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{{Infobox Story SMW
{{Infobox Novel
|image       = <gallery>
|image = [[file:Onlyhuman.jpg|250px]]
Onlyhuman.jpg|2006 edition
|novel name = Only Human
Only_Human.jpg|2013 edition
|series = [[BBC New Series Adventures]]
</gallery>
|number = 5
|series       = [[BBC New Series Adventures]]
|doctor = [[Ninth Doctor]]
|number       = 5
|companions = [[Rose Tyler]]<br>Captain [[Jack Harkness]]
|doctor       = Ninth Doctor
|enemy = [[Chantal Osterberg]]<br>The [[Hy-Bractor]]s
|companions   = [[Rose Tyler|Rose]], [[Jack Harkness|Jack]]
|year = <ul><li>[[Bromley]]; [[2005]]<li>[[2nd May|2]] [[May]] [[BC|29,185 BC]]</ul>
|enemy       = {{il|[[Chantal Osterberg]],| [[Hy-Bractor]]s}}
|writer = [[Gareth Roberts]]
|setting      = [[Bromley]], [[2005]] and [[24 May]] [[BC#Prehistory|29,185 BC]]
|publisher = [[BBC Books]]
|writer       = Gareth Roberts
|release date = [[September]] [[2005]]
|read by      = [[Anthony Head]]
|format = Hardcover book, 254 pages
|cover        = [[Henry Steadman]]
|isbn = ISBN 0-563-48639-2
|publisher    = BBC Books
|previous story = [[The Deviant Strain]]
|release date = 8 September 2005
|next story = [[The Stealers of Dreams]]
|release date2= 7 March 2013
}}
|format       = Hardcover book, 254 pages
'''Only Human''' was the fifth [[BBC New Series Adventures|Ninth Doctor novel]] to be released.
|isbn         = ISBN 0-563-48639-2
==Publisher's summary==
|prev        = The Deviant Strain (novel)
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.
|next         = The Stealers of Dreams (novel)
}}{{prose stub}}
'''''Only Human''''' was the fifth novel in the [[BBC New Series Adventures]] series. It was written by [[Gareth Roberts]] and featured the [[Ninth Doctor]], [[Rose Tyler]] and [[Jack Harkness]]. It was originally released in [[2005 (releases)|2005]] to accompany [[Series 1 (Doctor Who 2005)|Series 1]] and was re-released in [[2013 (releases)|2013]] for ''Doctor Who''{{'}}s 50th Anniversary.
 
== Publisher's summary ==
=== 2005 BBC Books edition ===
Somebody's interfering with time. [[Ninth Doctor|The Doctor]], [[Rose Tyler|Rose]] and [[Jack Harkness|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 [[human]]ity 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?
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-Bractor]]s escape to change humanity's history forever...
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 [[Chantal Osterberg|Osterberg]] experiment before the monstrous [[Hy-Bractor]]s escape to change humanity's history forever...


'''Plot'''
=== 2013 BBC Books edition ===
Reports of a time disturbance lead the [[Ninth Doctor]] to modern-day [[London]], where he discovers a [[Neanderthal]] Man, twenty-eight thousand years after his race became extinct. A trip back to the dawn of [[human]]ity only deepens the mystery: who are these strange humans from the [[far future]] now living in the [[distant past]]? The Doctor must learn the truth about the Osterberg experiment before history is changed forever.


At a fancy dress party in Bromley, a young Roman starts a fight with a caveman. The bouncers break it up, knocking the caveman unconscious.
== Plot ==
On 2 October [[438533|438,533]], seven year-old [[Chantal Osterberg]] provides an account of how over the weekend, her cat, Dusty, was giving her and her family too many "wrong-feelings." She proceeded to do surgery on her cat, making her tail scaly, rearranging her organs, and altering her brain to catch more rats. Her parents didn't like this.


Meanwhile on the TARDIS, the Doctor, Rose and Captain Jack Harkness are setting off to Kegron Pluva when a device in the TARDIS shows there is a temporal disturbance. Explaining that it is a "dirty rip engine" (an extremely primitive and dangerous form of time-travel) that is causing the disturbance, the Doctor pilots the TARDIS to Bromley in the early 21st century.
In [[Bromley]], [[2005]], [[Dean (Only Human)|Dean]] goes to a pub dressed as a Roman and gets into a fight with [[Das (Only Human)|Das]], who he believes is dressed as a caveman.


