The Monsters Inside

A lovely opener careens swiftly into danger and horrors - nicely reminiscent of a TV episode, in fact!

So, too, are the characterisations - much more on point than the prior NSA, which suffered I suspect (fairly) from being written prior to the series actually beginning to air. However, with Nine and Rose separated for perhaps 90% of the book, while they both have decently strong stories going on (Rose more than the Doctor) and they are entwined (so it doesn't feel too much like splitting threads), if you enjoy the way they bounce off one another . . . well, that is mostly lacking.

The Raxacoricofallapatorians (Slitheen and a new family, the Blathereen) are given more space than there was room for in the show, but little more depth. And show more rather than it seeming as though the Slitheen are a standout by being a ruthless, careless, cruel crime family, this posits that the only difference is that it's their family, so another family of Raxacoricofallapatorians would be similar, only in competition. Which I don't love.

Justicia is nicely horrifying, but the novel doesn't shy away from that either, and both Rose and the Doctor's offense and fury at it predate the alien interference revelation - as Justicia was awful long before the Blathereen infiltrated it, horrifically, and started making things worse. However, I feel like that happening also undercut/weakened the point that was being made, sort of, about Justicia - we spend a decent amount of time in Flowers' head, and she is one of those who signed on for this under its original auspices and runs things and all that, and it does indeed highlight how awful this whole place is and how the humans are justifying it to themselves and/or putting it out of their minds, etc.

. . .and then ah, a big bad, a monster alien plot, and it sort of falls away. It's left off as an 'oh of course they'll have to change things now' but will they? Why? They set this place up in the first place, and no one saw a problem with it then or as they got reports or results from it.

The end also leaves off with an ill-advised hook for more which I highly doubt is going to be picked up, given the nature of the NSAs, and turns it into a cliffhanger type looming potential horror that one suspects will just . . . continue to hang there. show less

It's time for Rose to finally have an adventure on a planet other than earth and the Doctor is just the Gallifreyan to take her. When the Doctor and Rose land on Justicia (yes, that's really what Cole named it) Rose is entranced by a beautiful flower growing in the desolate landscape. Before they can contemplate the stark beauty for any length of time, they come across humans building replicas of the Great Pyramids in Egypt, complete with overseers who have vicious whips. It's not long before the Doctor and Rose are noticed and despite fighting to get back to the TARDIS are captured and taken to different prisons. The Doctor and Rose had the misfortune to land on a penal colony without permission and that carries a hefty sentence. Rose show more and The Doctor immediately begin to work on a way to reunite but it's not long before they realise that something is not right with the prison. The sound of copious farts and belches and a bright blue light hint that the prison may not be in human control after all.

As you can see from the cover, The Monsters Inside is an adventure story staring the 9th Doctor and his companion Rose. You're going to have be patient with me while I fanpoodle for a moment because I simply loved The Monsters Inside, despite the fact that the antagonists were the puerile and disgusting Raxacoricofallapatorian (try saying that three times quickly). It easily could have been an episode of NuWho because Cole managed to capture the personalities of the Doctor and Rose perfectly. Every time the Doctor gave one his larger than life smiles or snarked, I pictured Eccleston. Rose is characterised as plucky, brave and smart.

For much of the story, Rose and The Doctor are separated so the book changes POV several times. As much as I love seeing The Doctor and Rose together, the separation highlighted their closeness because the both of them were so desperate to get back to each other no matter what. Rose didn't sit around like a helpless damsel waiting for the Doctor to find her ans she never doubted they would be reunited. The Doctor's absence gave Rose the chance to step into the roll expert as she led some her fellow prisoners and a guard out of danger. Rose even proved that she has been listening to all of the technical jargon she has learned in her travels with The Doctor as she explained the mechanics of the situation to her fellow prisoners.

While being alone worked well for Rose, it didn't work quite as well for The Doctor. Fans of the series know that the companions serve as a foil for the Doctor. Because The Doctor was separated from Rose, we were treated to his inner monologue. That took away some of the mystery for me. As a viewer, we are meant to know the Doctor is up to something but we aren't really supposed to know what exactly. That said, I do believe the revelation of the Doctors thoughts was thoroughly tempered by the great characterisation.

The 9th Doctor can easily be described as the PTSD angry Doctor. He will do what he has to do but he is always looking for the redemption of those he faces. In the case of (channeling River Song and warning, "spoilers") the Blathereen, though they plan to kill millions, and breed humans as a captive workforce, The Doctor is willing to allow them to live. It's only when they insist on their murderous plans that The Doctor is forced to act. He begs them to stop and finally warns them to stop but in the end, when the Blathereen are not persuaded, the annihilation is near total.

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A while back, a friend of mine told me she had a couple of Doctor Who books she wasn't going to read anymore. When I was at her place, I took a couple of them with me, one of them being The Monsters Inside, but in Dutch ("De Verborgen Monsters"). It featured Rose Tyler and the Ninth Doctor, so I was really enthousiastic about it because Nine was my first Doctor, and Rose is one of my favourite companions.

