Doctor Who: Space Babies

Doctor Who: Target Books #182

by Alison Rumfitt

In space, something can hear you scream. And that something is coming.

On her first adventure in outer space, Ruby learns that the universe is bigger, more colourful, and crazier than she could ever have imagined. She also learns that even the Doctor can feel afraid – and that certain nightmares are all too real…

A new voice to Doctor Who fiction, Alison Rumfitt, presents the Target novelisation of Russell T Davies’ first space adventure for the Fifteenth Doctor and Ruby Sunday, as played by Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson.

Genres: Doctor Who, Science Fiction, Fiction

140 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 8, 2024

About the author

Alison Rumfitt is a woman in trouble.

She lives and works in Brighton, and writes deeply personal, transgressive horror.

Reviews

[Oliver Clarke · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was just what I needed this week to restore my faith in humanity a little. A silly yet meaningful, hopeful, joyous SF adventure by trans author with a queer black lead, a feisty young woman sidekick and pro choice storyline.
The fact that’s it’s based on an episode of a TV show jointly made by the BBC and Disney, two of the largest, most respected entertainment organisations in the world, is a sign that compassion and inclusivity still have a chance.
Alison Rumfitt does a great job of bringing the episode to life on the page. It’s funny, fun and perfectly paced and she captures Ruby and the Doctor perfectly. In fact in some ways I preferred it to the TV episode - the babies are less weird and annoying in prose form.

[Kieran McAndrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Doctor takes Ruby Sunday into the distant past and the far future, where they find a space station run by some very scared infants. As the Doctor investigates, a unique creature stalks them from the lower levels.

Rumfitt really captures the sense of excitement in this new iteration of the Doctor and adds enough extra detail to highlight the overall arc of the series within the pages of the novelisation.

[Clare · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another well paced adaptation of a TV episode, with some fun additions including the creature's point of view and the Doctor's thoughts after Ruby steps on a butterfly. I just worry what's going to happen to the bogeyman without a regular supply of snotty hankies...

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Leaning again in the direction of 3.5 stars. A solid, entertaining Target adaptation worthy of Terrance Dicks, with a little extra spice in strategic areas to add background colour. Nothing groundbreaking, but wonderful comfort food.

[Gabriel Mero · Rating 5 out of 5]

The novelization itself was well written and entertaining. I half-watched the actual episode, so I read this with little to no memory of plot. Overall, it was a fun story, but I got annoyed with the constant "space babies" dialogue.

[Joe Kessler · Rating 3 out of 5]

An okay novelization of an okay episode of Doctor Who. Unlike certain previous efforts in the same vein, this book doesn't really provide many details or character insights beyond what's already present on the screen, although it does amusingly add back in the early appearance of the song "Push the Button" that got left on the cutting room floor and made subsequent references in the TV dialogue a bit confusing. Between that and the fact that the talking babies and bogeyman effects are likely more realistic in readers' minds than they were in transmission, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that some folks prefer this iteration of the story over the original. On the other hand, Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson's performances definitely helped elevate the material, and are thus sorely lacking here. It's a bit of a wash, in my opinion.

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[Marth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Doctor Who: Space Babies - 3/5

Idk, it takes a kinda meh TV story and makes it marginally better. Lots of snot, Space Babies, farts, good times for everyone.

[Alice · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Doctor Who and I love Alison Rumfitt. So it's unsurprising that I love them together! To be perfectly honest, I wasn't the biggest fan of the Space Babies episode, but when I saw it had been novelised by Rumfitt, I knew I had to give it a whirl. Now, I'm still not the biggest fan of the story, but Alison Rumfitt has done such a fantastic job of bringing it to the page. She has captured the setting, the characters, and the emotions, whilst still including a horror element that she excels at. The only thing I would love to see is an 18-rated version, where Rumfitt has the opportunity to go full horror on us. Still, an excellent Doctor Who novel which I'm very happy to add to my collection.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rumfitt’s novelization of “Space Babies” adds little to the story when compared to its televised version. On the surface, it’s pretty much exactly the same story as it was on TV. But, as it turns out, “Space Babies” works a lot better on the page when it’s freed from the constraints of television budgets and questionable CGI. Here, your brain can imagine the talking babies, freeing them of the uncanny valley visuals found in the televised version. And so, you get the chance to appreciate the story for the strange, otherworldly fairytale it is. Will Rumfitt’s novelization win over any of the episode’s loudest naysayers? Probably not. But it definitely feels like the superior way to experience this story, and that’s worth something.

[Nicola Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

This worked so well as a book/ audiobook, and I’d almost argue it worked better in this format than it did as a TV episode.

I’ve always been a fan of the Doctor Who Target books and love that they’re still carrying on with this tradition with the newer series and the latest incarnation. I always enjoy getting to know a new Doctor and I feel Ncuti’s Doctor has a lot of promise!

Whilst I wasn’t the biggest fan of this episode, I did enjoy it in book form. And it was well produced and narrated by Clare Corbett as well. It portrayed the episode perfectly and was a really enjoyable listen.

