctor Who

  Elsewhere, the SS Humphrey Bogart, battered and ugly, punched a hole into hyperspace and disappeared from view.

  ‘Here,’ said the professor, setting a mug of a hot liquid in front of the young man who was now dressed in a spare uniform.

  Rez took the mug and sniffed suspiciously.

  The professor smiled, taking years off her age. ‘I made sure I took some jinnen with us. Can’t expect you to get used to tea overnight, can we?’

  Rez took a grateful sip. It was a little on the weak side but he kept quiet about it, not wanting to upset his new guardian.

  He studied the woman who had promised to look after him in this strange new life. She seemed more relaxed now, younger, even though she had been forced to abandon her long-sought paradise. She was looking through the scant possessions that he had brought on board with him and held up the strange cube that had been packed into his escape pod.

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  ‘Do you know what this is?’ she asked him.

  Rez shook his head. He’d spent hours looking at it over the years but its meaning had always eluded him. It was just a plain plastic cube as far as he knew.

  ‘It’s a memory cube,’ she told him, and started running her fingers over each of the surfaces, looking around for something.

  ‘Ah!’ she exclaimed, as she found the hidden switches that she knew had to be there.

  The cube lit up as it burst into life. A hologram field sprang into view above one of the sides and the cube started to run a program.

  The hologram showed two humans, a handsome but slightly worried-looking man and a beautiful young woman with long blonde hair.

  They began to talk to the baby son they were about to place in an escape pod. Rez watched and listened, tears rolling down his face.

  His parents were long dead, but here at last they were able to speak to him.

  Petra Shulough moved across the room to sit next to him and placed an arm around his shoulders.

  ‘Now we can find out who you are and where you came from,’ she whispered to him gently.

  She realised that she had been given a new and much more valuable quest to follow, and this time she would not be alone.

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  Acknowledgements

  I am indebted to a number of people who have helped me in producing this novel and would like to take this opportunity to thank them all.

  First, everyone at BBC Worldwide, especially Stuart Cooper, Kate Walsh, my patient and talented copy-editor, Lesley Levene, and Justin Richards, the creative director of these books, who gave me the chance to be here.

  I’d also like to thank my fellow writers in this line, Stephen Cole, Steve Lyons, Jac Rayner, Gareth Roberts, Mike Tucker and Justin Richards (again), for inspiration and for setting the standard so high!

  I must also thank my very patient wife, Kerry – always my first editor – and my children, Cefn and Kassia, who have all been very understanding during this book’s accelerated production process.

  Finally, I want to thank everyone at BBC Wales and in the BBC

  Drama Department who have worked so hard to produce the wonderful revival of Doctor Who on television. In particular I must thank Helen Raynor, my point of contact in the Doctor Who Script Department, and, of course, the main man, Russell T Davies, whom I want to thank particularly for the opportunity to be (a small) part of this splendid new era of Doctor Who. Thank you all.

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  About the Author

  Colin Brake has stopped counting birthdays and given up measuring his height! As a writer and script editor he has been involved in the television business for twenty years. He has worked on shows as di-verse as EastEnders, Trainer and Bugs and written scripts for many programmes, including over thirty episodes of the BBC daytime soap Doctors.

  Having been thwarted in his ambition to become the next script editor of Doctor Who back in 1989, when the BBC cancelled the programme, he is rather amazed to find that he has now written Doctor Who audio plays, short stories and novels.

  He lives in Leicester with his wife, Kerry, their two children, Cefn and Kassia, and two Cornish Rex cats who love to walk all over his keyboard and thus get the blame for all typos (the cats, that is, not the children – although they too have their moments!).

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  Document Outline

  Front Cover

  Contents

  Prologue

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Back Cover