''Combat Rock'' is a

BBC Books BBC Books (also formerly known as BBC Consumer Publishing and BBC Publishing) is an imprint majority-owned and managed by Penguin Random House through its Ebury Publishing division. The minority shareholder is BBC Studios, the commercial subsidia ...

original novel written by Mick Lewis and based on the long-running British

science fiction television Science fiction first appeared in television programming in the late 1930s, during what is called the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Special effects and other production techniques allow creators to present a living visual image of an imaginary ...

series ''

Doctor Who ''Doctor Who'' is a British science fiction television series broadcast by the BBC since 1963. The series, created by Sydney Newman, C. E. Webber and Donald Wilson (writer and producer), Donald Wilson, depicts the adventures of an extraterre ...

''. It features the

Second Doctor The Second Doctor is an incarnation of The Doctor (Doctor Who), the Doctor, the protagonist of the British Science fiction on television, science fiction television series ''Doctor Who''. He was portrayed by actor Patrick Troughton. Out of his 1 ...

Victoria Victoria most commonly refers to: * Queen Victoria (1819–1901), Queen of the United Kingdom and Empress of India * Victoria (state), a state of Australia * Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, a provincial capital * Victoria, Seychelles, the capi ...

and

Jamie Jamie is a unisex name. Traditionally a masculine name, it can be diminutive form of James or, more rarely, other names and is of Scottish English origin. It is also given as a name in its own right. Since the mid-20th century it has been used a ...

. The story encompasses an extended allegory on

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Pacific oceans. Comprising over List of islands of Indonesia, 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, ...

's colonial treatment of

Irian Jaya New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; , fossilized , also known as Papua or historically ) is the world's second-largest island, with an area of . Located in Melanesia in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is separated from Austral ...

and draws on Lewis's own experiences in the region. The characters of Jamie and Victoria are also used to explore

post-colonial Postcolonialism (also post-colonial theory) is the critical academic study of the cultural, political and economic consequences of colonialism and imperialism, focusing on the impact of human control and exploitation of colonized people and thei ...

themes.

Placement

Its precise placement in the series continuity is not stated. The Doctor describes landing on a tropical beach as a "welcome change", implying that their last landing was in a more inhospitable place like in the serial ''

The Ice Warriors ''The Ice Warriors'' is the partly missing third serial of the fifth season of the British science fiction television series ''Doctor Who'', which was first broadcast in six weekly parts from 11 November to 16 December 1967. In this serial, the ...

'' or the novel ''

Dreams of Empire The ''Past Doctor Adventures'' (sometimes known by the abbreviation ''PDA'' or ''PDAs'') were a series of spin-off novels based on the long running BBC science fiction television series ''Doctor Who'' and published under the BBC Books imprint. ...

''. However, it could equally fit in between many of the stories with the Second Doctor, Jamie and Victoria, in particular the ending of ''

The Abominable Snowmen ''The Abominable Snowmen'' is the mostly missing second serial of the fifth season of the British science fiction television series '' Doctor Who'', which originally aired in six weekly parts from 30 September to 4 November 1967. In this se ...

''.

Reception

In '' Interzone'', Matt Hills writes, "By infusing ''Doctor Who'' with the grimmest of sensibilities — ''Combat Rock'' includes one character whose favoured leisure pastime is to use, abuse and murder prostitutes — Lewis rewrites a family TV programme that often gestured towards the tropes and stylistic tics of horror as out-and-out horror fiction gesturing in the direction of a family TV show. It is an inversion that doesn't always work, especially as Lewis tries to combine a near "traditional" horror-lite ''Who'' plot — mind-altering fungus unleashes primitive behaviour and possesses people — with the exaggerated psychopathologies and gross-out, splatter antics of his mercenary characters."

References

External links

* {{Second Doctor stories, selected=Books 2002 British novels 2002 science fiction novels Past Doctor Adventures Second Doctor novels Novels set on fictional planets