The Beast of Babylon

"You're going to save your favourite planet. You're going to rescue a whole race. What does my one life matter compared to all theirs...?"

Writer: Charlie Higson

Format: Novella

Released: November 2014

Series: 12 Doctors, 12 Stories: 09

Featuring: Ninth Doctor

Synopsis 

A young girl called Ali sees a silver orb fall from the sky and soon learns it is her ticket to seeing the universe. Desperate to retrieve the mysterious object, the Ninth Doctor lets her join him on a trip to ancient Babylon, where he must battle a giant Starman for the fate of Earth.

Verdict 

The Beast of Babylon was an excellent little novella and such an audacious one at that! It's unprecedented and well, just unthinkable that there could be a Ninth Doctor story without Rose as the companion. When we first meet Christopher Eccleston's Ninth Doctor in Rose, it's clear he's recently regenerated from what we later learn was the Last Great Time War. After successfully defeating the Autons and the Nestene Consciousness, Rose would then join this incarnation of our favourite Time Lord on his travels and she was there continuously until his regeneration in Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways, but here we have a Ninth Doctor actually set inside the events of Rose! A whole adventure took place between what we thought was the Doctor immediately returning to tell Rose that the TARDIS also travelled in time. Now that's a superb way to fit things into the storytelling continuity! No complaints from me at all. This gave us an unseen (or rather unread) perspective on the Ninth Doctor I was really intrigued by his persona, especially with it noticeably soon after the regeneration that we briefly saw the beginnings of in The Day of the Doctor. Ali filled the companion-role for this story and although I really liked her, somewhat contradictory she's the reason this story didn't quite score as high as every other in this series, excluding Tip of the Tongue which is the only novella from the collection that I would consider to be relatively poor. The threat of the Starman was pretty good here and I really thought the description was fantastic. It's almost too difficult to comprehend how it could be twins but one entity but I did like how it was depicted as almost looking not quite in existence. I loved the Doctor's mentioning of some of his past companions, notably Susan, Polly and Leela putting a smile on my face. I love a Classic reference in a revival era story I must say. Though I'm not too big a fan of inferring that the Doctor travelled with companions that we haven't seen anywhere before - not even in comic strips or audios. That seems a bit of a strange one to me but I can skip over it I guess. Ali knowing all about the concept of a TARDIS and the now long extinct Time Lords was intriguing but what made me like her immediately was the way she challenged the Doctor with questions and eventually got her wish in travelling with the Time Lord to Earth to Babylon. That historical setting is one I'm very fond of and although I prefer modern History in terms of my historical interest, I enjoy any visit to the past. Gurgurum and Hammurabi were typical of the period which was really good writing I must say. The Doctor expertly talked himself out of trouble yet again which was great. Ali got progressively less enjoyable as the story went on which was a real shame. She just killed numerous people and I was amazed and appalled by the Doctor almost dismissively saying it was okay because she thought it was right. I don't care which incarnation it is, the Doctor wouldn't accept that as a warranting reason. The resolution was decent and I like how we saw Ali persuading the Doctor to return to Rose and make sure she couldn't say no to the offer. We returned to the closing scene of Rose and a new Who episode received some sort of novelisation for the first time! Overall though, a very enjoyable read but a few little flaws that slightly bring it down but to what is still a great rating! 

Rating: 8/10