Doctor Who: Shell Shock

Telos Doctor Who Novellas #8

by Simon A. Forward, Guy N. Smith (Foreword)

The Doctor is washed up -- literally -- on an alien beach with only intelligent crabs and a madman for company. How can he possible rescue Peri who was lost at sea the same time as he and the TARDIS? But Peri has problems of her own. 'Rescued' from drowning by an intelligent sponge growth, she has been adopted by the life form as its own personal God.

Genres: Doctor Who, Science Fiction, Fiction

120 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2003

About the author

Simon A. Forward is an author and dramatist most famous for his work on a variety of Doctor Who spin-offs. He currently lives and works in Penzance with his wife as a full-time writer.

Forward specialises in sci-fi novels such as Doctor Who. His most recent work is Evil Unlimited for the Kindle. Simon's first published work was the short story One Bad Apple in BBC Books' Doctor Who anthology More Short Trips (BBC Books, 1999). Following this, Simon had a proposal for a Past Doctor Adventure accepted, and the subsequent novel, Drift, was published by BBC Books in 2002.

Having a successful novel behind him, Simon contacted Gary Russell about the possibility of writing for Big Finish's range of audio adventures. The enquiry resulted in him writing the audio play The Sandman (Big Finish, 2002). Simon went on from this to write several short stories for the Big Finish Short Trips volumes, as well two subsequent audio adventures.

Forward also wrote the novella Shell Shock (Telos Publishing Ltd., 2003). This was part of their range of Doctor Who novellas and is now out of print. In the same year, Simon also had another Doctor Who novel published by BBC Books, the Eighth Doctor Adventure Emotional Chemistry (BBC Books, 2003).

2009 saw two novelisations of the BBC television series Merlin, followed by a third in 2010.

2010 also saw the independent publication of an original SF Comedy, Evil UnLtd, in ebook form.

Reviews

[David Layton · Rating 3 out of 5]

The brief for the Telos novellas was that they be different from the BBC range of Doctor Who novels, exploring different narrative styles and being generally more "adult" than the main range. "Shell Shock" certainly fills the brief. The story ranges back and forth through time, though the time is a mere few days, and uses multiple points of view in third-person limited fashion. Each perspective is given its own narrative voice so that a reader can distinguish between perspectives. The novel is "adult" both in its content about the psychological trauma of war, and in its language, which has many more **** expletives than standard Doctor Who novels. The story itself has Doctor 6 and Peri landing on a derelict ship on a primarily ocean world. While Peri is exploring in scuba gear, the ship goes under, taking the TARDIS with it. The Doctor ends up washed ashore on an island, while Peri swims around on her own before "dying" and being eaten by something which itself is being eaten by sea creatures, while her consciousness gets absorbed by the something that is eating her. The island on which The Doctor lands is inhabited by a bunch of cyborg crabs created during a war that has since been abandoned, and a psychologically damaged veteran of that war who abandoned the war before it abandoned the planet. Thus, the title "Shell Shock" has the double meaning of Ranger's (the human's) PTSD and the shells of the crabs. These crabs are now starting to be killed and eaten by a giant, crazed, cyborg crab called Meathook, and there is little that The Doctor can do to stop it.

Running on its own internal logic, the novel works reasonably well. There is quite a bit of "what the hell is going on here" for the reader, especially with Peri's narrative, but Forward makes most of the necessary revelations eventually. A couple of things did not fully work for me. One is the strange helplessness of The Doctor in relation to the crabs. He is unable to help them in even the most meager defense against Meathook, and it is not clear why. There are some gaps in the backstory that never get fully worked out, such as just what Ranger's sister (another soldier in the war) had done to warrant her punishment, which is the precipitating event for Ranger's defection from the war. The way The Doctor puts Peri back together, literally, is another aspect not satisfactorily worked out. It is written in such a way that it is as if Forward believes that the only memories that "make" a person are the painful and shameful ones, which cannot possibly be right.

Overall, "Shell Shock" is a surprisingly good read, but with a few execution flaws.

[Nicholas Whyte]

http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/nonfiction/shellshock.htm[return][return]This is a good piece, and if all Doctor Who fiction were of this quality the world would be a better place.[return][return]The Sixth Doctor and his companion Peri Brown arrive on a deserted warship on an unspecified planet which might be Earth. They get separated when the ship sinks, and the Doctor finds himself playing the role of mentor to a small group of cyborg crabs and their human friend Ranger, survivors of a vaguely (but sufficiently) described horrible war, now marooned on a beach where the mysterious monster Meathook is picking them off one by one. Peri meantime spends most of the book disembodied and trying to regain contact with the Doctor.[return][return]The plot jumps between viewpoints and back and forth along its own timeline, and for Scrounger the crab, one of the viewpoint characters, we switch to the present tense. This mimicks the effects of Ranger's shell shock, as a result of which he looks "at the world as through a splintered lens". It's a difficult trick to pull off but it's done effectively. The insane Ranger and non-human Scrounger make effective viewpoint characters.[return][return]We gradually build up a picture of Ranger's motivations and his real relationship with the crabs, Meathook, and the disembodied intelligence which takes Peri under its wing. Scrounger is an engaging cyborg whose story ends on a note of triumph. Peri's character also is given some added depth (controversial in fan circles, I understand) which makes her relationship with the Doctor more convincing. I half-recognised elements from China Mi

[Numa Parrott · Rating 2 out of 5]

What the heck was that? Props for great character development with Peri, but everything else was . . . too freaky. Even for Doctor Who, that was seriously weird.