Doctor Who: Loving the Alien

Past Doctor Adventures #60

by Mike Tucker, Robert Perry

A novel featuring the Seventh Doctor and his fan-favorite sidekick Ace. The Doctor knows Ace is going to die. Knows very well, because although she is sitting in the TARDIS watching the TV news, she is also beside him as a corpse. And there is something very, very strange about the autopsy results. In London, 1959, the Doctor does all he can to prevent Ace's tragic death, due to occur in a few hours. In the process, he discovers further anomalies - swarms of giant ants emerging from the ground being among the least of his worries. A disturbing fetish for Cyberisation has taken hold of Britain, and the Doctor can probably guess who's behind it Against a background of international (and trans-dimensional) espionage, giant ants and Cyber-primates, and quite possibly the end of the world as we know it, the Doctor struggles to save his companion from a fate which she seems more and more determined to bring upon herself.

Genres: Doctor Who, Fiction, Science Fiction, Doctors

288 pages, Paperback

First published May 19, 2003

About the author

Mike Tucker is a special effects expert who worked for many years at the BBC Television Visual Effects Department, and now works as an Effects Supervisor for his own company, The Model Unit. He is also the author of a number of original tv tie-in Doctor Who novels (some co-written with Robert Perry), and three books based on episodes of the television series Merlin. He co-wrote the factual books Ace! The Inside Story of the End of an Era with Sophie Aldred in 1996, and BBC VFX - The Story of the BBC Visual Effects Department with Mat Irvine in 2010.

Reviews

[Sean Homrig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mike Tucker is best known for his model work in the current television series, but his Seventh Doctor and Ace story arc in the BBC range is admirable. This, the arc's conclusion, involves alternate universes, the dangers of tinkering with leftover Cyber technology, and a pack of cyborg primates that are as creepy as the Fleshsmiths in Tucker's "Prime Time". Tucker and Perry obviously live the Seventh Doctor's era, and write him without the annoying angst and manipulativeness seen in the New Adventures. The story is not without its faults: there's a revelation about one character, Jimmy, that I could have done without, and Ace's return in the final pages left me scratching my head. (Here's hoping the synopsis from the Doctor Who Reference Guide will help.) There's nothing here that can be called a breakthrough, but it's a damn entertaining story.

[Michael Battaglia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not even sure what the title of this has to do with the rest of the book. Which means they're either working at an angle totally tangential to my view of the book, or I missed the point entirely. It would certainly be easier if everything was my fault.

For quite a few Past Doctor Adventures, Tucker and Perry have been carving out their own little section of the Who universe by crafting a mini-arc around the Seventh Doctor and Ace. Taking place after the show is over (but sometime before the Virgin Adventures really seem to get going), they've been writing a continuing series of stories featuring Our Heroes, but with one little long-running plot thread. For reasons that haven't become clear until now, the Doctor has Ace's corpse from the future buried in a TARDIS basement. She's been murdered, you see, or will be, and he's trying to figure out how and where and why, presumably so can he stop it. At least that sounds like a reasonable plan, even if it does skirt the Laws of Time slightly.

Unfortunately, what does the Master Planner, the manipulative and clever, Mr Sleight of Hand and Back Up Plan the Seventh Doctor do? He figures out the how and the when and in an effort to figure out the why, he takes her to that period of time and place. Which is kind of like being told by a fortune teller that you're going to die in a horrible fire and then proceeding to attend Bonfire Night at your local high school. Sure it may not happen but no one is going to feel that bad that you went in asking for it.

As it turns out the Doctor has plenty of other distractions besides Ace's imminent and somewhat avoidable demise. A rocket test has managed to come down with a different pilot than the one who went up, which is even funnier because it's one of the pilots who is already on the ground. Also, giant ants are appearing and weird soldiers keep popping up. So it's no surprise that with all that going on, in the midst of it Ace gets away from the Doctor and manages to get capped in the head, just like Time has predicted. It's not even a spoiler.

From that point on the plot almost forgets about Ace entirely as it brings in characters from all the other Tucker and Perry novels just in time for it to become clear that parallel universes are afoot and things are about to get quite messy. Fortunately we know that the Doctor and Ace have to survive to go on to have the Virgin Adventures so it's more or less a matter of waiting for the resolution to occur and the reset button to get hit.

