UNIT: THE VAUGHN IDENTITY
2024 will see the launch of Candy Jar’s UNIT range with a series of original novels. The first book, The Vaughn Identity, is written by the range editor, Tim Gambrell, and picks up where the TV story The Invasion left off.
Tim says:
“There’s a lot left open at the end of The Invasion. Tobias Vaughn’s story – and the whole International Electromatics set-up – is very layered and detailed. We see repeatedly in Doctor Who that once the main threat is dealt with the Doctor is quick to leave”.
This new series of books now squarely focuses on UNIT and explores the fall-out from The Invasion, both on a personal and national level, and how the story would have been spun by the government and the press. As the title suggests, the story looks into the background of Tobias Vaughn.
Tim continues:
“As a character, he was in a class of his own – due very much to Kevin Stoney’s bravura performance, but also because of Derrick Sherwin’s script and Douglas Camfield’s direction. We know Vaughn was killed at the end of The Invasion, and left hanging over the railings. I wanted to find a way to get more from the character without pretending that he hadn’t really died on screen, which would have felt like a cop-out. I also wanted to work purely within the situations and concepts that Derrick Sherwin had created, to give my story the sense that it was finishing off, or tidying up any strands left hanging loose after the TV story had concluded.”
But as well as looking back to The Invasion, The Vaughn Identity also looks forward to the series of books that will follow.
Tim takes up the story again:
“We’ve got a wider cast of UNIT regulars to take our books forward. Readers have already been introduced to many of them in the two UNIT Files short story collections (Operation Wildcat, 2022, and Operation Fall-Out, 2023) but The Vaughn Identity allows us to see how they were impacted by the events of The Invasion, making it more of a shared experience. As the first novel of the range, it’s important to introduce and involve new regular characters in the action and the storyline and not simply as an info-dump roll call.”
Some other familiar faces are also appearing, besides the Brigadier and his TV team. “There are a few minor nods to the Lethbridge-Stewart range,’ Tim explains, ‘but nothing that would faze new readers. We want this to be a jumping-on point, a fresh start whilst also quietly acknowledging the achievement of the previous range.”
There will be another short Benton Files book, free with the hardback of The Vaughn Identity. More details of that will be available nearer the time.