Only Human

"Grief and sorrow boiled away, till they're just old mad words."

Writer: Gareth Roberts 

Format: Novel

Released: September 2005

Series: NSA 05

Featuring: Ninth Doctor, Rose, Captain Jack

Synopsis 

Somebody's interfering with time. The Doctor, Rose and Captain Jack arrive on modern-day Earth to find the culprit - and discover a Neanderthal Man, twenty-eight thousand years after his race became extinct. Only a trip back to the primeval dawn of humanity can solve the mystery. 

Who are the mysterious humans from the distant future now living in that distant past? What hideous monsters are trying to escape from behind the Grey Door? Is Rose going to end up married to a caveman?

Caught between three very different types of human being - past, present and future - the Doctor, Rose and Captain Jack must learn the truth behind the Osterberg experiment before the monstrous Hy-Bractors escape to change humanity's history forever...

Verdict 

Only Human was a fantastic novel which I thoroughly enjoyed reading! It was a welcomed relief to get back to doing an original novel because it has been some time since my last and it was also great to be doing something other than a comic strip after thirteen consecutive stories in that format. I probably haven't helped myself by buying Tales from the TARDIS but I'm never going to stop collecting that but I think I'll definitely be blogging a few more things yet before returning to the comic format. It was actually nice to be doing a single story that actually took a long time to complete and had an abundance of depth. That's one thing where the comics fall short and that's absolutely fine but I just needed something longer today and I thoroughly enjoyed doing a novel. I was rather reluctant to actually read this particular book because it now means that I've only got one novel left with the Ninth Doctor! I like to have options available so I think it'll actually be a long time before I get to this incarnation's final book. But before I do, let me talk about how brilliant this was! The characterisation of all three members of the TARDIS team was excelled but I must say the likeness of Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor was captured with absolute ease by Gareth Roberts. I was really impressed with that and I think it was the best characterisation this Doctor has had in his relatively short novel run. I know that books featuring the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors are being published later this year so I do hope that a Ninth Doctor quickly follows because stories with this incarnation are rather limited! I don't have many left across every format so I do hope we get some more. Titan Comics should see to that in due course. The premise of this story was really good and I loved the idea of a Neanderthal turning up in the early twenty-first century. It was a humorous start for Das in the nightclub and hospital with him unknowingly causing a fight and then bringing armed men to a hospital. Jack's distraction to get the Doctor and Rose to the mysterious Neanderthal was perfectly in line with his character which was both funny and good. The Doctor was superb in this story at acting as if he owned the place and demonstrated how well that works on more than one occasion. Rose was learning but it was clear that she had seen it many times before on her travels with the Doctor up to this point. She had quite an adventure in this novel it's got to be said! She actually ended up marrying a man from the primeval age and then had her head separated from her body. I think it's fair to say Rose had rather an eventful trip. Tillun was really taken with her and on first sight Rose really liked what she saw but she initially refused to marry him. Once lives were at stake though she was more than willing to be hit in the face by the Great Fish of Matrimony. Talk about traditions, eh? Captain Jack and Das staying in the twenty-first century was a good sidetrack from the aftermath of events that took the Neanderthal to Rose's time and I did enjoy the humour in the updates that came at the end of some of the latter chapters. Das was such a simpleton and that made him loveable. His grasping of the concepts of humour and lying was excellent! It must have been quite challenging for Jack to break that barrier but he finally did. He was more interested in the larger girls of today which seemed strange and his disliking of thin girls as being sexy didn't make much sense to me, but who am I to judge? Beauty exists in the eye of the beholder. That's something I firmly believe. Chantal was a really intriguing character and I thought she made a fantastic villain. The time where she came from, over 400,000 years into the future, has learned how to deal with feelings and even completely mapped out the body which meant they could detach and then reattach pretty much every limb. It was a strange thing but we saw it demonstrated with Chantal taking one of the Doctor's hearts out of his chest and then Rose having her head separated from her body! It was rather eventful it has to be said. Chantal's idea of recreating the human race from the primeval age in the form of the Hy-Bractors was really strange I must say. They didn't seem very human at all and they just wanted to devour every human in sight! There were some excellent story references in the novel with Rose, The End of the World, The Unquiet Dead and The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances all getting a nice mention. The plot was well paced and some of the guest characters were really good with Quilley, Jacob and Lene all standing out. The Doctor finally working out the way to overcome Chantal was excellent and it involved a momentary change in human evolution! Overall, a really good novel. Great characters, a fantastic plot and superb characterisation! 

Rating: 9/10