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
When the TARDIS is pulled off course, the Doctor and Amy make an unexpected trip to the Gyre. It is made of junk from all time and space, even a satellite Earth sent out thousands of years ago. They encounter aliens known as the Sittuun, who kidnap them. In mid kidnapping, the Doctor falls out of their vehicle and is kidnapped by primitive humans.

Amy explains how she and the Doctor got to the Gyre to the Sittuun, confusing them for the "locals". She learns they came to plant a bomb to destroy the Gyre before a comet strikes and endangers other worlds with its debris. Meanwhile, the Doctor is taken to the human camp. He learns they are descendants of a crashed cargo ship who believe they are on Earth. When the Doctor tries to tell them the truth, they call him a blasphemer and order him put to death.

Elsewhere, Amy has bonded with Charlie and met Dirk Slipstream, a man who has answered the distress call the Sittuun sent when they crashed. She persuades him to rescue the Doctor. However, he double-crosses them and leaves to find something the humans have in their camp. He persuades them to spare the Doctor and uses him to find the Mymon Key, an object that can harness the forces of the universe.

The comet draws closer, forcing them to flee. Dirk is knocked out and the Doctor makes sure the Key, which is pulling the comet to them, is left behind. They land the TARDIS in Dirk's ship, commandeered by the Sittuun, and take off. Dirk regains consciousness and flees tp an escape pod before the comet the Sittuun bomb goes off, destroying the Gyre.

Characters

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

Anatomy and physiology

 * Regeneration is impossible if the entire body has been immersed in acid, such as being submerged in Lake Mono.

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 from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, 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, along with another Gold planet, Midas Superior (This is a reference to the ancient Greek myth of King Midas, who turned things to gold through touch). 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.

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.