Damaged Goods (Doctor Who Novel) - Background

Background

Davies had already established himself as a successful writer of children's television by 1996, having penned well-received serials such as Dark Season (1991) and Century Falls (1993), and winning a BAFTA Children's Award for an episode of Children's Ward, a series he both wrote for and produced from 1992 to 1995. A staff scriptwriter at Granada Television, he was beginning to move into adult television, writing for soap operas such as Families and Revelations, the latter of which he created.

Despite being a professional writer and long-time Doctor Who fan, Davies had no initial interest in writing for Virgin's Doctor Who novel series, concentrating instead on his television career. However, in 1995 he was interviewed about Dark Season and Century Falls by journalist David Richardson of TV Zone magazine, who later wrote about their meeting. "When we first spoke back in 1995, Davies's interest in writing for the series was evident. With Doctor Who out of production, I suggested he'd be an ideal choice to write one of the novels, and gave him a contact at Virgin Publishing." However, Davies's friend and fellow writer Paul Cornell, who had written several novels for the New Adventures range, later claimed to have been the one responsible for enabling Davies to contribute to the series. "At the time he'd only just started to do The Grand, and we were very much on the same level. We swapped favours — he got me onto Children's Ward, and I introduced him to Rebecca Levene so he could get to do Damaged Goods."

Davies himself gave his own account of the book's origins in Doctor Who Magazine's 2002 history of the New Adventures range. "I first thought of writing a New Adventure when David Richardson interviewed me for TV Zone... I bashed out the first two chapters in my spare time. I sent in this dead lazy submission, which just said, 'I've got no idea what happens in the end, but trust me. I write'. The arrogance of youth!"

However, Davies found himself commissioned to write for the range by Levene, with his book forming part of the 'Psi-Powers' arc which was overarching the storyline of the novels at the time, although Davies claimed: "I'm not sure I completely understood the Brotherhood arc to be honest! I just kept it vague and hoped someone else would make sense of it."

After having been commissioned to write the novel, Davies had originally planned to take three months off writing for television in order to complete it. He was then also commissioned to write for two major ITV television series, leaving him very short of time in which to complete the book, eventually writing the manuscript in only five weeks. This sudden amount of work did, however, have the unexpected result of Granada Television purchasing the media rights for the novel on February 2, 1997, with a view to Davies possibly scripting a television adaptation for them.

"Granada lent me a researcher, Maria Grimley, to do all the leg-work on the novel, just so I could finish on time," Davies told Doctor Who Magazine. "This led to various Granada folk reading Damaged Goods and suggesting that the Mrs Jericho story would make a good thriller in its own right. It would have stripped out all the sci-fi stuff — including the Doctor, obviously! — and been cut back to just the story of the twins separated at birth... I think the treatment was called The Mother War. Nothing happened with that because I was just too busy on The Grand."