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Night of the Humans (novel)

From Tardis Wiki, the free Doctor Who reference
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Night of the Humans was the second Eleventh Doctor novel.

prose stub

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

The Doctor and Amy make an unexepceted trip to the Gyre (they were pulled off course), which the Doctor notes is made of junk from all time and space; even a satellite Earth sent out thousands of years ago is lodged in the junk. They encounter aliens known as the Sittuun, who kidnap them. In mid kidnapping, the Doctor falls out of their vehicale and is kidnapped by primative humans.

Amy explains how she and the Doctor got to the Gyre to clear up the Sittuun confusing them for the "locals". She learns they arrived to plant a bomb to destroy the Gyre before a comet blows it up and endangers other worlds with its debirs. In the meantime, the Doctor is taken to the human camp. There, he finds they are decendants from a crash cargo ship who believe they are on Earth. When the Doctor tries to explain this to them, they call him a blasphemer (they have an utterly ridculous religion ossociated with their denial) and order he be put to death.

Elsewhere, Amy has bonded with Charlie and met Dirk Slipstream, a man who has answered the Sittuun destress call (they crash-landed) and persaudes him to rescue the Doctor. However, he double-crosses them and leaves to find something the humans have in their camp. He persaudes them to spare the Doctor and uses him to find the Template:Insert name please Key, a powerful object that can harness the forces of the universe to do many great things.

However, the comet draws closer, forcing them to flee. Dirk is knocked out and the Doctor makes sure the Key (which is drawing the comet towards them) is left behind. They land the TARDIS in Dirk's ship, commandeered by the Sittuun, and take off. Dirk regains conciousness and (most likely) dies in an escape pod as the comet the Sittuun bomb goes off, destroying the Gyre.

Characters

References

Anatomy and physiology

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

locations

Planets

  • Amy had been expecting the 'planet' to look a more like the moon.
  • Charlie and Slipstream mention the planet of Gold, Voga, along with another Gold planet, Midas Superior (This is a reference to the ancient Greek myth of King Midas, who turned things to gold through touch). 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

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

Timeline

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

External links

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