The TARDIS lands, and the Doctor and Jack attempt to use the sonic screwdriver and Jack's wrist device to trace the disturbance. Rose goes across the street to a manicure shop and finds out that a fight at a nightclub resulted in a caveman being taken to hospital. She goes back to tell the Doctor and Jack.
The [[Ninth Doctor]], [[Rose Tyler]], and [[Jack Harkness|Captain Jack Harkness]] intend to go to [[Kegron Pluva]], but are drawn off course due to a time distortion. Rose investigates and finds that a caveman is in a nearby hospital. They go there to find that the hospital has been [[quarantine]]d and escape with Das with help from [[Weronica (Only Human)|Weronica]]. They try to bring Das back to his time, but he disintegrates when they try to take him in the [[The Doctor's TARDIS|TARDIS]]. The Doctor believes it's because his time travel was unprotected, and tells Jack to look after him for a month while him and Rose investigate what happened.


Upon arriving at the hospital, the trio soon realize that the army has closed it off, with all of the staff and patients evacuating. After a trip to the TARDIS's cloakroom, the Doctor and Rose go into the hospital, after asking for Jack to provide them with a distraction. Inside, a nurse explains that someone was brought in the night before with the Ebola virus, but the Doctor quietly explains to Rose that the Ebola virus was cured in 2076, and there was no time-travel technology then.
Rose and the Doctor travel back in time to find the [[Osterberg Experiment]] led by Chantal, wherein a group of future humans travelled back in time. They discover that most future humans drug themselves in order to not feel wrong emotions. The Doctor and Rose each go with a different human — Rose with Reddy, a human who uses drugs, and the Doctor with T. P. Quilley, a "refuser." Rose throws away Reddy's "[[popper pack]]" and forces him to feel real emotions as they witness a [[Neanderthal]] birth, then is kidnapped by early humans. Quilley and the Doctor discover the [[Hy-Bractors]] and are both shortly kidnapped and drugged by Chantal.


Jack's distraction is running through the lobby naked, which lets the Doctor and Rose run up the now unguarded steps. After finding the room with the Neanderthal, the Doctor explains that he is Dr Table and that he is an expert in acromegaly. With the help of the patient's nurse Weronika, they get the Neanderthal out of the hospital and into the TARDIS.
Rose is coerced into a marriage with Tillun. The Doctor is [[Vivisection|vivisected]] by Chantal, before escaping as the drugs where off and helping Quilley escape as well.


The Neanderthal gives his name as Das, and the Doctor asks him how he came to be in this time period. From his explanation, they realize the dirty rip engine is from time travelers visiting in 29,185 BC. The Doctor tells him that they are taking him home, but as the TARDIS leaves, Das starts to dissolve in a green pool of light. The TARDIS shudders and shrieks, but manages to reverse, and the Doctor says the original time trip has polluted Das's cell structure, and he cannot go home.
''To be added.''


The Doctor leaves Jack in charge of getting Das settled in, while he and Rose go back in time to figure out what's going on. He's rented an apartment for them, gives Jack a psychic credit card, and says they'll be back in a month.
== Characters ==
* [[Ninth Doctor]]
* [[Rose Tyler]]
* [[Captain Jack Harkness]]
* [[Das (Only Human)|Das]]
* [[Chantal Osterberg]]
* [[Weronika (Only Human)|Weronika]]
* [[Jacob (Only Human)|Jacob]]
* [[Lene (Only Human)|Lene]]
* [[Tom of Osterberg|Tom]]
* [[T. P. Quilley]]
* [[Tina (Only Human)|Tina]]
* [[Reddy (Only Human)|Reddy]]
* [[X01]]
* [[Hy-Bractor]]s
* [[Jackie Tyler]]
* [[Stephanie (Only Human)|Stephanie]]
* [[Ka (Only Human)|Ka]]
* [[Sakka (Only Human)|Sakka]]
* [[Sakka's mate (Only Human)|Sakka's mate]]
* [[Sakka's daughter (Only Human)|Sakka's mate]]
* [[Neanderthal midwife (Only Human)|Neanderthal midwife]]
* [[Gual (Only Human)|Gual]]
* [[Nan (Only Human)|Nan]]
* [[Tillun (Only Human)|Tillun]]
* [[Anna Marie O'Grady]]
* [[The Priest (Only Human)|The Priest]]


