Doctor Who: Dying in the Sun

Past Doctor Adventures #47

by Jon de Burgh Miller

It was the city of angels, and the angels were screaming...

Los Angeles, 1947: multi-millionaire movie producer Harold Reitman has been murdered and the LAPD are convinced that drug dealer Robert Chate is the killer. Detective William Fletcher isn't so sure — he believes that the man who calls himself the Doctor has a stronger connection to the crime than he's letting on.

While the Doctor assists the police with their enquiries, Star Light Pictures are preparing to release their most eagerly anticipated movie yet, Dying in the Sun, a film that rumours say will change the motion-picture industry for ever.

Suspecting that the film holds secrets more terrifying then anyone could ever have imagined, the Doctor decides to do everything in his power to stop it from being released. In Hollywood, however, it is the movie studios that hold all the power...

Genres: Doctor Who, Science Fiction, Fiction

288 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2001

About the author

Jon de Burgh Miller is an author most associated with his work on a variety of spin-offs from the BBC Television series Doctor Who. He is also co-owner of and regular reviewer on the Shiny Shelf website.

Miller's first published fiction was the Virgin Publishing Bernice Summerfield novel Twilight of the Gods, which was the final book of the series. He was brought on to the project by co-writer Mark Clapham, a friend from when both attended University College London. Following this, his Past Doctor Adventure Dying in the Sun was published by BBC Books in 2001.
He has also written the novella Deus Le Volt for Telos Publishing Ltd.'s Time Hunter series, published in 2006.

Reviews

[Ken · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve always had a strong feeling of enjoying this Past Doctor Adventure, so I was really keen to revisit it again.
It didn’t quite stand up as well as I’d remembered, but it was a pleasant nostalgic read.

I think the main reason why I’d enjoyed it so much was down to the 1940’s Hollywood setting, being an avid watcher of movies the idea of having a Doctor Who story set there really appealed.

But there were a few things that I spotted this time around that I found slightly disappointing.
Even though the characteristics of The Doctor, Ben and Polly were perfectly fine, it bugged me that their was no mention of the TARDIS.
In fact it didn’t quite feel as if it would slot into Season Four at all, with its more adult themes seemed slightly odd. Ironically the movie mind control aspect was perfect.

It’s still a solid 7/10 on a re-read.

[David Layton · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Dying in the Sun" is an attempt to extrapolate "movie magic" to a Doctor Who setting. The basic idea is that the allure of the stars and the compelling nature of film can be enhanced. In this way, the novel's writer can fit in the cliches of Hollywood and blame them on the aliens. So, here is what we have. The Doctor, Ben, and Polly are in Los Angeles 1947 generally being tourists. The Doctor's friend who works in the business is murdered, and this murder turns out to be part of a plot by some liquid aliens who live inside people and on film. One of the characters names the aliens Selyoids (get it, the celluloids). Alright, I'll go with the idea. However, four problems block the execution of the novel. The first has to do with anachronisms. I live in Los Angeles, so I can say that Miller never quite made Los Angeles 1947 seem real. He throws about some place names, but appears to be unfamiliar with the geography and history. He gets American dialogue wrong, such as having a character say "Go on then" rather than "Go on" and similar slips into Britishisms. Yellow crime scene tape was not in use in 1947. The second problem is the story of Robert Chate, which seems beyond improbable. Granted, alien slime that alters film is improbable, but that is the science fiction angle. Where normality runs, it should stay within the probability lines. Chate's story, involving his escaping a police dragnet, killing a gangster, knocking unconscious a police officer watching his property, dragging the body of the fat gangster up three flights of stairs and then setting a building on fire all before the unconscious policeman awakes, just does not hold up. The third problem is the Selyoids themselves. Just what do they want? Why do they do what they do? Only the vaguest of explanations are given. The fourth is Miller's handling of the Doctor's character. He spends most of the novel going here and there trying to tell people that the sky is falling. Every time the Doctor says something like "We have to do something," that something is to talk to someone who doesn't believe him. One would think that eventually the Doctor might consider some other course of action. To summarize, lack of imagination killed this story.

