More bodily possession than Soho
APOLLO 23 Author: Justin Richards Publisher: BBC Books 248 pages £6.99 ISBN: 978-1-84607-200-0 OUT NOW ★★
NIGHT OF THE HUMANS Author David Llewellyn Publisher: BBC Books 247 pages 66.99 ISBN: 978-1-84607-969-6 OUT NOW! ★★★★
THE FORGOTTEN ARMY Author: Brian Minchin Publisher: BBC Books 248 pages f6.99 ISBN: 978-1.84607-987-0 OUT NOW! ★★
There may be a new team in the TARDIS, but it's business as usual in BBC Books' latest batch of Who novels. As ever, these tie-in books provide action, adventure — and a nagging emptiness when done.
Apollo 23 kicks things off with a tale of body-snatching aliens. People are vanishing from the streets of present-day Earth and arriving, unprotected, on the surface of the moon. Not good for them. Investigating, the Doctor and Amy uncover sabotage, an inevitably sinister plot and a looming invasion.
Justin Richards can, and presumably does, write this stuff in his sleep. This is his 24th Who-related novel and while he rarely writes anything actively bad, Apollo 23 comes close. The plot is hackneyed, the science more than usually implausible (contemporary America has both a viable space programme and a secret teleport to the moon?) and the aliens are boring. The written word is meant to give authors an infinite budget and the freedom to let their imaginations run rampant — so why bother with yet another race of entities that like to possess people?
Night Of The Humans is better. Set on the Gyre — a planet formed entirely from intergalactic debris — ifs a neat twist on the marauding savages trope. Here, it's the alien Sittuun who are in danger from savage humans. Meanwhile, the Doctor has his hands full dealing with Dirk Slipstream, a showboating ex-con with more than a hint of JK Rowling's Gilderoy Lockhart about him.
It's fun, pacy stuff. Author David Llewellyn remembers that death and danger is at the heart of Doctor Who, and while this is hardly The Road, there's a real sense that any of the supporting characters could buy the farm at any moment. The anti-racism message is obvious but worthwhile, and the second half of the novel moves into similar territory to "The Fires Of Pompeii", with a comet heading ' towards the planet and the Doctor facing some impossible choices. The humans are a cliched bunch, but otherwise this is an entertaining read.
Finally, Brian Minchin's The Forgotten Army sees the Vykoids, an irritating race of naughty space pixies with names like Erik and Lars, try and take Manhattan using only a robotic woolly mammoth and some basic mind control techniques.
This is clearly meant to be the funny book, and in that regard it works. The jokes are gently amusing and the dialogue as zippy as you'd expect from the TV show. Still, everything else feels a bit half-hearted. The Vykoids want to enslave mankind, which is fine (it's not up there with replacing the Earth's core with an engine, but it'll do) but their perplexing decision not to kill anyone in the process saps the book of tension. Torchwood script editor Minchin does a decent job of capturing our box-fresh new Time lord, but he overdoes Amy's snark, making her annoying rather than feisty. And it was a poor decision to release this book, which features more people under alien control, at the same time as Apollo 23.
There was a time when the Doctor Who books were more adventurous than your average spin-off tat. As the TV show has grown in stature, so the books have diminished. Night Of The Humans proves that there's still life in the range, but it'd be nice if they were aiming for something more than just routine thrills and spills.
Apollo 23 features an appearance by Control - head of the CIA in the Whoniverse. He featured in several classic series Who novels.
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- APA 6th ed.: Salmon, Will (July 2010). More bodily possession than Soho. SFX p. 124.
- MLA 7th ed.: Salmon, Will. "More bodily possession than Soho." SFX [add city] July 2010, 124. Print.
- Chicago 15th ed.: Salmon, Will. "More bodily possession than Soho." SFX, edition, sec., July 2010
- Turabian: Salmon, Will. "More bodily possession than Soho." SFX, July 2010, section, 124 edition.
- Wikipedia (this article): <ref>{{cite news| title=More bodily possession than Soho | url=http://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/More_bodily_possession_than_Soho | work=SFX | pages=124 | date=July 2010 | via=Doctor Who Cuttings Archive | accessdate=22 April 2025 }}</ref>
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