Only Human

So, here I've been lo these many months, out of my mind with excitement that soon (but not soon enough), I'd be holding a Doctor Who novel written by my favorite living science fiction writer (that would be Alastair Reynolds*, duh, and may he live long and prosper**), and one that concerns one of my favorite Doctors (that would be the Third, portrayed by the inimitable Jon Pertwee), and I realized, hey, I've never actually read a Doctor Who novel.

So I went hunting. Concurrently with a recent mania to watch the whole of the Ninth Doctor's single TV season and an accompanying wild hair to write a novel starring said Ninth Doctor, because Christopher Eccleston is another favorite.*** And Only Human had the best blurb. This might be Jasper show more Fforde's fault for making me sympathize so with Neanderthals. I'm just not sure on that.

I am now dangerously close to writing a blog post that is longer than the actual novel, which is short and sweet but packed with goodies to satisfy the wibbly wobbly timey wimey longings of any Who fan, new or old, with offerings ranging from a Neanderthal lost in 21st century England (whom Captain Jack, of all people, must help to acclimatize) to a population of technologically advanced modern humans living in a Prisoneresque village in prehistoric England but strangely uninterested in the Neanderthal and Homo sapiens sapiens populations nearby unless their "popper packs" (basically a ripoff of the Penfield Mood Organs from Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep) compel them to, even though studying these populations and the charismatic megafauna that share their world is why said H.s.s. are there and then (for of course, they are time travelers, using a cheap and dirty version of time travel so cheap and dirty as to make Captain Jack's vortex manipulator look like something from the pages of Inhabitat).

But so, the Doctor and cavemen of various species. Who doesn't love a combination like that? I'm certainly in for a go, even if Rose has to come along, too, which she does, but no tale is perfect, right?****

Anyway.

Like I said, there's a lot packed into this short little book. While Captain Jack is training the displaced Neanderthal, Das in 21st century living, the Doctor and Rose travel back to Das' time (to which he cannot return because of reasons. And cheap and dirty time travel tech. Wibbly wobbly) to find out how/why Das got when he is and put a stop to whatever's going on because it is Bad. And they find the aforementioned Penfield Mood Organ junkies. Who are all enslaved via their Poppers by a charismatic and devastatingly (and artificially) intelligent, ruthless scientist named Chantal. Everybody wants to please Chantal. And Chantal is up to no good. Basically a Master/Rani hybrid, is Chantal. Except a bit more effective; at one point even the Doctor is drug-boozled into wanting to please Chantal -- and were this not a Doctor Who story, one might well have come to believe the jeopardy in which this places him. As it was, it was not at all easy to see how he was going to get out of his predicament. While Rose was off cavorting with cave men.

So, I wound up enjoying this little romp rather a lot. And I'll say this for my fellow Rose haters: book Rose, at least this book Rose, is rather more enjoyable than TV Rose -- not because Billie Piper did a bad job on TV or anything, just that the kind of stuff Gareth Roberts put her through would not be easy at all to pull off on TV, and is very likely way more satisfying for people who consider her dominance of the early seasons of NuWho to be their flaw rather than their glory.

Heh.

*I say this not only because it's true, but also because Reynolds occasionally reads my blog and my saying this makes him blush, and I'm just sadistic enough to enjoy making him blush. Especially when, for reasons that blast out my logic circuits, right now Britons can enjoy Harvest of Time, but I as an American not legally do so for another month. Harrumph.

**Heh.

***For those who will surely ask, my current (because they fluctuate, because I'm only human (heh) order of favorite Doctors is: Ninth, Third, Eleventh, Sixth, Fourth, First, Seventh, Second, Tenth, Fifth. Usually Eleventh is higher, and he's like to regain a higher spot on my list after the bravura performance in the most recent Neil Gaiman-penned episode in which Matt Smith got to pull a Gollum/Locutus of Who thing. But I'm all about the Pert right now because of Alastair Reynolds. Duh.

****And there I've outraged all the Rose partisans out there. Bring it. I've been dealing with people who aren't down with my dislike of Perpugilliam Brown† for decades now, and Al Bruno III and I are still even friends.

†I wasn't going to nerd out quite so much for this post, but dudes, trying to choke the life out of Peri on his very first day beneath Colin Baker's blonde curls is a huge part of why the Sixth Doctor is so high on my list. That and I'm just generally a bit partial to Bastard Doctors. show less

A Neanderthal turns up in Bromley of all places and sends the Doctor, Jack and Rose off on a search for answers. As usual it's humans messing about with things because they can and the Doctor has more than a few digs at humans lesser traits. I would have liked a bit more on the steampunk tech, but maybe that's just me. The odd couple Jack and Das, the displaced Neanderthal, are great together.

Enjoyable and interesting enough concepts, but I wanted more time with some of the characters (on both sides). Also, the Doctor's deus ex machina this time around felt extremely unlikely and contrived.

