White Darkness

White Darkness is a Doctor Who novel by David A. McIntee released in 1993 as part of the franchise's New Adventures series. It features the Necronomicon and introduces the concept of the Great Old Ones to the Doctor Who universe.
==Synopsis==
The Doctor is a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey who travels through time and space in a ship called the TARDIS, accompanied by his two human companions: Prof. Bernice Summerfield and Ace. Seeking a nice holiday in Florida, they mistakenly land in 1915 Haiti, in the middle of a revolution, being promptly arrested and brought before the cruel General Etienne. Meanwhile, a powerful voodoo sorcerer named Lemaitre and an assassin named Carrefour are working in league with the crew of a secret German military base in a mysterious project.
The Doctor convinces Etienne that he and his companions are British intelligence agents, and they are allowed to go, but the TARDIS key is confiscated by Captain Petion, who is assigned as their guide and tasked with keeping an eye on them.
One of Lemaitre's agents, named Henri Duval, keeps himself mentally in touch with an alien entity, whose body remains underground in stasis while its disembodied consciousness flows through the time vortex. Henri uses a tarot deck to find out about the Doctor and how he's going to interfere with their plans, and warns Lemaitre and his German allies accordingly. The Doctor, who has psychic abilities of his own, detects something akin to distant voices, which his human companions can't hear, and becomes aware that something is amiss.
On the next day, while Captain Petion gives the Doctor and his friends a tour, the four of them find a horribly mangled corpse inside a warehouse. The Doctor's analysis reveals that the man was torn apart by several barehanded people, and the victim's journal describes his encounter with a horde of zombies. Petion reluctantly admits that similar incidents have been happening for some time, and arranges for the body to be examined by an American physician named Howard Phillips, who has experience treating zombified people.
Howard explains that most so-called zombies are victims of tetrodotoxin, a drug that puts the major organs of the body into a catatonic-like state, so the subject remains barely functional enough to be used as a slave. He insists that tetrodotoxin victims are weak and docile, but also reveals that lately there have been cases in which a different, unknown type of drug has been used to create strong and aggressive zombies, including at least one who miraculously returned to life after an autopsy.
While Ace and Petion head off to retrieve the TARDIS, which has been taken by Etienne, Howard shows his collection of archaeological artifacts and a copy of the unexpurgated Necronomicon which contains instructions for reviving the dead. Both the grimoire and the artifacts also have illustrations of the same type of alien beings, which Bernice recognises as identical to some carvings found on other planets, at least one of which dated to over three billion years ago. According to legends, the beings depicted are known as the Great Old Ones, ancient entities who once "ruled everywhere".
Bernice decides to go to the local museum, where similar artifacts are being kept, while the Doctor asks Howard to show him the place where the pieces were found. While there, they hear the sound of explosions and find that the rebels have attacked the capital. In the museum, Bernice is ambushed and captured by Carrefour.
The Doctor and Howard return to town in their car, dodging shots from Lemaitre's German allies on the way. They reunite with Ace and Petion, who have returned to the hospital with the TARDIS and are now defending the place against both rebels and militia. When an American force invades Haiti to curb the rebellion, the Doctor asks Howard and Petion to take him to the local houngan (voodoo priest), Dubois, who tells him that the violent zombies are the work of Lemaitre, and offers to accompany them to the place where the ceremonies are held. Meanwhile, the Germans question Bernice, assuming that she and the Doctor are investigating the disappearance of a British consul.
Bernice escapes from the German base and meets the American forces, while the Doctor, Ace, Petion and Dubois enter Lemaitre's house and find the toxins he uses to turn men into zombies, as well as a library of occult tomes which includes the Book of Eibon and De Vermis Mysteriis, among others. The Doctor also identifies a drug called mescalin, which can be used to expand one's consciousness, and assumes that's how Lemaitre was able to contact one of the Great Old Ones. The creature in turn taught him how to build a neuro-pattern enhancer to control his zombies by telepathy. The Doctor locates the device and sabotages it, while Ace sets up explosives to destroy the ceremonial altar.