[Phillip · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think this story has great characterizations of the Second Doctor, Polly, and Ben - I could hear their voices coming throughout the whole story. But my wife and I agree - this is an odd choice for a Doctor Who story. It's almost the wrong genre -- it's not fantasy, sci-fi, nor historical/pseudo-historical. It's almost Hollywood mobster-ish, which is a different genre for Who. I'm not used to that many GDs or specific kind of murders happening in Who. It's not "bad," but it's an odd fit. I also think the ending goes on a bit long - there's a lot of the Doctor having conversations with people, trying to persuade them, that ultimately goes nowhere. So it seems like the Doctor actually has no plan, and we just need to wait for the situation to just work itself out. I think there was supposed to be a moral about not wanting material pleasures or ... something. Like I said, it's not the worst Who novel I've read, but I think it's a pass.

[Mark · Rating 1 out of 5]

The premise of Jon de Burgh Miller’s novel is rich in its possibilities. An upstart film studio in 1947 Hollywood is disrupting the industry with their alluring movies. Ordinary people are becoming charismatic film stars overnight thanks to a mysterious elixir. A film producer is murdered, with the evidence pointing to the adopted son of a Los Angeles police captain. And the Doctor and his two companions, Ben and Polly, soon find all of this is related to a conspiracy designed to use the magic of cinema to enslave humanity.

All of this sets up the prospect of an interesting commentary on celebrity and the power of media from the perspective of the early Doctor Who franchise. But whatever insights Miller has to offer are lost in a goulash of subpar plotting and lazy writing. His characterization of his protagonists is easily the strongest part of his book, as he captures the tone of Patrick Troughton’s Doctor as well as any author of a franchise novel that I’ve read. Polly is also portrayed reasonably true to Anneke Wills’s performance in the show, though Ben comes across as a little flat. There are only a few glimpses of the cockney seaman on the page, which becomes noticeable given his paring with the Doctor throughout most of the chapters.

When it comes to the story’s setting, the flaws are even more glaring. From the first page Miller attempts to replicate the signature tone of the crime novels of the era, only to be frustrated by his inability to accurately convey the sort of archetypal characters and dialogue for which the genre is known. Too often his hard-boiled figures bend to the Doctor in service to the plot, depriving readers of the sort of encounters that could have made for entertaining reading. Anachronisms abound to an embarrassing degree in order ways as well, and too often Britishisms slip into the speech of his ostensibly American characters. While better research and more careful editing would have gone far towards addressing these problems, there is only so much that could have been done to address the lackadaisical storytelling and inconsistent characterization that makes this book such a disappointing read.

[Jacob Licklider · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Second Doctor is a tricky Doctor to get right. Patrick Troughton’s performance was layered and often relied on quite a bit of improvisation (especially with Frazer Hines) to get right. While this is difficult for actors to recreate, Frazer Hines, David Troughton, and Michael Troughton have done so exceptionally well on audio, it makes it even more difficult for authors to capture in prose. From the novels I have read only Steve Lyons and Justin Richards have really managed to do so well, and in terms of the Past Doctor Adventures, he is a Doctor who appears less often as the main Doctor than others. Dying in the Sun is the sixth Past Doctor Adventures novel to heavily feature the Second Doctor and the second to place itself in the gap between The Power of the Daleks and The Highlanders. It is also the only Doctor Who novel to be written by John de Burgh Miller, an American interested in film noir and the Golden Age of Hollywood which works incredibly well as a setting for a pseudo-historical. It’s a setting that would be far too close for the production team to actually realize, plus the lavish Hollywood parties and film premieres being too expensive to realize on the show’s budget. Something about the setting, however, just feels right and I believe that’s down to de Burgh Miller’s almost old fashioned style of writing.

The Second Doctor just feels at home in Hollywood, able to mingle using humor and his often clown like nature to get himself into parties and explore just exactly what is happening with the film Dying in the Sun and the grisly murders that have been taking place. Ben is also incredibly well characterized as the sidekick to the Doctor, though de Burgh Miller has this tendency to rely on the fact that he’s cockney and a sailor as his only two character traits. I understand where that is coming from, at the time of publication only The War Machines would have been available on home media in visual format while The Power of the Daleks, The Highlanders, and The Macra Terror were available on audio format, so there wasn’t as much you could see from Michael Craze’s performance but de Burgh Miller makes an attempt. It is certainly a performance that’s better replicated than de Burgh Miller’s attempt at crafting something for Polly Wright. Polly is perhaps where the book really falls flat. She starts out fine, with some of the snark and optimistic attitude that the character was known for but because this is a film noir novel she gets propositioned by a film producer and then hypnotized by the aliens by the end of what would be the first episode if this were a serial. After that, she’s basically gone from the novel which is kind of a shame as she and Ben barely get to work together as characters and that’s when they’re at their best. It’s also something that extends to the supporting characters, they’re kind of stock characters which does work for the setting of Dying in the Sun.