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1180946.html

This is surely one of the best New Series Adventures, and one of the better Who novels in general. It is largely set in Bromley, which may not sound like a promising start, but this becomes the jumping off point for the Doctor (Nine, in this case) and Rose to get involved with Bromley's prehistory, where Neanderthals, local homo sapiens, and humans who have travelled there from the far future are all under threat from ambitious monsters and montrous ambition. Meanwhile, in the early 21st century, Jack Harkness is helping a displaced Neanderthal settle into contemporary Bromley. There is a certain amount of playing the situation for laughs, but also a bit of exploration of what it is that makes show more us human. The question of whether or not this applies to the Doctor lurks in the background, of course, but it's more about Rose and the people she meets, with the Jack story line operating as a contrast. Very interesting, and recommended. show less

Wasn't sure if I was going to like this one at the start, but it picked up quickly. It was an adventure with my first and favorite Doctor, Nine and his companions Rose and Captain Jack. Excellent combo. This was a bit dark and had some 'yikes' moments. Not that the show doesn't get dark, but this was WHOA!

A person from the future, a twisted person, is experimenting with human genetics. They have created dangerous human/animal hybrids and have gone on an expedition to earth's past with plans to repopulate the planet with their creations and change the course of earth's history and evolution. Jack spent the majority of the adventure in the present day acclimating a wayward, time-traveling neanderthal to the mondern day, as he is show more essentially stuck there due to time travel shenanigans. The Doctor and Rose went to the past to battle the big bad.

This was a "hang on to the edge of your seat" story. Clearly you know the Doctor and his companions saved the day, but sometimes you just have no clue how it could be possible. A very enjoyable read/listen. I will be interested in reading more stories in this vein. show less

Read this review, and many more on my blog October Tune!

This story features the Ninth Doctor, Rose Tyler and Captain Jack Harkness. They end up 21st century Bromley where a Neanderthal man, named Das, has just been discovered in a hospital. While Jack looks after Das, the Doctor and Rose travel back to Bromley 28,000 years before, to see what went wrong. And what they find there is so weird, even the Doctor has no idea what to do.

Nine has always been one of my favourite Doctors, mainly because he was the first Doctor I saw, and Rose is just one of my favourite companions. When I saw that this novel included Jack as well, I was sold. Jack is also one of my favourite characters in Doctor Who (not so much in Torchwood, though, but that’s show more for another time). This story also features a lot of beautiful (and then I mean movie-star beautiful, that is how they were described every time) people from the year 438,533 AD (approximately), and of course the Neanderthals from the year 26,185 BC.

What I liked:

When I started reading, before I hit 25 pages, there was the part that made me love this story already. The Doctor and Rose needed to get into the hospital where they were holding Das, and the Doctor asked Jack for a distraction. Well, what does Jack do? A thing only Jack would do… He takes of all of his clothes and runs across the street. What a distraction indeed!

Furthermore, I loved the way this story portrayed the Neanderthals, and our ancestors too for that matter, as clever beings – not as the brainless, ape-like creatures most books, tv-shows and movies portray them. When Das found out he was stuck in the 21st century, he learned to cope very quickly. Of course, this is still all fiction, and we’ll probably never find out how they actually were, unless time travel gets invented (which I don’t think will happen, ever).

The people in the Osterberg project were all strange, brainless and I was really happy when I met Quilley, who was known as a ‘Refuser’, someone who refused to use the ‘poppers’, which I thought were drugs that made the Osterberg people so brainless. If they were feeling ‘wrong-feelings’, they would just type in a combination to make them feel happy again, or well, emotionless actually, because I don’t think happy was good either.. Hmm…

I liked Gareth Roberts’ writing, it was very easy, though sometimes he used some words that I found difficult, but of course that’s what Doctor Who is for. I’ve read one other story written by him, I Am A Dalek, which was enjoyable but in my opinion way too short (I really wanted that one to be a full novel). He has also written several episodes for the show, like ‘The Shakespeare Code’, ‘The Unicorn and the Wasp’, and ‘Closing Time’, which were all episodes I really liked. I am definitely going to check out more of his books!

What I didn’t like:

There was only one thing I didn’t really like, sometimes while I was reading, I had no idea what I was actually reading. I had to re-read several parts before I finally understood what it said. Also, I just straight-up hated the main villain, Chantal. Because she turned those 100 people into brainless idiots, who wouldn’t even run away even though they were being attacked and eaten by Chantal’s creations.

In the end, I really liked Only Human, and seriously, I have started to ask myself if I will ever find a Doctor who novel that is really really bad.. show less

The Doctor Who books (new 2005 series) are all short but very sweet. They are pretty simple, but I love how they convey the same humor and feelings that a traditional Doctor Who tv episode does. The books I have read so far all had that same great humor by the Doctor that I love, which is why these books are almost like comfort food for me.
In this book the Doctor (9th) and Rose find a genuine Neanderthal in the UK, in Bromley, in the twenty-first century. When they find out how he got there, they discover a colony of future humans living in 26.000 BC. They are using a crude time-travel device, and the Doctor needs to figure out what they are doing there and stop them using the device again. Meanwhile, there is also the problem of the show more Neaderthal to think of.
Like I said, a great short book, truly Doctor Who. show less