‘Doctor Who: The Crawling Terror’ – Mike Tucker (BBC Books)

 

After a weekend of hardly any reading, I really wanted to head off a ‘reading slump’ and a little ‘Doctor Who’ is always good for that so… I’ve been working my way through a pile of old Target novelisations, recently, but thought a small change might help me out. ‘The Crawling Terror’ had been perched on a pile of books for a while, and I’d never read an original ‘12th Doctor’, so it pretty much chose itself. Let me tell you a little bit about it...

“Well, I doubt you’ll ever see a bigger insect.”

Gabby Nichols is putting her son to bed when she hears her daughter cry out. ‘Mummy there’s a daddy longlegs in my room!’ Then the screaming starts… Kevin Alperton is on his way to school when he is attacked by a mosquito. A big one. Then things get dangerous.

But it isn’t the dead man cocooned inside a huge mass of web that worries the Doctor. It isn’t the swarming, mutated insects that make him nervous.

With the village cut off from the outside world, and the insects becoming more and more dangerous, the Doctor knows that unless he can decode the strange symbols engraved on an ancient stone circle, and unravel a mystery dating back to the Second World War, no one is safe.

If you’ve ever wondered how ‘Doctor Who’ might tackle ‘Starship Troopers’ (minus the rampant facism and if it was set in a small Wiltshire village), ‘The Crawling Terror’ pretty much has you covered. And yes, I know that’s a very specific question to wonder but, it couldn’t just be me… Could it? ;o)

Anyway…

As a fan of ‘Doctor Who’s move towards a more horror based approach, back in the day, ‘The Crawling Terror’ had a lot to recommend it. I’m thinking particularly of the opening moments where the scene is set with the introduction of various oversized insects. Mike Tucker is brilliant at drawing the tension out and then hitting you with a jump scare, and that really works for a book like this. It’s as creepy as hell and asks questions that I wanted to see answered.

It’s a little bit of a shame then that the middle part of the book felt like it dragged a bit with resistance dealt with a little too quickly to keep things interesting (and the army effectively neutralised at the borders of the village). I guess the important thing is that even though it’s slow going at this point, things are always moving forward and the finale is well worth staying the course for. Soldiers fighting giant bugs, giant bugs fighting other giant bugs… I personally can’t ask for a lot more than that but still managed to come across a reference to a favourite ‘Doctor Who’ story of mine (‘Curse of Fenric’) that was very welcome but also made me wonder just how many incarnations of the Doctor were about during World War Two. At least three now… :o)

Tucker really hits the target with his portrayal of the 12th Doctor but what I really enjoyed about the book, as a whole, was his exploration of how ‘time travel etiquette’ can be conducted perfectly but the traveler can still face the consequences of inaction just as easily as action. You don’t realise it to start off with but the book really does hinge on one decision and I couldn’t help but wonder if another decision would really have made a difference? If I figure it out, I’ll let you know.

‘The Crawling Terror’ is a bit of a mixed bag then (well it was for me, your mileage will inevitably vary) but there was still plenty there to keep me engaged and reading. I’ve got a couple more ‘12th Doctor’ books on a shelf, I’ll have to find them now :o)