[Emma Dargue · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was good. Faithful novelisation of the first proper adventure of Ruby Sunday and the Doctor. Sometimes in these novels you get padding but this was a scene by scene walk through of the episode which was a good episode.

[Mike Leitch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Effortlessly expands on the story in fascinating ways while keeping the mad fun of it, still can't get the ending to quite work, but still well worth a read whether you like the original episode or not.

[Paul Griggs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Still as much a giggle on the page as it was on screen. The cuteness of Captain Poppy, Eric and the other Space Babies leaps off the page as does the Doctor and Ruby’s relationship. Brilliant!

[Lewis Cox · Rating 3 out of 5]

Faithful Re-telling of the Episode, wasn't keen on the Episode on Transmission, But it was good to read with the inclusion of Character thoughts of Jocelyn and Eric

[Tony · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was better than the episode. Without the episodes visuals you could imagine it in a creepier way. There’s still some overly ridiculous elements but it works better as a book.

[Gina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Have never seen a single Dr Who ep but a big Alison Rumfitt fan & enjoyed this a lot! Quick & fun read and the prologue & epilogue added a lot of emotional resonance.

[Rob Cook · Rating 4 out of 5]

⭐️3.5⭐️

A fun adaption of a fun episode.
The book largely has short, snappy chapters, except two, which are much longer and throw off the pace and rhythm of the story.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Only way I would read a Dr Who book is if Alison wrote it, and it was fun!

[Sanjay L · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finished in a day! What a nice wee quick read and really enjoyed all the wee extra details and emotions that we didn’t get from the episode.

[Siobhan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The constant "space babies" were as annoying as in the episode but Alison Rumfitt, as expected, did a great job making it a little bit creepier.

[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

The novelisation of Russell T. Davies' script for the first episode of the first season of Ncuti Gatwa's run as the Fifteenth Doctor, featuring his new companion Ruby Sunday.
Embarking on their first journey on the TARDIS together, the Doctor and Ruby find themselves aboard a spacestation under the control of intellectually advanced babies. However, the station's systems are failing and a terrifying monster stalks the engineering decks.

When this episode aired on TV it was widely criticised for being silly and for featuring bad CGI babies. I was never one of the haters, however, and felt it to be a fun, if disposable, story whose silliness didn't really bother me (Doctor Who should be a little silly/cheesy, if only to differentiate it from all the other SF shows out there these days).
I'll grant that the CGI babies were firm inhabitants of the Uncanny Valley, but there has not been a convincing CGI baby in any media to date, so I don't take exception to it here.

So yes, this is a somewhat silly story that may put off readers who only want dark and angsty Who stories (those people should take a look at the New Adventures from Virgin Books). Does it stray too far down the silly route from time to time? Sure, but most of the time it's just the right side of the line.

For me, I often struggled to connect to Gatwa's stylish, modern, charming, Gen Z lingo-ing incarnation of the Doctor, but there was an element of this story that really did hammer home that this is the same character whose adventures I've followed through fourteen (and more) previous incarnations: space babies!
Both in the screen version of this story and on the page here, I love the fact that the Doctor is totally enamoured of the mere concept of 'space babies' that he, often unconsciously, corrects anyone who refers to them merely as 'babies'. It has the same feel as the glee of Matt Smith's Eleventh Doctor crying "Dinosaurs! On a spaceship!".

The big downside to this book, and something that is certainly not the fault of this author or story, is that it puts in a lot of work setting up larger themes for the Fifteenth Doctor's era and, specifically, Ruby's backstory.
The abandoned babies (space babies!) are strongly thematically linked to both the Doctor's past as the Timeless Child (ugh!) and Ruby's mysterious abandonment as an infant. Lots of parts of the story are clearly intended to set-up later revelations, without any payoff here. The major problem with that is, due to poor writing and production issues, the series itself would never payoff any of those elements in any satisfactory way either.
Here it feels like a tragic glimpse into a planned arc of Who stories that never came to fruition (from what I gather, it's due to Milly Gibson - Ruby - not staying for two series' as originally planned and then Gatwa choosing to exit the role prematurely too).

But despite all of the peripheral issues, if all you want is a straightforward (if somewhat silly) Who adventure, then this book works just fine.

* More reviews here: https://fsfh-book-review2.webnode.page *

[Alex Sarll]

Space Babies is not a story I would ever have revisited, in the normal run of things. But give the novelisation gig to Alison Rumfitt, better known for trans body horror, and I'm interested. Obviously she can't go as hard here as in Tell Me I'm Worthless, or presumably Brainwyrms (which I've yet to read), but she gets closer to the edge than I expected, taking a story that was merely, well, babyish on screen, and bringing out not just the disgust of the lurking snot monster, but its terrible loneliness and sense of having been thrust into the loveless dark as a scapegoat through no initial sin of its own. Rumfitt has added so much here: the mutinous bodies, the hints of Omelas, not to mention a few nice little touches that aren't about grimness at all, just fun tweaks, because even when it's horror, Who should never altogether stop being fun. But she's also brought out themes which I'm sure Rusty intended, like the Doctor, Ruby and the space babies all being abandoned by their parents – except they were barely noticeable when I watched it, because RTD had let them be submerged by his worst gurning light entertainment instincts. And yes, Ruby's abandonment does also feed into a flaw here, because the book still has to go along with the mystery around her parentage, infuriating as that is now we've all seen its crappy 'aaaaaah' non-resolution. Nor is there really much to be done with the literally crappy conclusion to Space Babies itself, to which I think she's even added a few extra bad jokes, though I'm certainly not rewatching it to check. But when you're doing a novelisation or Space Babies, I'm not sure even the TARDIS could take you to a writer who could make it classic Who. And Rumfitt has certainly succeeded in making it more than the slightly less bad half of a double-bill which made the time I did Time-Flight back to back with Arc Of Infinity look like an afternoon well spent.

