Doctor Who - Invasion of the Cat-People

WRITTEN BY

GARY RUSSELL

RECOMMENDED

PURCHASE

VIRGIN 'MISSING ADVENTURE' PAPERBACK (ISBN 0-426-20440-9) RELEASED IN AUGUST 1995.

BLURB

Earth has been invaded. Twice. Thousands of years ago by a race searching for a new power source. More recently by the galactic marauders known as the Cat-People, who intend to continue the work done by the earlier visitors, with devastating results.

The recently-regenerated Doctor, along with companions Ben and Polly, teams up with a group of amateur ghost-hunters and a mysterious white witch on a journey that takes them from twentieth-century Combria to the Arabian deserts of folklore and Australia 40,000 years in the past. Can the Doctor stop the invaders and disarm the bombs left buried beneath the planet’s surface - or have the ancient Aborigines of Australia sung the seeds of their own destruction?

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Invasion of

the Cat-People

AUGUST 1995

Like the author of this book, I’m a big lover of cats. Unfortunately though, I’m no big lover of Invasion of the Cat-People – a complicated tale that I’m sure, if one took the time to carefully study the scientific concepts housed therein, would be a breathtaking example of scholarly science-fiction. Sadly, I doubt that many Virgin readers have either the time or the inclination to read each and every page twice.

That much said, I have a soft spot for the Patrick Troughton era – particularly the superb fourth season – and I rate both Ben and Polly very highly indeed, as it seems does Gary Russell. Whilst I couldn’t keep up with his elaborate narrative, I could at least enjoy reading his insightful musings on Polly’s life before meeting the Doctor – her ex-boyfriend, her friends, even her prosaic surname (Wright). I love how when she arrives in 1994 in this story, she isn’t immediately swept up some all-consuming adventure (or, at least, not knowingly so), affording her the rare opportunity to take stock of her really quite extraordinary life.

“If you ever get home, look up Ian and Barbara… ask them about the caveman… Don’t presume to place your pathetic human morals, ideology and nuances upon me, Benjamin Jackson!”

Russell’s portrayal of the young second Doctor is equally deft, expounding upon traits that were only ever fleetingly glimpsed on television. Patrick Troughton’s cosmic hobo-Doctor had a very dark vein running through him, and I really like how the author brings that to the surface here though dialogue such as that quoted above. Reading the text, I could clearly see Troughton frenziedly delivering the lines with his customary discomfort, but with just a hint of that ‘Final End’ intensity in his mournful eyes. In fact, probably the highest praise that I can bestow upon this novel though is that the prose effectively conjures up a vivid image of a 1966 six-parter. With a bit of red pen from Gerry Davis, a couple of furry masks and some rickety model work, I could really see this one playing out before me in glorious monochrome – warts and all.

Regrettably though, this is not a serial that you can make yourself sit though dutifully - it’s a novel, and you really have to concentrate. That is why when faced with the Euterpians; the Felinetta (related to the Cheetah people, you know); about twenty other central characters; and a plot that requires the consultation of several thick scientific tomes to be understood, I think that I could be forgiven for saying that Invasion of the Cat-People is a far cry from being the lightweight read that I’d both expected and desired. To be vicious like a killer cat, it isn’t worth the effort.

E.G. Wolverson has asserted his right under the Copyright, Design

and Patents Act 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

This novel’s blurb places it between the television serials The Power of the Daleks and The Highlanders. Within this gap, we have placed it prior to the novel The Murder Game, which was released later.

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