The novel “Night of the Humans” by David Llewellyn was published for the first time in 2010.
When the Tardis picks up a trans-temporal distress call, the Eleventh Doctor and Amy Pond end up on the Gyre, a giant mass of junk that have been accumulating in space for a few hundred thousand years. Upon arriving, the two travelers get separated because they get involved in the war between humans and Sittuun.
The descendants of the crew of a human ship wrecked on the Gyre regressed to barbarism, creating a strange religion. When the Sittuun arrived, humans declared that they are Evil because they tried to warn them that a comet is going to hit the Gyre. Another spaceship arrives, commanded by Captain Dirk Slipstream, who offers his help.
“Night of the Humans” is part of a series of novels connected to the new “Doctor Who” series. They’re targeted to a wide audience by being linear enough to be appreciated even by very young readers but sophisticated enough to interest more mature readers.
With the adventures of the Eleventh Doctor there was a small change in the size of the novels about “Doctor Who” new series’ adventures, which have become slightly larger. “Night of the Humans” is one of the first books with the Eleventh Doctor as the protagonist, published a few weeks after his debut in the TV show.
“Night of the Humans” begins in a way typical for “Doctor Who” adventures, with the Tardis picking up a distress call. In this case, it’s trans-temporal, which means that it’s transmitted not only through space but also through time. Obviously, when the Doctor and Amy Pond arrive on site they quickly find themselves in trouble.
This novel is set on the Gyre, a huge mass of debris that have accumulated over time which has become the home of the Sollog carnivores but also of a group of humans whose starship wrecked there and became one of the many wrecks. Over the generations, humans have forgotten much of their history and have created a religion that blends the few remaining shreds of memories of their past.
The Gyre kept on growing for many millennia but a catastrophic event is going to change everything. A comet is approaching the Gyre and the impact will project debris around the entire area, with great danger to the local navigation. The Sittuun spaceship arrived with the mission to eliminate the Gyre cleanly but the humans reacted violently to what they see as heresy.
The Doctor and Amy Pond get separated at the beginning of the novel and much of the history of the Gyre is reconstructed through what they discover from the Sittuun and the humans who live there. Sometimes out of the Earth “Doctor Who” adventures are set in a fairly generic location, on the contrary in “Night of the Humans” the place with its characteristics and its history are fundamental in the plot.
David Llewellyn uses a good part of the novel to create the environment and the strange human civilization that lives there with its degenerate culture. In the way he created the bizarre religion of the humans living on the Gyre, I see an echo of Douglas Adams with a mix of drama and humor.
The Sittuun are important as well in “The night of the human” as they represent the alien point of view much more than the Doctor. The group arrived on the Gyre to destroy it cleanly got in danger because of the humans, who consider them evil for their heretical words.
The Sittuun have had a relationship with humans for a long time before they got on the Gyre so they’ve seen both their positive and negative sides. The connection between the two species is shown by the fact that the Sittuun are using human names and even the word Sittuun comes from the Arabic and means sixty. It’s interesting that they’re considered evil by the humans of the Gyre and Sittuun in English is pronounced more or less like Satan.
We can assume that David Llewellyn had the chance to watch a preview of some episodes of the TV show with the Eleventh Doctor and Amy Pond or at least read their scripts because the novel was written before they were broadcast. I think he’s fairly successful in reproducing the protagonists in the novel.
The novels in this series are quite short but in “Night of the Humans” the story is still rather complex and there are some well-developed characters. In some cases David Llewellyn uses some clichés to create them quickly and it seems to me especially the case of Dirk Slipstream.
In my opinion, with “Night of the humans” David Llewellyn manages to put together a novel with a good plot that entertains and gives you some food for thought at the same time and interesting characters. Overall I really enjoyed it so I recommend reading it.