[Sean · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novelisation by Alison Rumfitt is superior to the TV episode it is based on in every way. Of course, it tells the same basic story of the Doctor and Ruby arriving on a space station manned by the titular babies, who are being terrorised by the Bogeyman. However, it adds more depth to the characters and their reactions to the situations they find themselves in.

Alison Rumfitt does a particularly excellent job getting inside Ruby's head. Her empathy for the lab grown babies being without their adult parents shines through the pages, and you get a sense of how she can really relate to them, because whilst she wasn't grown in a space lab like these babies were, she does share the similarity of not knowing (during this point in her character journey) who her parents are. She does have moments where in her head, she is annoyed at the Doctor's lack of tact whilst she is trying to keep the babies calm, which you don't really see in the TV version. Plus, the novelisation solves how many fans found the story too silly, by adopting a slightly darker tone and describing how Ruby herself cringes at some of the cornier aspects of the baby farm, like the contraption that blows the noses for the babies.

The best thing about this Target novel is the fact it reinstates a key scene from the episode that was deleted from the televised Space Babies story. The running gag concerning 'push the button', which begins when the Doctor plays Push The Button by the Sugababes on the TARDIS jukebox, is back, and it vastly improves Space Babies. Reinstating 'Push The Button' brings added context when the Doctor references 'pushing' the button as though we're supposed to relate it to something that was said earlier. It makes this Space Babies feel like the definitive version rather than the transmitted television original.

[Phoebe Clothier · Rating 4 out of 5]

The TV episode this novelisation is based on was probably one of the weaker outputs in season 1 but it is still enjoyable. Alison Rumfitt does a great job in fleshing out some of the scenes that benefited from the omniscient narration that prose can offer in a way screen can’t.

The Doctor and Ruby are wonderfully characterised and there were several moments of their beautiful father/daughter relationship already blossoming that made me emotional. It is their first trip together and the Doctor already has this intimate protective instinct for her.

I loved seeing more insight with the babies, especially Eric, and his and Ruby’s relationship. The Doctor and Poppy were also wonderful in the short time they got to shine (just like the TV story).

A wonderful target, which definitely has given me more appreciation for the TV story.

[Nicholas Whyte · Rating 3 out of 5]

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/doctor-who-space-babies-by-alison-rumfitt/

Alison Rumfitt is new to Who writing but has a couple of horror novels under her belt. This is a decent novelisation, adding a little top-and-tail narrative about a child and a monster, and digging a bit more into Ruby’s background and the resonances of the babies for her. There are also a couple more poo jokes, I think (I didn’t go back and check.) It may be difficult for an established writer to stamp their own authority on a Doctor Who story that they did not actually write, but I guess that wasn’t the point, and it’s perfectly serviceable.

[Alli_aye · Rating 4 out of 5]

Always liked this episode, didn’t understand other fans dislike of it. This book enhances the episode really well! Following the bogeyman thoughts are a great addition.

Revisiting this emphasises how much they’d planned on Ruby being season 2 and hopefully, Belinda season 3. Ruby should’ve ended up with baby Poppy.

15 And the noise. What was it - the engines, or something else? She thought it might be the sound of time itself, screaming past them.
119 Ruby gritted her teeth as they ran on. Would there always be this much running?

[James G · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't have high hopes for this novelisation, as I don't really like the episode it's based on. However, the author does a pretty incredible job of polishing the turd, so to speak (or should that be bogey?). While I think the story itself still has major issues that can't be fixed without huge re-writes, this novelisation expands a little more on the barebones plot we had in the episode. Props to you, Alison!

Bonus drinking game : take a shot every time you read the words 'Space Babies'

[Gabor Hernadi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Better than the TV episode still far from being a good Who story. And not because it`s silly (sometimes Who needs a bit of a comedy) but because it`s illogical and leaves some questions open just for the sake of being funny.

[Dan Apted · Rating 3 out of 5]

i was really excited to see if Alison Rumfitt could do something to rescue this story as it was probably one of the biggest misfires of the current era. unfortunately the book remains faithful to the episode and doesn't make any significant changes, but it was still enjoyable light reading

[Joe Ford · Rating 3 out of 5]

A reasonable translation of the episode but you realise that the charm of the piece was mostly in the direction and the performances, rather than the script. Some touching observations all the same.