The TARDIS lands on a plain, with forest nearby. They head into the trees, looking for the one described by Das as leading to the underground cave. They see a good-looking young man eating lunch, but when they head toward him, he runs off. While tracking him, they suddenly end up in the remains of a large animal, and hear noises from whatever killed it heading their way. Suddenly, loud thumping music screeches out, and the predator runs off.
== Worldbuilding ==
* [[Dean]] refers to [[Das (Only Human)|Das]] as <nowiki>''</nowiki>[[Captain Caveman]]<nowiki>''</nowiki>.
* The Doctor doesn't want Das to watch ''[[Farscape]]''.
* [[Rip engine]]s are a dangerous and primitive form of time travel.
* The Doctor says he was married to [[Lady Mary Wortley Montagu]].
* The Doctor discovers [[poppa pack]]s.
* The Doctor tells Jack to buy Das clothes from the Gap in [[Croydon]].
* The Doctor intends to take Rose and Jack to [[Kegron Pluva]].


The noise came from two more time travellers, who are unsurprised to see the Doctor and Rose. The two men are dressed like the man they were tracking, are also very good-looking, and both wearing name badges. Rose realizes that they seem very 'blank' and show very little emotion.
=== TARDIS ===


The two men take them Das's squeaky tree, which is a lift that goes to a huge cave containing a wooden city called Osterberg. As they go to meet Chantal, Rose notices that everyone is movie-premiere attractive, except for one man who looks normal and is dressed very eccentrically with a broad brimmed hat and a cape.
* The TARDIS translation circuit has a swear filter.
* The TARDIS key works on a kind of meson projection system.


Chantal is very tall, and incredibly beautiful. She is talking to the man in the hat, who is called Quilley. He is complaining about the experiment being on day forty-nine when it was only planned for forty. Chantal recommends he use combo 662 to stop worrying, and Quilley says he doesn't want it. The Doctor introduces himself and Rose, and while he stays to talk to Chantal, Rose goes with Quilley to talk about 'zoo-tech.'
=== Science & Technology ===


Chantal has Lene show the Doctor around Osterberg. The Doctor decides to see if he can break through the universal indifference show by the Osterbergers by asking Lene to pretend that he knows nothing about the city or why they are there. She looks irritated for a moment, then taps the keypad on her badge and is wildly enthusiastic about explaining it all to him. She tells him that Chantal is the boss, and came up with the idea of traveling to the past. Everything that the team does is for her.
* The intriguing monotony in the occurrence of inter-caval conduction block during typical atrial flutter suggests an anatomic or electrophysiological predisposition for conduction abnormalities of the Doctor's heart.
* Chantal removed Rose's head from her body, which can be undone by reverse-locking the kinetic seal.


The Doctor arrives at Quilley's home, and explains that he's worked it out. The Osterbergers come from a time after AD 436,000, when a massive space battle caused Earth to be hit with an EMP-like wave, knocking out all electronics and stopping progress in its tracks. Humanity was forced to focus on non-electronic fields of science, like chemistry and biology. Eventually, the advances in the two fields allowed humans to fully map out the human body. In essence, doctors will act like mechanics - taking people apart and putting them back together with no ill effects. The Doctor shows Rose one of the badges, and tells her that they use pharmacology to block any 'wrong-feeling.' Quilley is a Refuser, and won't use the popper packs.
== Story notes ==
* Later reprints of this book removed the image of [[Billie Piper]] from the cover.
* This story was also released as an ebook available from the Amazon Kindle store.
* This book was reprinted in 2013 with an entirely new cover to celebrate the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' 50th anniversary.


The Doctor asks Quilley to show them the time machine that they came in. It runs on steam, and the Doctor wants to check it out thoroughly, so he tells Rose she should investigate the creature they encountered earlier. Quilley tells her that Reddy is going out to visit the Neanderthals, and she could go out with him. She starts to ask if he will care, then realizes he'll just say 'Yeah, fine, whatever' and not ask any questions.
== Continuity ==
* The Doctor mentions that he has previously met [[Neanderthal]]s. ([[TV]]: ''[[Ghost Light (TV story)|Ghost Light]]''; [[PROSE]]: ''[[Timewyrm: Genesys (novel)|Timewyrm: Genesys]]'')
* Rose reflects on her encounter with [[Gwyneth (The Unquiet Dead)|Gwyneth]] in [[Cardiff]] on [[24 December]] [[1869]]. ([[TV]]: ''[[The Unquiet Dead (TV story)|The Unquiet Dead]]'')
* Rose recalls meeting Jack during the [[The Blitz|Blitz]] on [[20 January]] [[1941]]. ([[TV]]: ''[[The Empty Child (TV story)|The Empty Child]]'' / ''[[The Doctor Dances (TV story)|The Doctor Dances]]'')
* The Doctor uses the [[fast return switch]]. ([[TV]]: ''[[The Edge of Destruction (TV story)|The Edge of Destruction]]'')
* The Doctor refers to the destruction of [[Gallifrey]] in the [[Last Great Time War]]. ([[TV]]: ''[[The End of the World (TV story)|The End of the World]]'')