I'll give the authors credit, they ARE trying. But it seems that they're trying to appease the fans of the old Virgin Adventures by being utterly traditional, which misses the point somewhat. Footnotes to other Tucker/Perry romps abound, which never strikes me as a good sign, and the book is once again shoehorned into that four part format meant to mimic the television show we all think we remember. Bringing in all the old characters and referring to what happened only accentuates that it's been a while since we've read these other novels and too much seems to depend on us remembering what has happened before, otherwise all our emotional hooks become blunted. They're trying to write the Seventh Doctor as the figure we all remember from those "stories too big to fit the small screen" as best they can and some parts do have that feel but their portrayal of the Doctor lacks that edge of mystery and . . . alienness for lack of a better word. This Doctor feels familiar when he should be keeping us off-balance, our old buddy instead of the man kept at a slight distance that we have to meet all over again because we only think we know him.

Even worse the book keeps throwing out these ideas that could be neat but wind up being tossed aside in favor of focusing on characters that we've seen from other books. The giant ants are more or less window dressing but we've given an entire parallel world that could be worth exploring but we barely scratch the surface before it becomes just another function of the plot. The invasion of a parallel world isn't the most original idea in SF (for a more recent example, see the "Sliding Albion" arc from "The Authority" comic) but what do see makes it a shame that more isn't revealed, especially since the little glimpse is so frustrating. The main villain of the piece is a step in the Tobias Vaughn direction, and while he lacks that man's verve or personality, he seems to be clever enough and its a change of pace to see someone with evil motivations act through actual sociopathic tendencies as opposed to grandiose egomania.

But too many other parts feel off. A famous dead actor appears no longer dead but there's hardly any emotional weight or tragedy to it, the world seems to be the same as it ever was. When the Doctor sends cybernetic apes against the oncoming soldiers it doesn't have the urgency or last ditch desperation that it should and so feels wrong (especially since he knows they're going to kill everyone in sight). Ace is gone for many a page and then just as suddenly is back in what feels like an extreme cop-out as the whole point of the book is wondering how the Doctor is going to get around Ace's undodgeable fate. Turns out she can't avoid the fate but it doesn't matter but somehow she's okay anyway. It becomes the plot equivalent of painting yourself in a corner and then getting out by drawing a door in the wall. At times it feels like they were going to string out the Ace subplot for as long as they could until they were suddenly forced to wrap it up.

It's a shame because you get the sense they are trying very hard and what it makes even more frustrating is how close they come. A few more tweaks in a different direction would have made a world of difference. Though its possible now, with the Ace stuff out of the way, they can push further with the stuff that did work and give us something utterly new next time out. That's enough to hope for, really.

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Tucker/Perry 7th Doctor novels are very much their own attempt at a pseudo-season 27/continuation of classic Who, and on that level they do succeed. But in terms of style and taste I do prefer the efforts of other 7th Doctor authors, in novels such as "Heritage", "The Algebra of Ice" and "Relative Dementias" -- I find them deeper, darker, and willing to delve into the more ambiguous moral corners of the 7th Doctor & his relationship with Ace. The Tucker/Perry books I find to be much more simple and straightforward by comparison. I also don't believe "Illegal Alien" was a novel that needed a sequel, but here we are. In the end, this is perfectly fine for what it is, but I'll satiate my 7th Doctor fixes with other novels.

[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Past Doctor Adventure which concludes Tucker and Perry's subseries, begun in 'Illegal Alien', starring the Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) and Ace.
Having discovered Ace's murdered body from a future timeline, the Doctor takes the living Ace back to the 1950s in an attempt to thwart her murder. However, the walls of reality begin to fracture when a British rocket test opens a gateway to a parallel dimension and the Doctor finds himself once more facing off against the amoral mastermind George Limb.

These authors write really good Who together and this book shows all of the maturity and complexity, both of plot and morality, which was so prevalent in the other books of this Seventh Doctor series-within-a-series. So, overall, this is a very well-written book but it has to be said that there are a number of factors which combine to hold it back from the greatness of the likes of 'Illegal Alien'.

First and foremost, there is just too much crammed into this novel. As readers we have to contend with Cold War paranoia, cybernetic experimentation, Ace's time-bending murder plot, giant killer ants, parallel worlds, Ace being a giant, James Dean being mysteriously resurrected and more.
It's just too much and the ending fails to round out all these plotlines in a way that feels natural and satisfactory.

