2004 novel by Simon Messingham
The Indestructible Man is a BBC Books original novel written by Simon Messingham and based on the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. The novel features the Second Doctor, Jamie and Zoe.
It depicts a world modelled on television programmes created by Gerry Anderson, in particular Stingray, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons (e.g. the indestructible man of the novel's title, the flying base of operations and the alien threat) and UFO (carried over to the cover in which Zoe's purple wig echoes that of the female Moonbase personnel in UFO). However, The Indestructible Man depicts a dystopian future in contrast to the more utopian style of Anderson's earlier work.
Plot
Captain Karl Taylor is sent to investigate mysterious alien signals from the Moon, but the sights and sounds of the alien “city” he encounters are entirely incomprehensible to human perceptions. Taylor thus orders his people to open fire, apparently fearing that they are under attack. This is the start of a war between the alien Myloki and PRISM, the secret organisation created to fight the invaders. The Myloki attack by transforming ordinary human beings into their puppets; most are merely drone-like zombies known as Shiners, but two are different. One is Captain Taylor, who is sent back to Earth as a walking, indestructible, reanimated corpse, an emotionless killing machine. The other is Captain Grant Matthews, who is killed and duplicated while on a routine escort mission; however, his duplicate is caught and deprogrammed of his Myloki conditioning, and, like Taylor, is found to be literally indestructible.
The Doctor and Storm trace Verdana to a private hospice in Barbados, where his body is slowly wasting away, perhaps due to the hours he spent monitoring the Myloki's unfathomably alien signals during the war. He is bitter that he's been condemned to this slow death while Matthews, a jumped-up clerk and chauffeur, became immortal; this is why he wrote the book exposing PRISM. He refuses to help track down Matthews, but when he makes a snide comment about Matthews’ rich friends, Storm deduces where Matthews must be. Storm offers to put Verdana out of his misery, but Verdana refuses, determined to cling on to life until the bitter end. As the Doctor and Storm leave the hospice, Storm admits to the Doctor that he was a mercenary for hire before the war; Bishop freed him from a Polish prison and gave him the authority to kill whoever he had to defeat the Myloki.
John Sharon, once the wild child of the Sharon family, is now working as a doctor for an isolated tribe in a tropical rainforest. A nearby village was recently struck by a blast from the Myloki grid, and the Doctor chips in to help John tend to those affected by the blast; like everything else touched by the Myloki, however, their bodies have been warped by contact with the alien energy, and the Doctor knows that he can do nothing to save the victims’ lives. John eventually explains to the Doctor that the people of the world turned on Matthews, fearing what he had become, after Verdana's exposé revealed his secret; Matthews turned to Buck for help, and he agreed to let Matthews hide out on the Sharons’ private island. As far as John knows, Matthews is still there. However, John is torn by conflicting emotions regarding his family and his inability to live up to their shining example, and when the Doctor sees that the photographs of John's beloved family members have been repeatedly defaced, he realises there's nothing he can do to help the unfortunate man.
Specific references in the novel
Stingray
- Submarine Manta – Submarine Stingray
- Captain Hector – Troy Tempest
- Lieutenant Faulkner – Lieutenant George "Phones" Sheridan
Thunderbirds
Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons
UFO
- BFTV Studio – Harlington-Straker Film Studio
- BLOCKER – Interceptor
- KINGFISHER – SkyDiver (King/Sky One, Fisher/Diver)
- Lunar Base – Moonbase
- MOVER – Mobiles
- S.E.W.A.R.D. – S.I.D.
- S.I.L.O.E.T. – S.H.A.D.O.
- Alex Storm – Alec Freeman {name is typical of early Anderson era – "Mike Mercury", "Doctor Venus", etc.}
- Lieutenant Anouska – An unnamed SHADO operative portrayed by actress Anouska Hempel in four episodes
- Captain Drake – Captain Peter Carlin or Captain Lew Waterman {both UFO; Carlin was replaced by Waterman about a quarter of the way through the season after Peter Gordeno, who played Carlin, left}
- Lieutenant Gabrielle – Lieutenant Ellis {Named after actress Gabrielle Drake}
- Commander Hal Bishop – Commander Ed Straker {Named after actor Ed Bishop}
- Helen Bishop – Mary Straker {although she did not die, her and Ed's son John Rutland (named after his new stepfather) died after Straker failed to deliver the drugs that would have saved his life}
- Doctor Koslovski – Doctor Jackson {It was never determined as to whether Jackson was German or Russian}
- The Myloki – methods from The Mysterons {Captain Scarlet}; ideology from the unnamed aliens that attacked Earth in the 1980s
- Doctor Ventham – Colonel Virginia Lake {UFO; named after actress Wanda Ventham, who played Lake and who also guest-starred in multiple Doctor Who episodes}
- In addition, the Doctor has a nightmare early in the book, in which he views the Earth and Moon receding into the blackness of space, then the Sun, until an unknown planet looms suddenly into view. This is a clear prose rendition of UFO's usual closing credits sequence.
The Myloki are described as never having a physical form. This is the same in UFO, where the unnamed aliens are only ever seen physically when possessing the body of a human. The Mysterions, which were seen on-screen as a series of flashing lights, were also capable of taking over bodies as well as producing replicas (Captain Scarlet, Captain Black). They would usually announce their intentions to SPECTRUM in the same creepy voices that Neville describes early on in his book at the start of every episode.
Reception
Richard McGinlay of sci-fi-online.com gives The Indestructible Man a mixed review, calling it "an intriguing book, but sadly not tremendously riveting. The narrative reads like a sequence of events that are not strung together very tightly by the slender plot. Still, it should help you to destroy a few long winter evenings, especially if you're an Anderson fan."[1]