When they enter the Neanderthal camp, Reddy (who is the first man seen by Rose and the Doctor) is greeted by a female named Ka. Rose tells them that Das is OK, which they are relieved and happy to know, but that he won't be coming back. Suddenly, there is a great commotion as a band of human cavemen in skins and blue paint attack the village and takes Rose prisoner.
== Additional cover images ==
<gallery position="center" captionalign="center" hideaddbutton="true">
Only_Human.jpg|2013 edition. Cover by [[Two Associates]].
</gallery>


The Doctor finishes his examination of the engine, and tells Quilley that something is bleeding power off it. They trace the pipe to the 'Grey Door' and go to see what it is. It has a huge locking mechanism, and the Doctor starts to open it with his sonic screwdriver. They hear a voice from the inside, that Quilley identifies as an Osterberger named Tina. The door opens, and at first there is nothing, then a skeleton wearing Tina's name badge is thrown out.
== Editions published outside Britain ==
* Published in Finland by Luolamies Lontoossa in 2006 as a hardback edition, it was one of two books published in the 2000's.
* Published in China by New Star Press in 2017 as a hardback edition.


The Doctor starts to shut the door, but a grey six-fingered had emerges and pushes back. A tall creature looking vaguely humanoid wearing a suit jumps out and asks if they are human. The Doctor says of course not, and orders the creature back inside. He manages to intimidate it and relock the door. The Doctor tells Quilley that the creature is a product of genetic engineering, created by someone in Osterberg.
<gallery position=center captionalign=center hideaddbutton="true" >
Only_Human_Finnish.jpg|Finnish edition
Onlyhuman-chinese.jpg|Chinese edition
</gallery>


As they walk away, they see Chantal approaching with two other Osterbergers. She tells him the creature is called a Hy-Bractor, and the Doctor calls her its mother. She is holding a remote control, which she uses to make the two people with her attack the Doctor and Quilley. They are clubbed unconscious, and the Doctor awakens in Chantal's lab, drugged with a popper pack.
== Audiobook ==
* This novel was released as an audiobook on [[1 January (releases)|1 January]] [[2013 (releases)|2013]] complete and unabridged by [[BBC Audio]] and read by [[Anthony Head]].


Rose wakes up to see an old woman and her son. She gives them her name, and tells them she comes from 'nearer the river.' The woman tells Rose that they have decided she's going to join the family and marry her grandson, which would make her a queen. Rose tries to tell them that she doesn't want to marry Tillun, but her objections are brushed off. She finally tells them that she has to go out alone and appease her tribe's god before the wedding, and walks out of camp.
<gallery position="center" captionalign="center" hideaddbutton="true">
Only Human Audio.jpg|Audiobook cover
</gallery>


Even though Chantal has given the Doctor twice the normal dosage of chemicals, he manages to fight them off well enough to tie her to a chair and then go to find Quilley. He rips off his and Quilley's popper packs, and goes to look for an antidote. While looking in the supply centre, he realizes that the popper pack refills are almost gone.
== External links ==
 
* {{Penguin|1093765/doctor-who--only-human/}}
Chantal is freed by one of the Osterbergers, who she takes to the Grey Door and feeds to the Hy-Bractor. She then sets all four of them free to eat the rest of the humans, with the exceptions of each other, the Doctor, and herself.
{{dwrefguide|whobb905.htm|Only Human}}
 
* {{whoniverse|ns05|Only Human}}
The Doctor hears the screams, and provokes Quilley enough to overcome some of the effect. He tells him to save as many of the Osterbergers as he can. Then the Doctor goes to warn the Neanderthals and other people on the surface, and to find Rose. Quilley does his best to motivate the Osterbergers, but is only able to escape with two other people. They take the lift to the surface while the Hy-Bractors eat everyone else.
* [http://mysite.science.uottawa.ca/rsmith43/cloister/onlyhuman.htm The Cloister Library: '''Only Human''']
 