There are also two elements that are more weird than bad, but nevertheless detract from the overall quality of the book.
The first is that elements of this book feel all too similar to the Cybermen two-parter from Series 2; what with the parallel world, the experiments into cyber-augmentation and even the fact that zeppelins are still in use there. I mean, this book was published three years before the TV story aired, so it's not the authors' fault, but it still spoils things a bit.
The other thing is that although the story is set in 1950s London, almost all of the supporting cast, antagonists and protagonists alike, are American. The private eye is American, the sassy reporter is American, the villain's bodyguard is American and the warmongering General is American. I've nothing against Americans (unless they voted for Trump) but it seems really odd to have so few British characters in this story set in Britain.

The final problem with this book is that the characterisation of the Doctor and Ace is noticably off. I imagine it's intended to reflect them having changed since their TV story days, but it just makes them feel unfamiliar. I couldn't imagine either McCoy or Sophie Aldred saying their characters' dialogue from this book and that spoilt things a bit for me.
Also, whilst the Seventh Doctor is known for being a bit cold and ruthless at times, the scene at the beginning where he autopsies Ace's corpse whilst the still-living version of her is relaxing in the TARDIS' pool is too creepy for my taste (particularly considering he takes special note of the love bites on her breasts and the, quote, 'deeper evidence' that she had sex before she died). It's just not what I want from a Who story.

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[David Layton · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a sequel to Tucker & Perry's earlier 7th Doctor novel "Illegal Alien." It also rounds off a story arc begun in "Prime Time" and continued in "Heritage" about why The Doctor is acting weirdly around Ace. Most of the novel is a fairly good alternate realities thriller along the lines of "The Outer Limits." There were some annoying bits, such as the writers' repeatedly telling us how clever George Limb is. Our heroes really get beaten up - beaten, battered, bullied, and bombarded beyond anyone's realistic tolerance for pain and abuse. And then, a scene later, they are going along as if had not happened. Granted that occurs only sometimes, but the characters are definitely going to need more recovery time than they get. What does not work for me is the last 40 or so pages. The ending is a mess. There are too many things happening, and the writers resort to "dimension hopping, multiple universes, so we can throw in any weird thing we like" as a way to get themselves out of the tangle they've written. There are some loose ends as well, such as the Dumont-Smith couple. What happened to them? So, tight writing at the beginning gets undermined by sloppy writing at the end.

[Jacob Licklider · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ace is dead, long live Ace. Mike Tucker and Robert Perry are for all intents and purposes the architects for the Seventh Doctor novels in the Past Doctor Adventures line. From writing the debut to penning most of them (with Tucker taking Prime Time solo), their direction formed the basis for a story arc not only for the Seventh Doctor and Ace as an alternative take on Season 27 but also tying into the continuity changing hijinks of the later Eighth Doctor Adventures. Loving the Alien is the culmination of that arc in this range, Dale Smith’s Heritage being a lead into this final showdown. The Doctor fails. Ace is shot dead after falling in love. The Doctor can barely keep it together with added medical torture. The rest of the novel plays out with the idea that she is not actually going to come back, or at least not in the way that we think. There is explicitly a shift in the timelines, the reason for resurrection left vague and the Doctor not caring because his best friend is back He is not going to question the gift, even if deep down he knows that this is not the Ace he met in Dragonfire. Tucker and Perry structure so much of Loving the Alien around this central event yet what propels the first half of the novel is setting up for the reader the idea that Ace’s own decisions: rebelling against the Doctor and falling in love with a boy called Jimmy, is going to somehow subvert her death.

There is a world where this is a television story, and Sophie Aldred has decided to leave Doctor Who. Being a novel, the timeline is corrupted somewhat and there is a slight uncomfortableness with the Ace that we have here because the Past Doctor Adventures won’t return to this arc. Tucker and Perry leave the reader on this implication on where the Doctor and Ace will go from here, though there is an argument to be made that their story is going into its own new, adventurous territory. After all, Ace has already left in Set Piece. She even died in “Ground Zero”. Tucker and Perry’s portrayal of the Doctor in Loving the Alien is particularly excellent. The Time Lord is taken by the grief of losing Mel in Heritage and the very real possibility of losing Ace, bringing to the surface his worst impulses. His decision to plant a bug on Ace so he can track her is the final straw to push her away. Loving the Alien is a look through the Doctor’s past mistakes, with several footnotes reminding readers to check the other Past Doctor Adventures that have been leading to this moment. Tucker and Perry examine the Doctor as over planning, the sequences in the TARDIS where he is emotionally distant from Ace are great as are the haunting description of his autopsy of her corpse. The Doctor is planning for something far bigger than him but Loving the Alien despite being explicitly a sequel to Illegal Alien, isn’t actually all that big in terms of stakes. Yes, there are timestream diversions that need to be put right, and they are put right at the end, but the extent of the diversions still leaves the setting of the late 1950s London looking like the late 1950s London.