John de Burgh Miller does also excel with crafting the narrative around the titular Dying in the Sun while paralleling the Golden Age of Hollywood and the influence that art can have on somebody. In the novel, it’s not just influence but mania and madness, drawing people into the events of the film but without the ability to describe what made it great. Part of it feels as if de Burgh Miller is exploring the idea of film as a spectacle, the effects are impossibly good and the projectors have to be specially altered to properly play the film reels. The director has his magnum opus and has snuck in an entire alien species into the film stock itself. Aptly called the Selyoids, we have a very 1960’s science fiction idea for a Doctor Who monster which allows for some grisly gore and sequences of them literally emerging and embodying film. Their desires are essentially parasites obsessed with creativity so this time period is perfect for an invasion as the film industry is about to explode in terms of style in the post-World War II environment which I absolutely love.

Overall, despite being a Doctor Who novel not a lot of people discuss it’s one that I found myself enjoying quite a bit. It’s a genuinely rare success in characterizing the Second Doctor and the ideas contained in it just jump off the page despite the rest of the characters kind of suffering. 7/10.

[Steven · Rating 3 out of 5]

While this book captures the characters of the Second Doctor and his companions very well, the rest of the story falls kind of flat. I'm not sure if just wasn't Whovian enough without the TARDIS looming in the background, but it was almost as if the writer ignored the fact that the Doctor travels through time at all... I understand his purpose was to absent Doctor Who from its continuity, but I don't understand WHY that purpose existed. Part of the fun of reading a story in a shared universe is seeing how the story links up to the canon storyline. Removing this story from any sort of arc almost seemed to strip it from its fandom source, IMO.

[Frank Davis · Rating 3 out of 5]

You can tell from the blurb that this is going to be an outlandish plot, the idea reminds me of some original series Tomorrow People episodes. I didn't think this was a great book but it had some good moments and The Doctor is spot on. Polly and Ben aren't as familiar but aren't too bad.

The Doctor is one step ahead throughout, of course, but kudos to the author for giving Polly the part of explaining things to The Doctor near the end. However, De Sande's kissing rampage is decidedly creepy so whatever the opposite of kudos is for that.

[Mole Mann · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite Doctor Who novels, Dying in the Sun talks about the dangers of celebrity worship - something very relevant.
The main meat of the novel is about an alien plot to use film stars to control humanity and a man on the run for a crime he didn't commit. These two plots manage to weave together nicely at the end.
Dying could easily work as its own novel but Miller's portrayal of the Doctor makes this work even better.

[Angela · Rating 5 out of 5]

The 2nd Doctor, Polly, Ben and Jamie go to 1930s Hollywood.

Something alien is making people glamourous and films 3d.

A fun story that showcases Polly for a change.

[Matthew Kresal · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are ideas that are captivating when we come across them. Doctor Who is one of them, featuring a lead character bouncing around time and space in a blue box. It’s why it’s endured for more than sixty years across different mediums, surviving hiatus and cancellation, public indifference and sometimes overly harsh criticism from its “fans,” to still have new stories being made from it. Because it’s a format that has birthed ideas that make us go “I’d like to watch/hear/read that!” Like, say, Patrick Torughton’s Doctor in 1940s Hollywood with Ben and Polly before they met Jamie. Surely that would make for a good story?

Well it ought to have been, if only things had been a bit better.

In part because, of all the Doctor’s, Troughton’s has proven the hardest to capture on the page. There’s a quicksilver and strongly visual quality to his performances, something that was driven home over a decade ago when The Enemy of the World was recovered. Along with what Barry Letts termed a “semi-improvisational” approach to dialogue, this is a Doctor that proved elusive to conveying in prose, something that I first realized when I read Heart of TARDIS nearly twenty years ago (though memory tells me there was little about that novel that worked). David A. McIntee in The Dark Path and Justin Richards with Dreams of Empire captured him convincingly, as more recently has Kate Orman with The Dead Star (though, being an audiobook, perhaps also benefits from having Michael Troughton bringing the Doctor to life). It’s something which made me wonder which end of the scale Jon de Burgh Miller would fall.