{{NSA}}
Away from the tribe, Rose realizes she has no idea how to find her way back to the Neanderthals. She has been followed by Tillun, who wants to know why she won't marry him. As she tries to explain, they hear hoofbeats and hide. The bushes are parted, and the Doctor is there. He used the psychic paper (which also does pictures) to tame the horse.
{{TitleSort}}
 
[[it:Only Human (romanzo)]]
The Doctor tries to tell the Family that they must hide deep in the cave, but they won't believe him because he is a man and an outsider. Rose asks if they will believe her if she joins the Family, and is told that they will. So Rose agrees to marry Tillun. As soon as the ceremony finishes, she orders them to hide. Tillun tries to make her stay, but the Doctor knocks him down and they leave on the horse.
[[ro:Only Human]]


The Doctor and Rose find the Neanderthal camp site, but there are only four of them left alive - the rest have been killed by the Hy-Bractors. Chantal walks into the clearing and they are both captured. The Doctor again awakes in Chantal's lab, where she has also brought the TARDIS. She tells the Doctor that it won't open for her, and then threatens Rose if he will not help her get inside. Between the two of them, they manage to capture Chantal and drug her with a double dose from a popper pack.
[[Category:Ninth Doctor NSA novels]]
 
The Doctor sets to work designing a way to defeat the Hy-Bractors, and runs outside to disperse it into the air. A Hy-Bractor who was still in Osterberg enters the lab and frees Chantal. When it tries to eat Rose, she opens her mouth and breathes fire on it (the same thing happening to other Hy-Bractors on the surface).
 
Chantal makes her way to the time travel machine, where she is found by the Doctor. He tells her not to enter the beam, but she does and is torn apart by the time winds. The Doctor realizes that the machine is going to blow up, and he and Rose take the TARDIS to the surface. They land near Quilley and the other two Osterbergers, but are then discovered by the remaining Hy-Bractor. The Doctor tells it that Chantal is dead, but that she asked him to tell it to eat anything except humans, and it believes him.
 
Meanwhile, Jack is helping Das adjust to modern life. By the time the Doctor and Rose return, Das is sufficiently acclimated, has a job, and even finds a girlfriend who suits him. The novel ends with the TARDIS crew jumping forward several weeks to Das's wedding. Back in prehistoric time, Quilley marries Tillun's grandmother, with the remaining Neanderthals and last Hy-Bractor also living with the family.
 
 
 
==Characters==
*The [[Ninth Doctor|Ninth Doctor]]
*[[Rose Tyler]]
*Captain [[Jack Harkness]]
*[[Das]]
*[[Chantal Osterberg]]
*[[Weronika]]
*[[Jacob (Only Human)|Jacob]]
*[[Lene]]
*[[Tom of Osterberg|Tom]]
*[[T. P. Quilley]]
*[[Tina]]
*[[Reddy]]
*[[X01]]
*[[Hy-Bractor]]s
*[[Jackie Tyler]]
*[[Stephanie (Only Human)|Stephanie]]
*[[Ka]]
*[[Sakka]]
*Sakka's Mate
*Sakka's Daughter
*Neanderthal Midwife
*[[Gual]]
*[[Nan (Only Human)|Nan]]
*[[Tillun]]
*[[Anna Marie O'Grady]]
*The Priest
 
==References==
*[[The Doctor's TARDIS]] has a swear filter.
*Rose gets married to a prehistoric human. Her married name is "Rose Glathicgacymcilliach". This would make her a widow as [[Tillun]] lives out his natural life in his own time.
 
==Story notes==
''to be added''
 
==Continuity==
*Rose reflects on her encounter with [[Gwyneth]] in [[DW]]: ''[[The Unquiet Dead]]''.
 
