Invasion of the Cat-People

The TARDIS is drawn to Earth by a mysterious call which impacts all the members of the crew, but moreso Polly. They arrive to find a ghost-hunting expedition in an English manor house in 1994, and it gets more interesting when the leader of the group is found to be one of a species of tremendously long-lived aliens who have been stranded on Earth for 40,000 years. There are still others of her species on Earth, and where one of their calls has reached the Doctor and Polly, another had brought a group of vicious Cat-People who have a mission of their own, and it isn’t a nice one.

Huh. Cat-People. I think the cover illustration says it all. They are directly related to a species called the Cheetah People from the 1989 season (series) finale Survival, so when the book was originally printed they were somewhat fresh in the minds of fans and could be accepted as villains. Mind you, doing it this way, we’ve already dealt with alien sharks too, so credibility is being stretched somewhat. And things are not as cut and dry with the Cat-People either; they are subject to internal power struggles in their all-female ranks with the ambitious litter-runt, Lotuss, scheming to overthrow her mother the Queen Aysha. Female ambition at its best, although what else would one expect from cats? If they were male characters they’d be likened to Starscream and Megatron.

And they’re not the only aliens about; there are also the Euterpians, and they, too, have their own issues with maintaining their hierarchy. Over the millennia they have been on Earth they have gone their separate ways, and by 1994 they are desperate to get away despite having influenced aspects of Earth culture to perpetuate themselves. Mr Dent and Mrs Wilding have come to terms with living on Earth, but Thorsunn, Tim and Godwanna want to get away and will resort to whatever means they can to do so. Whereas Thorsunn has recruited the Cat-People, Tim’s slippery manipulation of Polly gets him a lot closer to his endgame faster, even if she resists him from time to time and has to be brought under his sway once more. But that's easily done; he just has to hum to her, as his species have the power to make things happen or grow or simply come into being through the sound of their songs.

Yes, more is revealed about Polly here, and it pretty much keeps in line with other prose produced for this period of the show (although Cat-People was written first, I have read it in this order as there’s more of a feel of the TARDIS crew being together for a while). We’re not really given a likeable picture of her sometime, I find; spoiled, pampered, society girl oblivious to the world around her. Her job with Professor Brett looks like an act of rebellion against her family who would rather her do anything other than work in such a menial role. It gives Ben’s nickname of her, “Duchess”, a bit more cred the more we see of this past of hers, but in travelling in the TARDIS she is growing beyond her past by leaps and bounds. But now add to it an affinity for the psionic powers which Tim and his people use. It all makes Ben a bit superfluous this episode doesn’t it? He’s with the Doctor for most of the tale and they end up going on some mad (and not exactly necessary) back to Arabia 20,000 years in history – an excursion which doesn’t really get anyone anywhere, least of all closer to the resolution of the plot. And all that jealousy Polly feels when anyone shows an interest in Ben doesn’t seem to really be reciprocated; Ben’s suspicion of Tim’s attention to Polly is more out of her general safety than it is his feelings towards her (if any). In moments when they are together, though, they do come off as the old married couple, highlighted by their bemusement with 1994 culture and dining at places like McDonalds (and Ben remarks that the food tastes like cardboard – libel, anyone?).

By the time I was finished reading this one (for the second time – the first was actually *in* 1994) I was left wondering where the editor was when this was being done. Author Gary Russell is no slouch when it comes to writing for Doctor Who and he’s one of the driving forces behind Big Finish these days so he knows what needs to be done, but here I just felt like the story wandered away too often in cases such as the aforementioned trip to the past and the McDonald’s lunch part. And the inclusion of the Cat-People themselves made me wonder who the real alien threat was – them or the other ones? There was just a feeling of things being too crowded in that respect; it has been managed before but either Russell wasn’t up to handling two sets of aliens or whoever was editing the range at the time didn’t give him enough direction on how to do it and maybe, maybe, the advice to drop one and focus on the other. And if it had been me, I would have said drop the Cat-People and focus on the others.

NEXT EPISODE: WONDERLAND