Above everything else Loving the Alien is Mike Tucker and Robert Perry’s tribute to the atomic monster genre of film with a particular love of Nigel Kneale’s Quatermass serials. While not taking the plot from a Quatermass serial, instead using giant ants as our primary “monster” threat until Cyber technology can reenter the plot as the book becomes more of a sequel to Illegal Alien over anything else. The British Rocket Group and the space program seen in The Quatermass Experiment and its subsequent film adaptation take center stage in the plot for the first half, there even is a character named Kneale as tribute. Tonally this is great for the novel, Tucker and Perry setting it in a very specific period of history and the pacing of the book takes on the pace of a very early science fiction serial with flashes of film noir. Cody McBride and George Limb are our two major returning characters, McBride now being an older private detective being hired by American reporter Rita Hawks to investigate a classic case of adultery that isn’t adultery. The book keeps the film noir elements until the timeline slipping becomes slowly more and more apparent but having McBride and the Doctor both fill a detective role leads to some of the lighter moments of the novel which are particularly great. George Limb doesn’t fare as well. He works well as the villain of the novel being run on survival instinct and an accrual of political power.

This is where the larger issues of Loving the Alien comes through. Itis packed to the brim with ideas and plotlines that are constantly shifting and twisting. The atomic monster plot of the giant ants is resolved so it can shift to explicitly use Cyber technology for political gain that is incoherent. The explanation of the Waverider as being responsible for everything is also far too quick after a lot of buildup. Loving the Alien does set up its many twists and turns, however, outside of the central Doctor/Ace conflict it becomes a mess. The most egregious is Ace becoming pregnant with James Dean’s child. Yes, that James Dean who slipped a timeline and didn’t die in the 1955 car crash. The actual pregnancy happens almost too quickly and Ace’s own feelings on potentially having a child are not explored before her death and when resurrected it is undone. Jimmy as James Dean is a twist that feels more like an idea that Tucker and Perry had without thinking it through.

Overall, Loving the Alien works best in the first half with the mounting sense of dread in the reader as Ace goes slowly to her death. This is a novel where Mike Tucker and Robert Perry take some big swings that really do pay off by the end, even if that ending becomes all too cluttered with the resolution not entirely involving the Doctor’s actions enough. The characterization is fantastic, and it does feel like a season finale to the several books leading up to this. It’s also a book that is begging for Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred to star in an adaptation as a pair with Illegal Alien. 8/10.

[Nicholas Whyte · Rating 4 out of 5]

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2683562.html

This is the culmination of the arc of Seventh Doctor novels by Mike Tucker and Robert Perry, the previous stories being Illegal Alien, Matrix, Storm Harvest and Prime Time. I really enjoyed this, as I really enjoyed them all, and I've realised that this sequence is one of the unsung successes of Who spinoff literature.

The story is suitably complex; the Doctor investigating Ace's murder, even though she is still alive; confused astronauts arriving from another timeline; cyber-technology and giant ants infesting London. There is sensawunda and emotional intensity. There is homage to Quatermass (and perhaps one or two Tuckerisms). I think I couldn't recommend this to readers, even Who fans, who had not read the previous four in this mini-series, but I would warmly recommend reading the whole lot.

[Michael T Bradley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I accidentally read this way in advance of finishing all the books in the 'arc' this ends (I mixed up Hollow Men and Storm Harvest, because I was like, scarecrows are out in fields that are harvested, so that must be the book w/them in it ... whoops! Anyway, I still read the main core books, so I think I'm okay to review here.

While a lot of what's covered in here is fun and shocking at times (there are a couple of scenes that felt like they utterly shouldn't work, like the cyber-ape cage scenes, the ridiculously fast romance between Ace and ... eh, I won't spoil it ... yet somehow they do work, because these authors honestly get these characters), my main issue is the same as the last 'core'-feeling story in this arc, Illegal Alien, which is there are way too many characters. I got seriously confused about who all the damn characters are. For the climax we're juggling something like a dozen or so characters (some of them AU versions of themselves), and that was just ... too much for my poor brain.

