Recap / Past Doctor Adventures Loving The Alien

Written by Robert Perry and Mike Tucker; published 2003, and featuring the Seventh Doctor and Ace.

In 1959, from Edwardian mansion Winnerton Flats, the British Rocket Group, co-financed by the US military, launches space plane the Waverider. When it appears to have crashed, relief pilot Davey O’Brien disappears. An anonymous phone voice puts journalist Rita Hawks on the trail of a Mr Dumont-Smith.

Having secretly exhumed from a London cemetery Ace’s near-future corpse, the Doctor, desperate to prevent her death, lands the TARDIS in the basement of a military hospital. On a private ward, Captain O'Brien is heavily fitted with prosthetic wiring. Listed under the British Space Agency - which in 1959 shouldn't exist - he expects a visit from a Mr Dumont-Smith.

While the Doctor searches for Dumont-Smith, Ace goes sightseeing. Horrified to find a miniature transmission device sewn into her jacket, she angrily throws away the device, and is befriended by Jimmy, a young American zookeeper.

To find Ace, the Doctor, with old friend Private Investigator Cody McBride, finds Chief Inspector Mullen, currently dealing with an unexploded Luftwaffe bomb - which promptly goes off, mildly concussing the Doctor and shattering Mullen's legs. An anomalous x-ray persuades Dr Bill Hark, of the Augmentation Programme, of the Doctor to be a Russian genetic construct.

While the Doctor evades dissection on the orders of General Crawhammer, Ace learns of Jimmy's alliance with George Limb - whose flight in the Cybermen's time machine has proved less fatal than anticipated.

In a Kennington cottage, Rita, held prisoner by Dumont-Smith and bizarrely strong elderly Emily Desmond, escapes into a London where people walk unnaturally fast - and, via a socket in the back of the head, regularly plug themselves into walls...

Tropes:

