BBC Books Night of the Humans

Author	David Llewellyn
ISBN	1 846 07969 6
Published	2010

Synopsis: 250,000 years' worth of junk floating in deep space, home to the shipwrecked Sittuun, the carnivorous Sollogs, and worst of all - the Humans. The Doctor and Amy arrive on this terrifying world in the middle of an all-out frontier war between Sittuun and humans, and the clock is already ticking.

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"When he had reached its end, the Doctor looked down into the acid of Lake Mono and took a deep breath. He had faced so many dangers before, found himself in so many situations from which there had seemed no obvious way out, and yet now he found himself stuck in a tight spot by some rope handcuffs and a handful of angry humans armed with spears. In his many lives he had fallen great heights and been shot. He's lost a hand and grown it back. He had seen the end of the universe, and lived to tell the tale. But acid... Acid was something else. Acid would rule out a regeneration. Acid would be final."
- The Doctor musing on the primitive nature of his impending death, Night of the Humans, Page 121, Chapter 11

In a way, this is a very old-fashioned sort of Doctor Who story. The Doctor isn't a superhero trying to save the world or the universe. Amy and he are trapped in a hostile world and have to survive and escape with their lives. The fact that twelve alien worlds get saved in the process is just a side effect. The great thing about the story is that it is clear by the end of the story that events had an impact on the characters including the regulars. I won't give away the ending, but suffice to say that Llewellyn spends all of Chapter 22 with the Doctor and Amy reflecting on the tough choices they had to make and learning to deal with them the best way that they can.

The world of the Gyre was reminiscent of Dave Stone's short story Moon Graffiti which was very similar: a world of trash. The idea of the Gyre makes for a fascinating and different alien world for the Doctor to explore and the later revelation of how it was formed is even better than I expected. Speaking of Moon Graffiti, the way the Doctor and Amy argue at the start of the story I was getting worried that Llewellyn was veering the characters too much into the direction of the Sixth Doctor and Peri, but thankfully once the two characters split up for their two parallel storylines, they settle into their usual TV personas with the Eleventh Doctor's eccentric way of making conversation and his obsession with appearing human and not quite getting it right. For instance, the Doctor's attempted high-fiving with Amy at the end of the story, which would have been so like the Tenth Doctor and Rose, but which ends up being awkward and the Doctor proposing never to do it again. There are times towards the end when his character does start to veer into Fifth Doctor territory as he starts beating his head hopeless against the wall trying to convince the humans of the truth about their imminent destruction and his need to rescue them all to no avail. In fact, I could easily imagine this as being a Fifth Doctor and Nyssa story. You just need to make some minor adjustments in continuity references and mannerisms and it could pass as a really good Fifth Doctor story. But thankfully it wasn't because this is a fantastic story for this Doctor.

I also love the way in which Llewellyn adds in details about this solar system they are in. We get some fascinating looks into the future of humanity, their first contact with aliens in the form of the Sittuun and their impact on that civilization, Slipstream's seedy past (which I won't spoil) and his hilarious description of Earth in this time period, and even the Sittuun civilization itself which was shown to be a bland utopia before the humans arrive. I also thought it was really clever how Llewellyn creates the civilization of the barbaric humans on the Gyre and the evolution of their civilization from survivors trying to live on a space version of a desert island to eventually become a civilization that worships the corporate clown logo as a god named Gobo and using old western movies with no sound as their "biblical stories". Interestingly, Llewellyn isn't really criticizing religion in this story, but instead is criticizing the ignorant people who refuse to believe in the truth even when it is staring them right in the face. It's the confrontation of sheer bloody-mindedness for the sake of being stubbornly bloody-minded about your beliefs. The human civilization is a portrait of what happens when you become so comforted by your beliefs that you are unable to consider other points of view even when it could directly benefit you and make your life better. I also love Llewellyn's themes regarding racism as Amy confronts, through the character of Charlie, what the human race looks like from the perspective of an alien and discovers that her own perspective is more arrogant than she thought. Charlie isn't out to convert her in any way; it is Amy who pursues the topic relentlessly in trying to understand things from a new point of view. In so doing, it actually confirms the Doctor's conclusion at the end of the story that Amy should live while the other humans should be left to their stubborn fate because Amy represents all that is good in the human potential. She is willing to accept and absorb a different perspective while Django and the humans burn those same people at the stake for daring to speak out an idea different from their world view.

The story is about the same page count as Apollo 23, but flies by at a fantastic breakneck pace since the story constantly has an invisible clock to doomsday ticking over it and the story is also filled with action and adventure that never keeps things dull even to the last plot twist at the end. And I haven't even mentioned Captain Slipstream! He was a character who worried me from the back cover blurb description, but ended up being a brilliant addition to the story. He adds an extra layer of mystery as we wonder exactly what is the treasure he is hunting? What is the Mymon Key? And who exactly is he? At first we think he's a blowhard not unlike Gilderoy Lockheart from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. But, unlike Lockheart, Slipstream's Hollywood-style heroic persona is just a ruse and there is a ruthless and calculating character underneath who gives the Doctor a run for his money. It's a shame what happens to the character at the end of the story because I would have loved to see him turn up in some other stories as a recurring character. They obviously can't get away with that anymore since the books are meant to tie into the TV series now rather than create its own continuity. But still, I will miss the character. Indeed, I will miss all of the characters in this story! I was almost hoping that Charlie would join the Doctor and Amy at the story's end, but the mentioning of Amy's impending wedding brought me crashing back to reality that this wasn't to be and that the future had already been spelled out in Series 5. A shame really.

On the whole, a brilliant piece of writing from David Llewellyn and I can't wait to check out his future Doctor Who books. Actually, I learned recently that he wrote the Tenth Doctor book The Taking of Chelsea 426, so perhaps I will check that out sometime soon! Night of the Humans is an action-packed and thoughtful book that could easily have been made for the TV series today or in the past. A sterling piece of Doctor Who fiction not to be missed!