Night of the Humans

"They've developed an entire culture based around the scraps of what survived the crash. Old a Westerns... a cartoon clown..." 

Writer: David Llewelyn 

Format: Novel

Released: April 2010

Series: NSA 38

Featuring: Eleventh Doctor, Amy

Synopsis 

"This is the Gyre - the most hostile environment in the galaxy."

250,00 years' worth of junk floating in deep space, home to the shipwrecked Sittuun, the carnivorous Sollags, and worsr 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 countdown has already started. There's a comet in the sky, and it's on a collision course with the Gyre... 

When the Doctor is kidnapped, it's up to Amy and 'galaxy-famous swashbuckler' Dirk Slipstream to save the day.

But who is Slipstream, exactly? And what is he really doing here?

Verdict 

Night of the Humans was a very good read and another solid outing for the Eleventh Doctor and Amy in their early tenure during the novels. This had a much darker feel than Apollo 23 and it was intriguing that for quite a large proportion of the book, it was Humans who were the enemies! The Doctor has faced all sorts during his many lives from Zygons and Sontarans to Macra and Nimon, but I bet he never felt he'd come against Humans in the quite the way they were presented here. The Humans weren't at all like you and I, partly because this story was set some 250,000 years into the future. Amy reminiscing of being so far from home was fantastic and there's absolutely no disputing that this story is set prior to The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone due to the wedding dress references, so she's still getting used to hopping around space and time in a police box with her raggedy man. The references to The Eleventh Hour and The Beast Below were brilliant and I loved how Amy still couldn't quite believe she'd been on a spaceship in her nightie. The characterisation of Amy here was very good and I loved how she questioned the Doctor calling her 'Pond'. The characterisation of Matt Smith's Eleventh Doctor was an improvement from the last novel in my opinion but that may be down to me getting used to transferring this incarnation into prose. The traits were definitely there from what we seen on screen during the early episodes of Series 5. The Gyre was an interesting setting and the story behind the Sittuun crashing during their mission was quite an eventful one! They'd been here 108 days and on the day the comet was set to blow the flat planetoid into smithereens, causing disaster for the nearby planets, things got very interesting. The Doctor and Amy arrived and they had quite an eventful start to things with them being separated right away. Charlie and Amy got along splendidly and their goodbye was magnificent! The alien wanted to ask Amy on a date. How sweet. The comment about eyebrows being wigs for your eyes was hilarious I must say. Jamal was a great character too and I liked how he just couldn't leave without his son. He was the one that had gotten him the job and he wouldn't be leaving without him. Slipstream was an interesting villain and I liked how he lured the Doctor in. However, I'm not a fan of characters that have had eventful past meetings with the Doctor that we don't know about! Had we read the original meeting and then this story, Slipstream's arrival would've been a great shock factor moment. He was cunning and only concerned with Mymon Key, an object so incredibly powerful that you could literally control the universe. It could even be used to travel through black holes. The power was immense, but it belonged to the Gyre. The moment the Doctor knew Slipstream hadn't departed with the key was wonderful. The story behind the culture of the human descendants of those who survived the original crash centuries ago was most intriguing. A whole culture had been built around Westerns. I couldn't think of anything worse to be honest! I absolutely despise Western films (it's no secret why The Gunfighters is my worst rated TV story ever) so a whole culture based around them would be horrendous. The Chamber of Stories depicting soundless old films was intriguing but to me this showcased just how ridiculous religion is. I firmlly think its fact that religion nowadays, all of it, developed similarly to what was presented here. As silly as Gobo the clown was here, I think it's just as credible as a man dying on the cross and then being resurrected in a cave. It's just rubbish. And you can't just make a walkway in the sea. It's beyond ridiculous, as were some of the policies of Django and co here. But credit to them, even when the Doctor fixed the projector and showed the onlookers that the 'Olden Ones' were actually speaking quite differently to what was being said, they stood by their belief. They couldn't accept what they considered heresy. The Doctor pleaded with them to get off the Gyre but they wouldn't listen. There was nothing he could and the Doctor was devastated. Having the countdown of the Nanobomb definitely helped the pace of things and added believability to the danger. The Sollags were depicted as quite awful creatures and it was pretty obvious Slipstream stood no chance once he chased after the key in the swamps. He was devoured. The Nanobomb was always going to go off and once it did the description of the way it just gorged through the Gyre in an instant was quite chilling. The Doctor couldn't watch but Amy couldn't help herself from looking. The references to Revenge of the Cybermen, The Christmas Invasion and Utopia were very good! The Humans perished but what a unique culture of them. I kind of imagined them as being a cross between the Tribe of Gum and the Futurekind. Not the best of combinations! Despite everything that had happened and the lives he couldn't save, I thought it was a lovely touch that the Doctor said he was okay because Amy was okay. A nice point to end the novel on, which overall was really good! 

Rating: 8/10