The Hungry Night

"Your job is to roam the galaxy calling dibs."

Writer: Jonathan Morris
Format: Audio
Released: June 2015
Printed in: The Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who 04

Featuring: Ninth Doctor

Synopsis

The Godsend beams out a distress call after coming under attack by Space Barnacles of all things. They're in desperate need of help, so it's a good job that the Doctor arrives with all of the answers. He just needs the crew to agree to a few things before he saves their lives...

Verdict

The Hungry Night was another little interesting tale to continue along my reading of The Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who quite nicely! I am always a fan of furthering the adventures of the Ninth Doctor so when he finally arrived into the story I was delighted to find that it was indeed Christopher Eccleston’s incarnation of our Time Lord hero. More than that though, we had him travelling alone which is very much a rarity and I’d love to find out where this might fit in the chronology of Series 1. I am going to assume that the intention was for before Rose given that she wasn’t even mentioned. I’d like to think that the Doctor would have brought her up if he’d met her at this point in my life. Not knowing is sometimes part of the fun though and the ambiguity and guessing games that can come with placement just enhance the enjoyment. I always try to make it fit where I think it should be. If it wasn’t for that look in the mirror in the aforementioned televised episode, a whole new world of adventures could be opened up but there must only be so long before the Doctor looked in a mirror after regenerating from the War Doctor in The Day of the Doctor. The characterisation of the Ninth Doctor was pretty good, but I didn’t understand why he took a little while to enter the story. When there are barely twelve pages to play with you have to utilise everything that you’ve got so I thought it was strange to have an opening without the lead character and it seemed like it was going to last indefinitely! I’m slightly exaggerating there as it must have only been about 4 pages before he arrived, but that’s actually a considerable amount and a third of the whole story! Some of the other characters were enjoyable with Locklear particular standing out and also standing up to the Doctor which was impressive. Tobbs was also a good character and I enjoyed his struggle to find the words at the end of his song, purely because I know how incredibly frustrating that can be! There really isn’t anything worse than not being able to remember a song line. The Godspeed was a decent setting for much of the adventure but I was a little surprised that the Doctor didn’t acknowledge that he’d answered the mayday signal. I assume that must be what had occurred for him to be there? The Space Barnacles seemed like an amusing little nuisance and I liked their resemblance to the Pting in feeding on the energy fired at them from the Plasma cannons. Could this small little story be where the influence for The Tsuranga Conundrum was derived? It’s an intriguing thought and one I would like to think might be true just because of how obscure it would be. There wasn’t actually a huge amount going on other than things going wrong, the Doctor showing up and then finding the solution to solve it. That was the gist of the adventure which is hardly a surprising structure! It’s happened so often, but maybe not as basic as was the case this time around. The answer, according to the Doctor, was actually a really simple one. Turn off the ship and make the Barnacles think that lunchtime was over and that there was no more energy left to feed on. That was easier said than done though as they still required another energy source and that ended up being the TARDIS. The idea of the Doctor using his time machine spaceship to capture a load of Space Barnacles was terrific and they seemed to completely overwhelm the exterior! The Doctor would take them to the nice inner asteroid belt where they could feed on all the energy they wanted in abundance. That was nice of him to do and exactly the selfless and kind gesture you’d expect of the Doctor, but I have to admit I was a little surprised with how easily the ship’s crew gave up their claims to the planet and the region of space. They must have feared for their life to let that go willingly! It was a mandatory compromise for the Doctor and he was happy to have that accepted. Things seemed to just end on a nice little note with relative ease which was somewhat unusual, but it was a good way to conclude events for what was an enjoyable yet little read. Overall, a decent adventure for the Ninth Doctor! 

Rating: 7/10