Night of the Humans (novel)

Night of the Humans was the second Eleventh Doctor novel.

Publisher's summary
"This is the Gyre – the most hostile environment in the galaxy."

250,000 years’ worth of junk floating in deep space, home to the shipwrecked Sittuun, the carnivorous Sollogs, and worst of all – the Humans. The Doctor and Amy arrive on this terrifying world in the middle of an all-out frontier war between Sittuun and humans, and the clock is already ticking. There’s a comet in the sky, and it’s on a collision course with the Gyre...When the Doctor is kidnapped, it’s up to Amy and “galaxy-famous swashbuckler” Dirk Slipstream to save the day. But who is Slipstream, exactly? And what is he really doing here?

Plot
to be added

Characters

 * The Doctor
 * Amy Pond
 * Dirk Slipstream
 * Charlie
 * Ahmed
 * Dr Heeva
 * Captain Jamal
 * Tuco
 * Django
 * Sancho
 * Manco

Anatomy and physiology

 * Regeneration is impossible after being killed by acid.

Colleges and universities

 * Charlie's father mentions him going to the Lux Academy.

Cultural references from the real world

 * The Gyre humans' names are all taken from so-called "Spaghetti Westerns".
 * The human leader Django shares his name with the eponymous hero of the 1966 film; Tuco is a character appearing in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly which was also released in 1966; while Manco is the name given to Clint Eastwood's "Man With No Name" in For a Few Dollars More.
 * Lake Mono, the lake of acid the humans use to execute their prisoners, may be named after Mono Lake, California, a location used in the Western High Plains Drifter.
 * Charlie plays Ella Fitzgerald's Stairway to the Stars to Amy before Amy and the Doctor leave.

The Doctor

 * The Doctor says that the TARDIS can hear every word he says to her.
 * The Doctor says he once jammed with Ella Fitzgerald, playing a recorder (likely a reference to his second incarnation).
 * The Doctor says that Amy is 'the girl with a monster in her wall'.

locations

 * Lake Mono is the name of the lake of acid the humans use to execute their prisoners.
 * The Gyre is located in the Battani 045 system.

Planets

 * Amy had been expecting the 'planet' to look a more like the moon.
 * Charlie and Slipstream mention the planet of Gold, Voga. They also mention that, because of the discovery of these Golden planets, gold was now much less valuable.
 * Dirk Slipstream was once a prisoner on Prison planet Volag-Noc.
 * Amy refers to Star-Whales and 'intergalactic felons'.
 * Dirk Slipstream claims to have earned a medal for bravery during the battle of Krontep.

Spacecraft

 * One of the crashed spaceships is made from Proamonium, found only on Proamon.
 * The NASA deep space probe Pioneer 10 appears as part of the Gyre's Landscape.
 * Dirk Slipstream's ship, The Golden Bough, takes its name from the book of the same name.
 * The Sittuun ship, the Beagle XXI is likely named after the ship that took Charles Darwin to the Galapagos Islands; the HMS Beagle.

TARDIS

 * The Doctor's TARDIS is unable to translate the Sittuun language, despite the Doctor claiming it can translate any language.

Continuity

 * Volag-Noc is mentioned which first appeared in DW: The Infinite Quest.
 * The shipwrecked Herald Of Nanking featured as a working spaceship in Llewellyn's NSA: The Taking of Chelsea 426.
 * The Doctor recalls surviving after falling from great heights (DW: Logopolis, The End of Time), being shot (DW: Doctor Who), losing a hand and growing it back (DW: The Christmas Invasion) and seeing the end of the universe (DW: Utopia).
 * Amy recalls running around a spaceship in her nightie. (DW: The Beast Below)
 * Amy recalls her wedding dress that 'she might never wear', and later says that she has 'a big day tomorrow' 250,000 years ago, placing this adventure before DW: The Time of Angels.
 * The Doctor encounters flying fish similar to the ones on Kazran Sardick's planet (DW: A Christmas Carol)

Timeline

 * Night of the Humans occurs after NSA: Apollo 23
 * Night of the Humans occurs before DWAN: Attack of the Space Leeches!

Audio release

 * The story was released as an audiobook on 4x CD read by Arthur Darvill.
 * The audiobook is also available as a download from the AudioGo website.