Night of the Humans (novel)

Night of the Humans (novel)

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Night of the Humans
Doctor:	[[doctor::Eleventh Doctor]]
Companion(s):	Amy Pond
Main enemy:	Dirk Slipstream Sollogs Django
Main setting:	Gyre
Key crew
Publisher:	[[publisher::BBC Books]]
Writer:	David Llewellyn
Release details
Release number:	38
Release date:	22 April 2010
Format:	Hardcover, 246 Pages
ISBN:	ISBN 978-1-84607-969-6

Night of the Humans was the second Eleventh Doctor novel.

Publisher's summary

"This is the Gyre – the most hostile environment in the galaxy."

250,000 years’ worth of junk floating in deep space, home to the shipwrecked Sittuun, the carnivorous Sollogs, and worst of all – the Humans. The Doctor and Amy arrive on this terrifying world in the middle of an all-out frontier war between Sittuun and humans, and the clock is already ticking. There’s a comet in the sky, and it’s on a collision course with the Gyre...When the Doctor is kidnapped, it’s up to Amy and “galaxy-famous swashbuckler” Dirk Slipstream to save the day. But who is Slipstream, exactly? And what is he really doing here?

Plot

to be added

Characters

• The Doctor
• Amy Pond
• Dirk Slipstream
• Charlie
• Ahmed
• Dr Heeva
• Captain Jamal
• Tuco
• Django
• Sancho
• Manco

References

Anatomy and physiology

• Regeneration is impossible after being killed by acid.

Colleges and universities

• Charlie's father mentions him going to the Lux Academy.

Cultural references from the real world

• The Gyre humans' names are all taken from so-called "Spaghetti Westerns".
• The human leader Django shares his name with the eponymous hero of the 1966 film; Tuco is a character appearing in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly which was also released in 1966; while Manco is the name given to Clint Eastwood's "Man With No Name" in For a Few Dollars More.
• Lake Mono, the lake of acid the humans use to execute their prisoners, may be named after Mono Lake, California, a location used in the Western High Plains Drifter.
• Charlie plays Ella Fitzgerald's Stairway to the Stars to Amy before Amy and the Doctor leave.

The Doctor

• The Doctor says that the TARDIS can hear every word he says to her.
• The Doctor says he once jammed with Ella Fitzgerald, playing a recorder (likely a reference to his second incarnation).
• The Doctor says that Amy is 'the girl with a monster in her wall'.

locations

• Lake Mono is the name of the lake of acid the humans use to execute their prisoners.
• The Gyre is located in the Battani 045 system.

Planets

• Amy had been expecting the 'planet' to look a more like the moon.
• Charlie and Slipstream mention the planet of Gold, Voga. They also mention that, because of the discovery of these Golden planets, gold was now much less valuable.
• Dirk Slipstream was once a prisoner on Prison planet Volag-Noc.
• Amy refers to Star-Whales and 'intergalactic felons'.
• Dirk Slipstream claims to have earned a medal for bravery during the battle of Krontep.

Spacecraft

• One of the crashed spaceships is made from Proamonium, found only on Proamon.
• The NASA deep space probe Pioneer 10 appears as part of the Gyre's Landscape.
• Dirk Slipstream's ship, The Golden Bough, takes its name from the book of the same name.
• The Sittuun ship, the Beagle XXI is likely named after the ship that took Charles Darwin to the Galapagos Islands; the HMS Beagle.

TARDIS

• The Doctor's TARDIS is unable to translate the Sittuun language, despite the Doctor claiming it can translate any language.

Notes

• The smaller craft used by the Sittuun take their names from 20th Century jazz musicians. The buggy, Ella, is named after the singer Ella Fitzgerald, while the "helipod", Bird, takes its name from saxophonist Charlie Parker, whose nickname was "Bird".
• The Gyre is located in the Battani 045 system. Muhammad ibn Jābir al-Harrānī al-Battānī (c. 858CE - 929CE) was an Arab astronomer and mathematician.
• This story was also released as an ebook available from the Amazon Kindle store.

Continuity

• Volag-Noc is mentioned which first appeared in DW: The Infinite Quest.
• The shipwrecked Herald Of Nanking featured as a working spaceship in Llewellyn's NSA: The Taking of Chelsea 426.
• The Doctor recalls surviving after falling from great heights (DW: Logopolis, The End of Time), being shot (DW: Doctor Who), losing a hand and growing it back (DW: The Christmas Invasion) and seeing the end of the universe (DW: Utopia).
• Amy recalls running around a spaceship in her nightie. (DW: The Beast Below)
• Amy recalls her wedding dress that 'she might never wear', and later says that she has 'a big day tomorrow' 250,000 years ago, placing this adventure before DW: The Time of Angels.
• The Doctor encounters flying fish similar to the ones on Kazran Sardick's planet (DW: A Christmas Carol)

Timeline

• Night of the Humans occurs after NSA: Apollo 23
• Night of the Humans occurs before DWAN: Attack of the Space Leeches!

Audio release

• The story was released as an audiobook on 4x CD read by Arthur Darvill.
• The audiobook is also available as a download from the AudioGo website.

Gallery

• 

  Original cover

• 

  French Cover

• 

  The Audiobook cover

External links

• BBC Shop - Night of the Humans
• Night of the Humans at the Doctor Who Reference Guide