Night of the Humans was the thirty-eighth novel in the BBC New Series Adventures series. It was written by David Llewellyn and featured the Eleventh Doctor and Amy Pond.
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
When the TARDIS is pulled off-course, the Doctor and Amy make an unexpected trip to the Gyre. It is made of junk from all time and space, even a satellite Earth sent out thousands of years ago. They encounter aliens known as the Sittuun, who kidnap them. In mid-kidnapping, the Doctor falls out of their vehicle and is kidnapped by primitive humans.
Amy explains how she and the Doctor got to the Gyre to the Sittuun, confusing them for the "locals". She learns they came to plant a bomb to destroy the Gyre before a comet strikes and endangers other worlds with its debris. Meanwhile, the Doctor is taken to the human camp. He learns they are descendants of a crashed cargo ship who believe they are on Earth. When the Doctor tries to tell them the truth, they call him a blasphemer and order him put to death.
Elsewhere, Amy has bonded with Charlie and met Dirk Slipstream, a man who has answered the distress call the Sittuun sent when they crashed. She persuades him to rescue the Doctor. However, he double-crosses them and leaves to find something the humans have in their camp. As it turns out, Slipstream is an escaped criminal who had encountered the Doctor prior when he foiled a diamond robbery. He persuades them to spare the Doctor and uses him to find the Mymon Key, an object that can harness the forces of the universe.
The comet draws closer, forcing them to flee. They attempt to use Charlie's helipod to get to the TARDIS, but, an attack from a creature called a Sollog damages an engine and causes them to crash. Dirk is knocked out and the Doctor makes sure the Key, which is pulling the comet to them, is left behind. They land the TARDIS in Dirk's ship, commandeered by the Sittuun, and take off. However, it turns out that the Key that was left behind was a fake, and the ship can't leave. The Doctor takes the real Key back to the Gyre and throws it in a swamp. Dirk regains consciousness and takes Amy hostage before fleeing to an escape pod. He threatens Amy to make the Doctor give him the Key, but the Doctor only tells him where he threw. it. Dirk enters the swamp to search, but is eaten by the Sollogs. The Doctor and Amy return to the TARDIS and Dirk's ship, and before the comet hits, the Sittuun bomb goes off, destroying the Gyre.
Characters
References
Anatomy and physiology
- Regeneration is impossible if the entire body has been immersed in acid, such as being submerged in Lake Mono.
Colleges and universities
- Charlie's father mentions him going to the Lux Academy.
Music
- The Doctor says he once jammed with Ella Fitzgerald, playing a recorder.
Planets
- Charlie and Slipstream mention the planet of gold, Voga, along with another gold planet, Midas Superior.
- 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 is named the Golden Bough.
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. (TV: The Infinite Quest)
- The shipwrecked Herald Of Nanking featured as a working spaceship in PROSE: The Taking of Chelsea 426.
- The Doctor recalls surviving after falling from great heights, (TV: Logopolis, The End of Time) being shot, (TV: Doctor Who) losing a hand and growing it back (TV: The Christmas Invasion) and seeing the end of the universe. (TV: Utopia)
- The Doctor refers to the monster in Amy's wall. (TV: The Eleventh Hour)
- Amy recalls running around a spaceship in her nightie. (TV: 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 TV: The Time of Angels.
- The Sittuun ship is named Beagle XXI. The Doctor previously encountered a similarly named ship, the HMS Beagle, commanded by Charles Darwin. (AUDIO: Bloodtide)
Editions published outside Britain
- Published in France by Milady in 2012 as a paperback edition.
- Published in Italy by Asengard Edizioni in 2013 as a paperback edition.
- Published again in Italy by Armenia in 2018 as a paperback edition. It used the same cover as the previous edition.
French edition
- ItalianNightOfTheHumans.jpg
Italian edition
Audiobook
- This novel was released as an audiobook in November 2010 complete and unabridged by BBC Audio and read by Arthur Darvill.
- The audiobook was offered as a free download with The Brilliant Book 2012.
Audiobook cover