• Air-Vent Passageway: Imprisoned in the military hospital, the Doctor slips a guard Mullen’s medication, and climbs up a furnace shaft.
• The Alleged Car: George Limb's Cybermen-acquired time machine, "Betty," can’t travel back any further than the 1940 point of departure, or any further forward than 1962.
  The Doctor: It’s a banger! It’s only capable of short hops, and then you were lucky.
• Alternate Timeline: George Limb’s adventures with "Betty," as he names the Cybermen's time machine, breach a parallel timeline in which Major Lazonby's dream of a Cyber-augmented British Army, having crushed the Nazis in 1942, has gendered a bionically augmented populace.
• Alternate Universe: Two have been breached by George Limb’s time travel exploits - one in which 1959 Britain slowly undergoes Cyber-conversion; the other near-identical to this one, only bigger.
• An Arm and a Leg: Chief Inspector Mullen's legs are shattered by a latterly exploded Luftwaffe bomb.
• Anger Born of Worry: During an impromptu switchback tour of the galaxy, Ace's private misadventure with several hippies perplexingly angers the Doctor - who knows of, and is trying to prevent, her imminent murder.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: On reversal of George Limb's temporal interference, Ace returns to life - from a timeline where everything is slightly bigger. Being about sixty feet high enables her to lift Mullen from the clutches of the Augmentation Programme.
• Bad Ass Longcoat: McBride's grimy mackintosh.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies:
  • Subverted with the Doctor and Ace's recreational visit to a planet of giant sapient butterflies.
  • With wife Ivy, Arthur Baulstrode finds his allotment ravaged by foot-long ants - they’re from a parallel timeline similar to this; only rather bigger.
• Big Fancy House: Run-down Edwardian Mansion Winnerton Flats.
• Black Site: Winnerton Flats, seat of HM Government’s British Rocket Group, is held at maximum security.
• Body Horror: In the Alternate Universe breached by the Waverider, much of Britain's populace is equipped in the back of the head with a recharge socket.
• Boisterous Bruiser: General Crawhammer is quite bullish, but in amiable sort of way.
• Boom, Headshot!: As bait for the Doctor, George Limb murders Ace.
• The Brigadier:
  • American Major Bill Collins, while staunchly dutiful, is reasonable - he reminds the Doctor of a young Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart.
  • Downplayed with General Abe Crawhammer: believing the Doctor to be a Russian genetic augment, he tries to have him dissected - although he eventually does heed the Doctor’s claim to be otherwise. A meaningful speech, implicitly about his future, persuades the General to let the Doctor leave.
• Call-Forward: The Doctor, disorientated by Dr Hark's anaesthesia, notes that such things tend to disagree with him.
• Camp Gay: In the alternate universe, brusque Inquisitor editor George Pryke wears a beret and pink cravat, and lives with "his nibs."
• Clothing Damage: On surmising him to be a Russian genetic augment, General Crawhammer rips the Doctor's shirt with a bowie knife.
• Cool Gate: On the outskirts of Kennington, a cottage, due to frequent use by George Limb's Cybermen-acquired time machine, intermittently merges with two alternate universes: one in which Britain has acquired Cyber-technology; the other near-identical to this one; only slightly bigger.
• Continuity Nod: Ace mournfully recalls learning of previous TARDIS occupant Mel’s death in Heritage. In her TARDIS room, Ace, as a reminder that nothing lasts forever, keeps Mel's menu from the Shangri La Holiday Camp.
• The Coroner: The Doctor, on Ace’s near-future corpse, conducts a post-mortem.
• Creepy Physical: At Winnerton Flats, in preparation for dissection, the Doctor is forcibly medically examined, and is not happy about it.
• Cutting the Knot: Having tried to prevent Ace's death, the Doctor realises his involvement to have sown insurmountable consequences, and that further meddling will only protract the chaos. A word of protest from McBride encourages him to investigate the anomaly head-on.
• Disney Death: The Doctor believes Ace’s death to be irreversible. It is, in fact, a result of George Limb's anomalous attempt to prevent his own death. When this fails, Ace, from the alternate timeline in which everything is slightly bigger, falls into place, and soon regains her natural size.
• Drives Like Crazy: In George Limb’s time travel-breached alternate universe, both cars and pedestrians move at high speed.
• Drowning My Sorrows:
  • McBride sneaks some booze into the hospital, whereupon he and Mullen get severely drunk.
  • McBride and the Doctor after Ace’s funeral; although the Doctor claims it to have little effect on his system.
• ET Gave Us Wifi:
  • Shortly after the war, McBride and Chief Inspector Mullen dynamited a sewer full of dormant Cybermen - which, under armed guard, was rebuilt. The Augmentation Programme, on London Zoo primates, experimented with bionic implants. Mullen’s opposition to the Programme gets him volunteered by Dr Bill Hark for some experimental replacement legs.
  • In an alternate timeline gendered by George Limb’s exploits with a Cyber-time machine, Britain, having in 1942 crushed the Third Reich with Cyber-armoured troops, supplies commonplace implants which lend high speed, super strength, and wire-imparted sustenance.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Regardless of Limb's ambitions and ego, his refusal to become a Cyberman leads to him rejecting a version of himself who has been concerted and accepting the Doctor's advice that the only way to stop this situation is to kill himself.
• Expy: Wandering 1959 London, Ace stops at a cinema to watch a film about radioactive giant insects - although beetles rather than ants.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: On a bus, when Ace rips her jacket, her exclamation of "Oh, bloody hell!" incurs the reproval of a fellow passenger. Her jacket’s pocketing of Captain Sorin’s badge, in 1959, is taken by Jimmy to have sinister implications.
• Food Porn: In Luigi's Cafe, the Doctor enjoys an egg roll.
• Fun Personified: On their recreational switchback tour, the Doctor, at the Twelve Planet Fair, buys Ace candyfloss and enters the juggling competition. Hiding with Ace near the Lunar Module Eagle, he keeps her in stitches by doing Clanger impressions.