The Monsters Inside tells the story of how Nine and Rose are being arrested for trespassing on a planet. They are each brought to a different prison, and they're trying their best to get back to each other. But then they find out that there are creatures trying to infiltrate the prison planets, and they must do their best to stop show more them.

I'm going to say it right away: I was disappointed. The first Doctor Who book that I didn't give a positive rating. And I am so sad about it, because I love both Nine and Rose; but I just couldn't care about this book. And the majority of it was the main villain of this story. Raxacoricofallapatorians. We met a couple of Slitheens in the first season of Doctor Who, and I already disliked them a lot then; but this book made me dislike them even more. I have no idea who even came up with these aliens who literally wear people's skins and then fart and burp because they're too fat to fit in the suits; really?!

It really made me dislike the book, and made me not want to finish it. Even though I wanted to find out how they were going to get back together again, and how they were going to defeat these creatures. But eventually, I just decided to give up, so I closed the book at page 230. I do plan on skimming through the rest of the book to find out what happens, but I'm not going to read the rest.

I loved Rose, I loved the Doctor; I also liked Flowers and Dennel, but other than that I couldn't feel anything for any of the characters, and I just didn't care whether they lived or died.

Then there was also the fact that it was written in Dutch. It is my native language, but it's certainly not my favourite language, especially not to read in. I've said it in probably every review of a Dutch book on my blog; but it's so childish. And - this is a little pet peeve of mine - every 'you' in the original book was translated into the formal you in Dutch (we have the informal 'jij/jou/jouw' and the formal 'u/uw') and I don't know but I find that a bit annoying. Sorry not sorry.

In the end, I didn't like The Monsters Inside which saddens me. I'll be picking up another Doctor Who book soon, another one I got from my friend, also written by Stephen Cole but this time it's in English. So yeah, I can't really recommend this book to people, unless you really want to read all the Doctor Who books out there.

My opinion on this book in one gif: show less

http://nhw.livejournal.com/761346.html

This isn't bad. I think Cole catches the Ninth Doctor/Rose banter very well. The monsters of the title are the Slitheen, from "The Aliens of London" and "World War Three" (the internal chronology suggests that this is set before "Boom Town"); their back-story as a species is filled out rather nicely, with some uncertainty as to whether they are allies or enemies. The last word of the title refers not to complex explorations of Inner Space, but to the interplanetary jail in which the Doctor and Rose end up. The descriptions of setting and incidental characters are good. Sadly the actual scientific bit of the plot (the local solar system being sneakily remodelled for sinister criminal purposes) makes show more no sense at all, but you can't have everything. show less

The Doctor and Rose end up on Justicia, a prison camp where Rose finds herself locked up in a borstal and the Doctor is made part of a scientific work-camp. This one has a really good plot and the "baddies" are better described here than they were depicted in the TV show. It is, however, slightly let down by the fact that the author has made the Ninth Doctor a bit too happy-go-lucky (he's actually more like the Tenth Doctor) when he should have more gravitas. Also, the narrator of the audio version has a nasal and slightly shrill voice, which works when she does Rose, but gets annoying with the other characters, so I'd recommend the paper version if this is on your list.

It was surprisingly good Doctor Who story. The Raxacoricofallapatorians where interesting. The fight between two families was interesting and they even brought up what happened to the Slitheen at the 10 Downing street.

Rose's character was amazingly done. She was independent and clever. She managed well without the Doctor helping her and when she had to play being really smart, she caught on to Doctor's hints really well. It was her first time on an alien planet also.

The Doctor was written like the Doctor and he really cared about and worried about Rose.

It was tons better than the first 9th Doctor story.

*Spoiler alert - if you've not read this book and you want to, there are some spoilers in the following review.*

I wasn't sure about this book from the start. I'd previously read a Doctor Who novelisation by Stephen Cole and did not enjoy it or his characterisation of the Doctor. Plus, with this one, the title seemed to have a bit of a giveaway about the nature of the monsters. It turned out that my suspicions were not without merit.

The characterisations here were marginally better than in Feast of the Drowned. Perhaps Stephen Cole has trouble with capturing the Doctor in his tenth incarnation and not so much with the ninth. It wasn't quite up to par but it was an awful lot better than in the other book. Rose wasn't great - she seems a show more lot younger than 19 here and certainly more of a troublemaker than has ever been suggested before. All the other characters were original, but the majority were bland, two-dimensional and nothing more than stereotypes.

The plot itself was an interesting idea. It certainly started off well. But then the monsters were revealed. Having my suspicions about who they were going to be, I was not surprised in the slightest. However, there was a twist. Unfortunately, it sank the book into the realms of very very bad fanfiction. Imagine a book where the Mary Sue is not the companion, but the monster. Yes, in this book, the monsters were not just Slitheen, but the Slitheens evil cousins, the Blathereen. I couldn't believe what I was reading. I expected it to be a joke, that the monsters were taking the piss at the expense of the Doctor, but no, it was supposed to be completely serious. I managed to finish the book, though not with a great deal of enjoyment. I'm glad that I don't have any more novelisations by Stephen Cole in my collection so far because I think I would be giving them a very wide berth or reading them with a huge grain of salt. Very disappointing. show less