On the way to the cemetery where the ceremony will be held, the Doctor finds the dead body of one Robert Blake of the British Consulate. Bernice reunites with Ace. Lemaitre returns home and is furious to find the neuro-pattern enhancer misaligned and the altar destroyed. While fixing the enhancer, he picks up a telepathic impression of the Doctor, finding out that he is a Time Lord, a species that even the Great Old Ones themselves regard as a danger. He informs the Germans that the Doctor must be eliminated if they are to continue with their plans, while the Germans secretly plan to also eliminate Lemaitre himself as soon as they have seen the ceremony and acquired the method for creating zombies of their own. When the Doctor is captured, he tells the Germans that Lemaitre is about to betray them and thus manages to postpone his execution.
In the cemetery, Petion tells Ace and Bernice about the voodoo rituals, and they deduce that Lemaitre is planning to reunite the disembodied consciousness of his Great Old One benefactor to its body, which lies asleep in a cave filled with strange geometry and seemingly impossible angles. The return of the being's mind to its dormant body can only be done at a certain point in the galactic cycle, "when the stars are right", so to say.
The Doctor is visited in his cell by Lemaitre, who reveals himself to be 170 years old, and has placed himself in service to one of the Great Old Ones, essentially betraying humankind as revenge for how his tribe in Africa was captured to be sold as slaves when he was a boy.
At night, Ace, Bernice, Petion and the American forces successfully disrupt the ritual, but Lemaitre and Carrefour escape with the neuro-enhancer, even as most of their followers are captured or killed. Ace uses night vision goggles to guide the others to the German base, where the Doctor has already escaped his cell and set up explosives to destroy the tunnels leading to the cave of the Great Old One. The Germans flee as the American army invades the base, and the tunnels collapse, taking Lemaitre with them. Outside, the Doctor and his allies find themselves face to face with a horde of zombified villagers, but without the neuro-enhancer to control them, they turn out to be harmless enough that Howard can treat them, believing he'll be able to restore them to normal.
Asked if the explosion might have killed the Great Old One as well, the Doctor responds that it's impossible to kill them in this dimension, and while he assures the others that the ritual to awaken these creatures can only be successfully performed when the stars are in the right configuration, he doesn't know how long it will take for it to happen again.
==Behind the Mythos==
White Darkness is the first entry in the Doctor Who franchise to feature the Great Old Ones, which would be revisited in a number of subsequent novels and audio plays over the years. All-Consuming Fire, by Andy Lane would further cement the connection between Doctor Who and the Cthulhu Mythos by retroactively identifying several monsters from the classic TV series as Great Old Ones.
The identity of the Great Old One that Lemaitre and his followers serve is never revealed in the novel, even after the Doctor's brief encounter with it in the caves. All-Consuming Fire would later identify it as Cthulhu.
The unexpurgated copy of the Necronomicon that Howard Phillips shows to the Doctor was given to him by Aleister Crowley as payment after Howard gave him emergency treatment for an ulcer. It contains at least one passage written in the Eocene language (which the Doctor can read) and a number of original illustrations by Roerich. The grimoires that Ace finds in Lemaitre's house include the Book of Dzyan, the Book of Eibon, The Golden Bough, Ludvig Prinn's De Vermiis Mysteriis, and The Beginner's Guide to the Necronomicon.
When the Doctor and his companions are brought to a less-than-stellar hotel in Port-au-Prince, he jokes that it must be the place where Norman Bates served his apprenticeship. The character Norman Bates is a motelier and serial killer created by Robert Bloch for his horror novel Psycho and its sequels, as well as its famous film and television adaptations. The murdered British agent whose body is found by the Doctor is named Robert Blake, after the main character from H. P. Lovecraft's "The Haunter of the Dark", who was in turn named after Bloch.
Another Bloch reference is the planet Exo III, mentioned by Bernice as one of the worlds in which artwork depicting the Great Old Ones has been found. Exo III was created by Bloch for an episode of the sci-fi TV series Star Trek, which includes references to an ancient humanoid race called the Old Ones. This isn't the only Star Trek reference in White Darkness. At one point, Bernice reveals that she has a tricorder, and the Doctor mentions the "Rihanssu" [sic] language, the deciphering of which "allowed a peace treaty to be drawn up, and ended an interstellar war with Earth in the twenty-seventh century". In the Star Trek expanded universe, Rihannsu is the proper name for the Romulan species, which waged war against Earth in the 22nd century and has been involved in many subsequent interstellar conflicts.
==External links==
Category:Expanded Mythos Works
Category:David A. McIntee works
Category:Crossovers
Category:Novels