==Timeline==
*''Only Human'' occurs after: [[NSA]]: ''[[The Deviant Strain]]''
*''Only Human ''occurs before: [[DW]]: ''[[Boom Town]]''
 
==External links==
* {{dwrefguide|whobb905.htm|Only Human}}
* {{whoniverse|ND05.php|Only Human}}
 
{{NDA}}
{{TitleSort}}
[[Category:Ninth Doctor novels]]
[[Category:BBC Ninth Doctor Adventures]]
[[Category:2005 novels]]
[[Category:2005 novels]]
[[Category:Stories set in 2005]]
[[Category:Stories set in 2005]]
[[Category:Stories set in London]]
[[Category:Stories set in London]]
[[Category:Stories set in the distant past]]
[[Category:Stories set in the Stone Age]]
[[Category:Stories set in 29185 BC]]
[[Category:Stories set in the far future]]
[[Category:50th Anniversary Collection NSA reprints]]

Latest revision as of 12:26, 6 December 2024

RealWorld.png

prose stub

Only Human was the fifth novel in the BBC New Series Adventures series. It was written by Gareth Roberts and featured the Ninth Doctor, Rose Tyler and Jack Harkness. It was originally released in 2005 to accompany Series 1 and was re-released in 2013 for Doctor Who's 50th Anniversary.

Publisher's summary[[edit] | [edit source]]

2005 BBC Books edition[[edit] | [edit source]]

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...

2013 BBC Books edition[[edit] | [edit source]]

Reports of a time disturbance lead the Ninth Doctor to modern-day London, where he discovers a Neanderthal Man, twenty-eight thousand years after his race became extinct. A trip back to the dawn of humanity only deepens the mystery: who are these strange humans from the far future now living in the distant past? The Doctor must learn the truth about the Osterberg experiment before history is changed forever.

Plot[[edit] | [edit source]]

On 2 October 438,533, seven year-old Chantal Osterberg provides an account of how over the weekend, her cat, Dusty, was giving her and her family too many "wrong-feelings." She proceeded to do surgery on her cat, making her tail scaly, rearranging her organs, and altering her brain to catch more rats. Her parents didn't like this.

In Bromley, 2005, Dean goes to a pub dressed as a Roman and gets into a fight with Das, who he believes is dressed as a caveman.

The Ninth Doctor, Rose Tyler, and Captain Jack Harkness intend to go to Kegron Pluva, but are drawn off course due to a time distortion. Rose investigates and finds that a caveman is in a nearby hospital. They go there to find that the hospital has been quarantined and escape with Das with help from Weronica. They try to bring Das back to his time, but he disintegrates when they try to take him in the TARDIS. The Doctor believes it's because his time travel was unprotected, and tells Jack to look after him for a month while him and Rose investigate what happened.

Rose and the Doctor travel back in time to find the Osterberg Experiment led by Chantal, wherein a group of future humans travelled back in time. They discover that most future humans drug themselves in order to not feel wrong emotions. The Doctor and Rose each go with a different human — Rose with Reddy, a human who uses drugs, and the Doctor with T. P. Quilley, a "refuser." Rose throws away Reddy's "popper pack" and forces him to feel real emotions as they witness a Neanderthal birth, then is kidnapped by early humans. Quilley and the Doctor discover the Hy-Bractors and are both shortly kidnapped and drugged by Chantal.

Rose is coerced into a marriage with Tillun. The Doctor is vivisected by Chantal, before escaping as the drugs where off and helping Quilley escape as well.

To be added.

Characters[[edit] | [edit source]]

Worldbuilding[[edit] | [edit source]]

TARDIS[[edit] | [edit source]]

  • The TARDIS translation circuit has a swear filter.
  • The TARDIS key works on a kind of meson projection system.

Science & Technology[[edit] | [edit source]]

  • The intriguing monotony in the occurrence of inter-caval conduction block during typical atrial flutter suggests an anatomic or electrophysiological predisposition for conduction abnormalities of the Doctor's heart.
  • Chantal removed Rose's head from her body, which can be undone by reverse-locking the kinetic seal.

Story notes[[edit] | [edit source]]

  • Later reprints of this book removed the image of Billie Piper from the cover.
  • This story was also released as an ebook available from the Amazon Kindle store.
  • This book was reprinted in 2013 with an entirely new cover to celebrate the Doctor Who 50th anniversary.

Continuity[[edit] | [edit source]]

Additional cover images[[edit] | [edit source]]

Editions published outside Britain[[edit] | [edit source]]

  • Published in Finland by Luolamies Lontoossa in 2006 as a hardback edition, it was one of two books published in the 2000's.
  • Published in China by New Star Press in 2017 as a hardback edition.

Audiobook[[edit] | [edit source]]

External links[[edit] | [edit source]]