All over the place was the answer. There are times when Miller is up there with McIntee and Richards, especially in chapter fourteen where the Doctor reveals to Ben and Fletcher the nature of what they’re up against. The entire chapter, running six pages, is a masterclass in writing for this Doctor, capturing him wonderfully. For moments such as that and a handful of others scattered throughout the novel, for much of the it the Doctor is written in a bland “fill in the Doctor here” fashion. The flourishes when they’re present go a long way to selling that this is, in fact, a novel with Troughton’s Doctor but those moments aren’t sustained enough to make the characterization a complete success.

Nor do things get better beyond the Doctor. Ben and Polly’s characterizations likewise range from well drawn to “in name only,” with Polly especially getting the short end of things in the concluding chapters where she’s scarcely present. None of the supporting characters come across especially strong, either, including the LAPD’s William Fletcher who is the lead supporting character or the notional villain in the form of De Sande. There’s interesting ideas for characters and moments here and there, but nothing especially memorable or praise worthy.

The sliding scale of quality is present elsewhere. Miller clearly had strong ideas and lines of prose, including an opening line written in a hard-boiled noir style that offered strong hints of where the novel ought to be going. They offer an immediate sense of time and place, namely LA and Hollywood in the late 1940s in those early chapters. This is one of a number of Wilderness Era works that go for an American setting, perhaps because they could do so in a way that Classic Who could never hope to do (and even Big Finish in its early years struggled with as Minuet in Hell released a few months prior to the novel sadly attests). Which makes it a shame that it’s something that isn’t sustained after a couple of chapters and proves to be entirely absent by the time of the rather rushed and underwhelming finale. The ideas and themes are strong (and there’s arguably shades of them in the 2025 TV episode Lux, all things considered), but the novel doesn’t make anywhere near as much of them as it could have.

Something which can be said of Dying in the Sun as a whole. There’s much that Miller gets right, from flashes of characterization for Troughton’s Doctor to those early chapters, that ought to have made this one of the better novels for that Doctor. Instead, those are flash in the pans, catching the eye and promising much but never quite delivering.

Which is a crying shame.

[Cameron Turnbull · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think this is the most 3/5 story that I’ve ever read. For the most part it does a passable and competent job at telling a narrative

The story does well to embed itself in the stardom world of post-war Hollywood. The main threat of the story is related to the idea of what both Hollywood means to the public and what actually happens behind the scenes which was very clever. Unfortunately this isn’t really expanded upon much which is a shame. There were also too many plots going on at the same time with multiple different characters. They were all tied up by the end, however some were completely forgotten until then and others were barely talked upon until the final few pages.

The story feels like it both has very little to tell and too much to tell at the same time. A lot of the writing tells us bluntly who the characters are, their motivations and their secrets. I personally enjoy letting the characters tell their own story without everything being dropped on the reader at once. Some of the characters in the story also had very little to do, it makes One wonder why they even had a presence at all.

A very minor point but there were a lot of grammatical mistakes I found within the book. Commas where they shouldn’t be, or no commas where there should be one. Very minor stuff like that, but it kept driving me crazy

Polly is portrayed well in the story, however she isn’t given a lot to do. Which is a shame because I feel like her subplot would have been really good if it was expanded on. The portrayal of the Doctor and Ben is very hit and miss.

The side characters are handled well. Mostly. Chate and DeSand, I believe, are some of the more interesting characters in the story. There are others who needed probably just a little more development but overall they served their function in the story adequately enough

Overall this might just be a one for any Doctor Who novel completionists.

[Travis · Rating 2 out of 5]

A bunch of interesting ideas that never quite form a solid whole.

put the Tardis crew into a Raymond Chandler style story...sounds good.
Let's pick the Doctor least likely to work in a noir story...interesting choice.
Let's make it an under appreciated Tardis crew...like it!
include some aliens and social commentary...yeah, why not.

Where it doesn't work is the attempts at realism (swearing, the sexism of the time period and violence etc) feel clunky and jarring, much as I like Ben and Polly, I have the vague notion this doesn't quite fit into their time in the Tardis and the author doesn't seem to know what to do with them most of the time.

The aliens are interesting, but their plan doesn't entirely make sense, and how they act doesn't seem consistent.

Despite my grumblings, the writer does write the Tardis crew well, so you buy some of the books weak spots, as they don't feel out of character.

Not a bad book, but I feel like I should like it more than I do.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this soon after I read Synthespians, as the plot of this book was briefly mentioned in that one.

I'm a big fan of the 2nd Doctor, as are most people in the fandom. I also always love it when Doctor Who decides to visit Los Angeles, my childhood city. So my interest was piqued.

