''Combat Rock'' is a BBC Books original novel written by Mick Lewis and based on the long-running British science fiction television series ''

Doctor Who ''Doctor Who'' is a British science fiction television series broadcast by the BBC since 1963. The series depicts the adventures of a Time Lord called the Doctor, an extraterrestrial being who appears to be human. The Doctor explores the u ...

''. It features the Second Doctor, Victoria and

Jamie Jamie is a unisex name. It is a diminutive form of James or, more rarely, other names. It is also given as a name in its own right. People Female * Jamie Anne Allman (born 1977), American actress * Jamie Babbit (born 1970), American film and te ...

. The story encompasses an extended allegory on Indonesia's colonial treatment of Irian Jaya and draws on Lewis's own experiences in the region. The characters of Jamie and Victoria are also used to explore

post-colonial Postcolonialism is the critical academic study of the cultural, political and economic legacy of colonialism and imperialism, focusing on the impact of human control and exploitation of colonized people and their lands. More specifically, it is a ...

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'' 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 imp ...

''. 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''.

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