• Haunted Technology: A circuit from the Cybermen’s time machine is constantly layered with Vasser Dust - a frosty substance with telepathic properties, it's a bi-product of time travel.
• Heroic BSoD: Deep in a locked TARDIS room, the Doctor, having operated on Ace's near-future corpse, grows ominously withdrawn.
• Human Outside, Alien Inside: Caught non-fatally in a bomb blast, an x-ray reveals the Doctor's two hearts.
• Hyperspace Is a Scary Place: A circuit from the Cybermen’s time machine, layered with telepathic Vasser Dust, gives Dr Edward Drakefell a glimpse of the "endless nothingness of the vortex, where everything exists in potential." It overwhelms him with debilitating horror.
• Hypocritical Humour: The Doctor, having once named an Edwardian car Bessie, jeers at George Limb’s naming of a time machine Betty as "infantile."
• Interdimensional Travel Device: On the Waverider, a secretly stowed time travel circuit, blown up by a planted bomb, breaches the universe of a Cyber-technology-augmented Britain - whose own Waverider, equipped with a dimensional stabiliser, did so simultaneously, albeit deliberately. George Limb's use of the Cybermen's time machine to reach alternate timelines has bridged both the universe of Cyber-Britain, and one with giant ants.
• It's All About Me: Everything George Limb has done, including killing Ace, is focused on the goal of preventing his own conversion into a Cyberman.
• It's All My Fault: The Doctor is devastated when he realizes that everything he did to try and prevent Ace's death basically caused it to happen.
• Kaiju: On failure of George Limb’s anomalous attempt to prevent his own death, Ace, from a timeline in which everything is slightly bigger, slips into place.
• Killer Gorilla: At London Zoo, the Augmentation Programme imbued several apes, including gorillas, with partial Cyber-conversion.
• The Kindness of Strangers: Lost in the alternate universe, Rita is given brief shelter in the Wong family restaurant.
• Mind Rape: A piece of cylindrical machinery, unaccountably layered with frost, telepathically reiterates Drakefell’s 1940 capture by the Cybermen; and overwhelms him with unfathomable impressions of infinite, simultaneous lifelessness and vibrancy.
• The Mole: Rubber manufacturer Edward Drakefell, having narrowly escaped the Cybermen's London Underground infiltration, found a job in the Augmentation Programme. Mentally shattered by the telepathic properties of a circuit from the Cyber-time machine, he uses the Waverider to launch it into space.
• Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: Dr Bill Hark, of the Augmentation Programme, volunteers Mullen, against his will, for replacement Cyber-legs; and tries to dissect the Doctor - although, having lost family to the Blitz, genuinely believes Cyber-augmentation to be for the good.
• Our Wormholes Are Different: Between two universes, a breach is simultaneously made, respectively by explosion of a rocket carrying a piece of the Cybermen's time machine; and by a deliberately used dimensional stabiliser. Such technology later opens, in the sky above London, a huge, white-glowing rip, through which arrives a Cyber-augmented army.
• Pet the Dog: While only slightly regretful of his murder of Ace, George Limb was always a kindly uncle to his now-adult niece Sarah Eyles.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Major Collins helps the Doctor escape dissection.
• Roaring Rampage of Rescue: Offered refuge in the TARDIS, McBride insists on returning to the military hospital to rescue Mullen.
• Intrepid Reporter: Forty-four-year-old Rita Hawks, who, on a lead, discreetly hires Private Investigator Cody McBride.
• Screw Destiny: Having exhumed from a London cemetery Ace’s near-future corpse, the Doctor, in 1959, strives to prevent her murder.
• Sentient Cosmic Force: Vasser Dust, a frosty substance picked up from the Time Vortex, has telepathic properties.
• Shout-Out:
  • The experimental Waverider space plane, built by the British Rocket Group, is piloted by Colonel Thomas Kneale.
  • The Doctor claims to have known Abbott and Costello, who performed at the opening ceremony of Lugi's Cafe.
• The Slow Path: On reunion with Cody McBride, Ace is irresistibly shocked to see him having aged nineteen years.
  McBride: I got old. Whaddaya expect? It’s what people do around here.
• Stable Time Loop: In attempt to evade his own death, George Limb, whose Cyber-time machine can’t travel further than its 1940 point of departure; as bait for the Doctor, shoots dead Ace. He’d intended to go back and change this, but…
  The Doctor: You can't undo what you’ve done - ever! You can go back and stop yourself pulling the trigger, but you don't change what happened - you can only change your position with respect to what happened!
• Super-Soldier: From an Alternate Universe, Cyber-augmentation allows for an army whom bullets only mildly inconvenience.
• There Are No Coincidences: Whereas the Waverider's dimensional breach was caused by a planted bomb's combustion of a secretly stowed Cyber-technology, it’s parallel universe counterpart, via a dimensional stabiliser, deliberately breached this universe.
  The Doctor: Reality’s a funny thing.
• Time Travel Escape: Young American actor Jimmy, saved by George Limb from a fatal car crash.
• Titled After the Song: The novel gets its name from "Loving the Alien", the opening track of David Bowie's 1984 album Tonight.
• Vacation Episode: After a bout of ominous withdrawal, the Doctor merrily announces a break from saving the universe - he and Ace spend New Year on a dozen planets; hide on the moon to watch Neil Armstrong’s first lunar steps, attend the Twelve Planet Fair and drop in on Woodstock.
• When Dimensions Collide: Due to George Limb’s time travel exploits, several universes are starting to bleed into each other, threatening cataclysm on a multi-universal scale. From a slightly larger timeline, several foot-long ants have already found their way in.
• You Can't Fight Fate: The Doctor realises his attempt to prevent Ace's death to be insurmountable - however, George Limb's murder of her is itself an anomalous result of his attempt to prevent his own death.
  The Doctor: You see Mr Limb, you cannot escape what time has in store for you. You are the eye of the storm. All the chaos you create cannot touch you. Wherever you turn, this is the inevitable, irrevocable conclusion.

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