I'm torn, as on the one hand I feel like this is a pretty generic Who story, more or less what you'd do for this kind of golden age of Hollywood setting. I also felt like Ben and Polly weren't used to the best of there abilities.

It's probably unfair of me to complain about that sort of thing, but I did just read Synthespians which also used the idea of film that's alive to tell a story that was not only was a fun alien invasion set in space, but also explored the limits of nostalgia. So this felt like a bit of a downgrade in comparison.

Overall, I enjoyed it, but I think I'd have liked a bit more from it. But Troughton's Doctor always elevates a story, so I had fun

[Mars G. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Okay, so I feel like this could have been great. Doctor Who, 1940s Hollywood, and murder? I am the exact, EXACT target audience here (I have a degree to prove it) and I was so excited to read something with these ingredients.

What a letdown. Okay, so we have pros and cons here.

Pros: Ben and Polly! Also, somebody finally just goes off and punches the Doctor in the face. I love him but I was actually quite pleased about that.

Cons: Mediocre characterization, extremely weird and nonsensical plot, and a gross misunderstanding of 1940s California.

I mean, okay, I know that DW plays fast and loose sometimes but, come on. I wanted to like this so bad but it fell flat.

If you're a die hard and you have to read every novel, okay. If not, feel free to skip this because you aren't missing much.

[Denis Southall · Rating 1 out of 5]

Didn't enjoy this at all. The second doctor blunders through the story not really contributing much. However Ben and Polly get quite involved. The storyline is confused and thin in my opinion with a poor ending. It also just felt out of place, maybe as it was set in America and there was not one mention of the Tardis.

[Daniel 🌈🎭😻 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely fantastic book! It certainly gets too much hate. I mean, it's Doctor Who in Hollywood! What more could you ask for? However, the ending was a tad bit chaotic, like the story had suddenly turned into a completely different genre, and the way the villain was defeated was rather ridiculous. Overall, it was a great read which I really enjoyed!

[Russell M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

While not all perfect, this book serves as another fun romp with the Second Doctor and his companions Ben and Polly. The writing grabbed me with the first line, and the story serves to blend both modern and classic Who ideas and methods. It can be cheesy, but it’s that Doctor Who cheesiness we’ve all come to know and love. It’s an entertaining stroll down what could have been for Troughton.

[Dan Hodges · Rating 2 out of 5]

Certainly not as repugnant as Combat Rock, this Second Doctor story just fell very flat for me. More of a Raymond Chandler-esque crime story than a Doctor Who adventure. Not bad, just a bit of a dull slog.

[Patrick Hayes · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked that the book was broken into reels (a nice play on "episodes"), Ben got quite a bit of action, the movie setting, the aliens and their history, the ultimate ending for the villain, the summary involving friendship, and Doctor Two acting true to form. I didn't like all the profanity (I was really taken out of the book due to the language at the beginning and the end), it's really preachy on celebrity and fame, the drug dealing aspect (which disappeared after four chapters), Polly being essentially pushed aside, and the explicit violence (does shooting someone in a Who novel have to be described with the brain matter, et al?).

An "okay" Who novel that got too modern for me. The violence and language seemed really out of place for this series. Having them included seemed a disservice to the series. However, the aliens and their cult make up for these author missteps and it's worth a look-see if you're dying for new Who, waiting for the new season to begin.

[Nicholas Whyte · Rating 1 out of 5]

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1956469...

Another Second Doctor novel featuring Ben and Polly (no less than five spinoff books are set between The Power of the Daleks and The Highlanders, if you count a Telos novella and an annual). Although there is an interesting idea here of alien intelligences infesting the movie industry (done better than in Pratchett's Moving Pictures, though this really isn't saying much), it is let down badly by the writer's failure to get American idiom at all accurately and by some ludicrous plot points - at one point a murder suspect outwits two policemen guarding his home to smuggle a corpse inside, for instance. And poor Polly gets possessed / hypnotised yet again.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good characterisation, fairly decent story. I felt the first two thirds of the book were better than the ending, but it was still a solid effort. Doctor Who books can be hit or miss. This one is definitely a readable and a good version of the second doctor.

[Simon Curtis · Rating 4 out of 5]

The second Doctor in America could very easily go wrong. Here it doesn't. Excellent.

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found the prose more than adequate, and setting unique...but in every other respect, this is one of the most forgettable Doctor Who novels.