The Indestructible Man

In the year 2068 the Earth's first interstellar war comes to a sudden and uncertain end; the alien Myloki, a race not actually seen at all during the war, disappear leaving the people of Earth wondering if they won or not. Their questionable victory centres around the Indestructible Man, who as his name suggests cannot die. In 2096 the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe arrive on a desperate Earth where social order is decaying and only a semi-secret organization called SILOET is holding things together. The awful truth begins to dawn, that the Myloki are coming back. Once again all attention focuses on the Indestructible Man and the search for him. But is he enough?

This has got to be one of the most bloody and horrifying novels of the BBC Books range. Simon Messingham creates a version of the future that is so opposite to what Doctor Who has portrayed before that you might think you're reading something completely different. Well, you'd not be too far wrong there are this one is a homage, if you will, to several other TV series that shared the 60s with Doctor Who, most notably Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, and Quatermass. The first time I read the novel I didn't know any of the references at all and thought Messingham was just a mad genius the day he wrote this. Now that I have researched it and read it again I see he was still a mad genius just on some other levels; the military organizations he dreamed up were really just someone else's with a different name, even if they have grown from the UNIT organization headed by the Brigadier. But where he might have cheated on some of his content and characters, he did some interesting things with setting and the overall mood of the story.

Messingham has already delivered a similar vision of Earth with his mind-bending tome The Time Travellers which saw the first Doctor and company lost in a future version of Earth where time was in flux from temporal interference. The links there were to some television episodes from the show's future seasons (The War Machines, Remembrance of the Daleks) but the vision of Earth was very much the same as we are offered here: there is unrest, people are living in horrid conditions, the truth about why the world has crumbled is kept from the people while military elites attempt to maintain control. Given that the novel takes place over several months in 2096 it is worth remembering that the Daleks are set to invade within 60 years and there was certainly no mention of Earth being decimated by another war before then unless the Myloki attacks are covered up and assumed to be the Daleks by the time they arrive. There is also the possibility that these events take place within the bubble that was the flux state of the Earth during The Time Travellers and once that particular quandary was solved this future would never happen. I normally don't like the notion of a reset button on history because it seems like too easy a way out when continuity gets blurred but this time, given the author is the same and the circumstances are very similar, it just might be the right fit.

There is, however, the effects of this adventure on the TARDIS crew to consider. Jamie and Zoe see the Doctor shot in the head and as far as they can tell he is dead. Both flee into the world outside the SILOET compound they arrive in, both terrified and alone, and in Jamie's case, wounded. Zoe is enslaved, beaten up in prison and almost marries a man. Jamie turns practically feral, joining a military unit and becoming a killing machine. The Doctor, meanwhile doesn't die but also doesn't regenerate due to medical interference, and months after recovering is dismayed to see his companions broken and turned into nightmare versions of themselves. There's no real indicator of where this one falls within their time together, but the close proximity of the first few stories of season six (Dominators, Mind Robber, Invasion) means it isn't during the early days. Zoe makes a reference to a "failed transmat system" which at first I assumed to be T-Mat and thought this shoulf have gone before Seeds of Death but the years are wrong; then I realized she is in fact referring to the Sol Transit System of the New Adventures future history cycle novel Transit. But after all is said and done there is going to be a lot of healing needed before the crew are themselves again. Zoe does remark that their friendship bond is something not easy broken and they would have to be pried apart by force. Forebode.

But it's no surprise that Jamie and Zoe turned the way they did for the story; they had to survive. And everyone else around them was pretty much in that space already between desperate military commanders and rebellious factions rising against them and ordinary citizens trying to make it to the next day. We're not talking the level of graphic violence like in Combat Rock but it's not too far off. Most of it is gun related, aside from the few physical altercations including violent outbursts from Jamie. Jamie becoming a murderous thug isn't really that much of a surprise; he was, in his own time, a fighter and a killer when he had to be. Zoe realizes that in her efforts to stay sane she almost embraced the way the system worked. Neither of them had much hope as they thought the Doctor was dead and gone, and the rest of the planet had no hope as they were just waiting for another wave of Myloki attack to finish them off.

The book is 283 pages but felt like it was going to take forever with its small print making my eyes go crossed after reading for too long. I think there was some compromise made with the series editor about cutting material and the solution was just to print in small font to get it all on the pages.

But from a longer effort to a shorter one we go now, to a Telos novella to be precise...

NEXT EPISODE: FOREIGN DEVILS