So it sort of fell apart as it went along, but especially the first 2/3 are extremely enjoyable. I'd say the PDAs are often like that, which is sort of the opposite of the Virgin New Adventures. Those that I've read are often like 150 pages of trudging through meaningless meandering, then an exciting ending that makes it all feel worth it. Sometimes.

[Kyle Theobald · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can't really say this book is good, but its existence within Doctor Who canon fascinates me. Loving the Alien starts with the Doctor dissecting the dead corpse of his companion Ace (in rather graphic detail) and then just gets progressively more bonkers from there. The plot features among other things exploding rockets, cold war espionage, time paradoxes, alternate realities, a version of the actor James Dean whose life has been prolonged and has turned into a homicidal maniac, cybernetically enhanced gorillas, oh and giant ants, as well as a giant King Kong size version of Ace who replaces the original version who as far I can tell remains dead at the end of the book(!). I know people talk about the VNAs as being a bit crazy, but this book is an experience that has to be read to be believed.

The thing is while it has an absurdly convoluted almost incomprehensible plot, there is some stuff I genuinely like about this. For instance I appreciate Tucker and Perry's interpretation of the Cybermen as more of a homemade threat as opposed to an invading force from another planet, and setting this within the context of the cold war and the space race seems like a natural progression given that Illegal Alien, the book this is a sequel to, was set around the Second World War. If nothing else this book was a page-turner and I don't regret reading it, but don't expect a neat and satisfying explanation of anything that happens in the story.

[Eli Seibert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow this book had a lot of balls in the air.
So, to understand what is going on in this book fully, I recommend reading Illegal Aliens first (it was completely by chance I already had). It’s written by the same author, and has several characters that return in this book and are integral to the plot. It also may help to read Prime Time and Heritage too, but it’s not as important (I didn’t read the latter).
I was about to give this five stars, it was well paced, and it kept me intrigued, but the ending kind of left me wanting and confused. I don’t really understand how the problems were resolved, and it seemed a little rushed near the end.
But I still liked it, and when written well, the seventh Doctor is probably one of my favorites to read. I feel like writers are able to do things with him and take him places that they can’t with other Doctors. And in this novel, this mysterious, manipulative little Scotsman with heavy eyes and a melancholy soul is pushed very far, and- usually five steps ahead of everyone- is for once not sure if he can save the day, as universes start colliding, and the very fabric of reality starts to unravel.

[Cindy Matthews · Rating 3 out of 5]

I hadn't read a Doctor Who novel in a while, and this is a good one if you're into the classic series with Sylvester McCoy as the 7th Doctor. Thing is, it's part of trilogy, so reading the last one in the trilogy first was a bit confusing! Anyway, the premise is very interesting and the level of action is intense. About the only thing I wasn't too thrilled about was how little Ace played a part of the story and also the level of violence visited upon her. When I read or watch a Doctor Who fiction, I sort of want the Doctor's companions to be "safe" and not quite so violated. To each their own I guess, but this isn't exactly a warm, fuzzy type of yarn, as we have killer bionic apes, rips in the fabric of space/time, giant ants, and post-war British recovery problems all at once. The villain of the piece didn't seem as villainous as expected, but that could be because he was fleshed out in earlier stories. A good read for fans of the 7th Doctor, who is at his moodiest and most somber ever.

[Mark C · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a bad conclusion to the story arc that has run through the Mike Tucker and Robert Perry novels. However, like most novels and stories that involve messing with time or alternative dimensions, it all gets very muddled and confused by the end.

Cheif amongst these confusions is the death and apparant resurrection of Ace. The build up to her death at the end of the first half of the book is well done. However her resurrection is not so well handled. I'm still not sure if she's an Ace from an alternative reality or whether she's been brought back from the dead because of time being altered. The book doesn't really explain and both options seem equally valid.

Aside from that niggle, it's not a bad book and the characterisation of the Doctor and Ace is spot on as usual.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable enough but as it's part of a series arc and I haven't picked up the others I can't help but feel I'm maybe missing something.
That said the story was enjoyable enough and not overtly complex ..it's pretty much a tale of alternate universes bleeding into one another due to excessive meddling in time..in such a way it's a familiar Doctor who type plot.
I never really enjoyed the Sylvester McCoy years as much as other incarnations of the Doctor ..however these literary incarnations make me feel I was either missing something or he is better served in book form.
Ultimately good fun..a typical Dr Who novel.

[Shannon Appelcline · Rating 4 out of 5]

Generally, a strong book with an interesting timey-whimey plot.