Ten Little Aliens

The TARDIS brings the Doctor, Ben and Polly to a dead asteroid hanging in space which, by coincidence, is where a group of Elite military hopefuls have been sent on a training mission. The mission leader, who controls her group through fear and bullying tactics, immediately suspects the TARDIS crew of being enemy agents in league with the troll-like Schirr. The Doctor realizes that they have all walked into a deadly trap, and despite the fact that there are ten Shirr corpses on the asteroid, the enemy if very much at large in the dark tunnels around them.

Well here's a departure and a half. Ten Little Aliens has got to be one of the goriest, most atmospheric non-traditional Doctor Who novels I have ever read. As was the case with The Time Travellers this is a story that takes the TARDIS team into extreme territory far beyond what is done on even the current television series; it is so jarringly different from the televised episodes it is nestled between that it almost doesn't feel like the same franchise.

Where to start...

The setting. It's the far future of Earth's empire, and it's a pretty big one as far as it can be told. Entire planets have been named after old regions of Earth including Idaho, Paris II and Toronto, and whenever they are referenced it's usually a hindsight mention by one of the military team and it's usually because something bad happened there. Earth's empire has swept so far into space that it has sucked up other species, including the Schirr, and is struggling to hold itself together now it is so bloated. There are elements of the Schirr who want out and are waging wars against the empire for their freedom, but the space marines have been sent in to crunch that nonsense. Oddly, when the marines speak of the struggles with the Schirr there is never any mention of other conflicts - I expected at least one Dalek reference to get dropped somewhere but no.

The marines, then, despite how they are being portrayed (bad ass grunts all with their own distinct backstories and nicknames of course - think Aliens) are actually the bad guys, sent in on missions to quell uprisings by an oppressed species, but here when they are cut off from the support of the rest of the empire with only the leadership of a bully (Major Haunt actually shoots and beats one of her own soldiers in front of an assembly to humiliate him under the guise of proving his protective armour works - imagine if the RCMP did that) they start to fall victim to paranoia and fear.

Ben and Polly are an excellent team, and without any physical limitations associated with an actor on screen, the Doctor can be with them the whole story and be active and engaged with what is going on. Ben and Polly have only been on the TARDIS crew a short time but already they are developing an attraction to each other (and a jealousy complex when each sees the other getting chummy with a marine of the opposite sex) and an unshakable faith in the Doctor. And the Doctor is exactly the character on the page that he is on screen, not straying from his own character and thus keeping the rest of what goes on around him rooted in the traditions of Doctor Who despite being not of the norm; if the Doctor himself started picking up guns and shooting at things or lowering himself to Haunt's bullying ways then the entire thing would fall apart. Ben and Polly also get a bit of development of their own; Polly flashing back to her party girl days in London and some promiscuous nights out at Inferno, her posh background and her stint at working at a charity shop. Ben thinks back to his brother and his time with the navy.

The bit I don't like? There's this kind of choose-your-own-adventure bit where everyone enters a holonet and can experience each other's thoughts and feelings as they hunt the tunnels of the asteroid. The same sequences get repeated over and over each from a different character's perspective, but not from the Doctor's as there's no way anyone is getting in his head. It's in the pages leading up to this and the segment itself where the book slows down a bit and loses some of the momentum despite some of the more graphic descriptions of the violence and gore. Maybe I made a mistake by reading them through back to back rather than play the game of jumping from segment to segment, but I don't think it would have made it any better. And the appearance of some nasty stone cherub angels seems a bit of an odd choice, although wanker fans who don't think the show existed before 2005 will just assume this is an early appearance of those angels and get all "squeeeee!" about it. It's not. Don't go "squeee". Ever.

Actual placement for this tale is a bit strained, putting it in the final few moments between scenes at the end of The Smugglers; that episode closes with the Doctor proclaiming they have landed on the coldest place on Earth, but Steven Cole must have really wanted to write for this character team otherwise he would have picked somewhere easier to place a story. But the TARDIS eventually leaves the asteroid behind, and heads for where the Doctor says it did, and destiny is waiting there for him.

But before we go there...

NEXT EPISODES: THE SARA KINGDOM TRILOGY