Damaged Goods (Doctor Who Novel) - Themes

Themes

There are several aspects of Damaged Goods which contain elements present throughout much of Davies's other work. The inclusion of a family named Tyler, in particular, is a trademark of the writer — Tylers also appear in Revelations, Queer as Folk, The Second Coming and the 2005 re-launch of Doctor Who itself.

The scene in which Mrs Jericho prepares a dinner laced with rat poison for her husband is replicated almost exactly in the concluding episode of Davies's 2003 religious telefantasy drama The Second Coming, where the leading character of Judith prepares a similarly poisoned meal for her lover Steve. There is an even more direct link to Dark Season, with the novel's epilogue featuring a mention of the main character, Marcie, from that serial.

Damaged Goods contains a gay character, David, and homosexuality is a recurring theme explored in much of Davies's writing, as he himself noted in an article for The Guardian newspaper in 2003. "The first gay character I ever wrote was a Devil-worshipping Nazi lesbian in a Children's BBC thriller, Dark Season. She was too busy taking over the world to do anything particularly lesbian, though she did keep a Teutonic Valkyrie by her side at all times... Once I'd started, I never stopped... I even wrote a Doctor Who novel in which the six-foot blond, blue-eyed companion interrupts the hunt for an interdimensional Gallifreyan War Machine to get a blowjob in the back of a taxi. Like you do."

Davies's major breakthrough television series, Queer as Folk (1999), was centred around the lives of three gay men in Manchester, one of whom, Vince Tyler, is portrayed as a fanatical Doctor Who fan. Although never clearly seen on screen, part of the set dressing for Vince's bedroom as seen in the first episode of the series was a copy of Damaged Goods, included as an in-joke by the set dressers. Damaged Goods itself contains a reference to Why Don't You?, a BBC children's television series on which Davies was working at the time the novel is set.

The Doctor Who Annual 2006, published by Panini in August 2005, contained an article entitled Meet the Doctor by Davies, which referred to "N-Forms" being one of the weapons used in the Time War referred to in the 2005 series of Doctor Who. "N-Forms" are the ancient Time Lord weapons which are featured in the plot of Damaged Goods.