Doctor Who: Combat Rock

Past Doctor Adventures #55

by Mick Lewis

When 400-year-old tribal mummies inexplicably return to life and begin murdering tourists on an exotic alien island, the Doctor's initial urge to investigate lands himself, Jamie and Victoria right in the middle of a jungle holocaust. Ferocious cannibals and deadly beasts stalk the swamps, mummies lurk amongst the trees and the peaceful, civilised locals are reverting to long-forgotten head-hunting practices. Something is giving a clarion call to savagery, something that can only be found in the deepest darkness at the heart of the hostile rainforest. It could well be the end of the river for the TARDIS companions as they find themselves involved in a horrific jungle conflict between desperate guerrilla tribesmen and merciless colonial forces. Cannibalism could be the least of their worries as evil stirs the pot and the dead reach for the living...

Genres: Doctor Who, Science Fiction, Fiction, Ebooks, Horror, Doctors

288 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2002

Reviews

[Ken · Rating 4 out of 5]

Out of all the Past Doctor Adventures this novel was one of the titles that I was really keen to revisit.
It has a low opinion amongst fans and a low score on Goodreads, surly it’s not that bad?

This is essentially Doctor Who meets horror, it doesn’t quite fit with the series but if it’s a genre you like then you will certainly have fun with this adventure.

It’s basically an allegory of Indonesia’s treatment of Irian Jaya as mentioned in the back of the book.
It’s shocking and brutal whilst quite telling that the show wasn’t in production at the time, there’s no way this book would be published today.

It’s an interesting tale that gives a great insight into a region I’m not overly familiar with.
I think it’s fair to say at times it doesn’t really feel like a Doctor Who novel, but it’s nice to have something different.

Out of the TARDIS crew it’s Jamie that is best suite to this story, the young highlander excitement for the scantily clad ladies is rather amusing.

I’m not sure if a different Doctor would have made others enjoy this story more, but two companions were needed to make this story work...

[David Layton · Rating 1 out of 5]

Mick Lewis has tried to write a Vietnam War novel, Heart of Darkness story, Zombie invasion horror/slasher movie tale set in the Doctor Who universe. I emphasize tried. What comes out is a mish-mash so pointlentlessly violent and gory it defies description. Doctor 2, Jamie, and Victoria land on a jungle world that is so like 1960s Vietnam it seems utterly pointless to have made it an alien world. This society is in the midst of a civil war on a planet that still has tourism. Our heroes get hoodwinked into going to an island of "former" cannibals for some low-grade site seeing, predictably get attacked, split up, and variously assualted. Thus, the reader follows the three characters as they try to find each other and escape. There is a fourth plot involving a crew of nasty, ugly mercenaries who spend most of their time killing for the hell of it and nursing their psychoses. Into this, we get ruthless native freedom fighters, the aforementioned cannibals, several absurdly large and dangerous beasties, all in a journey-to-the-center plot. I say plot, but there really is not much of one. The story goes from one scene of brutality to the next, without respite, and without developing anything. There are so many villains that the big baddy, the Krallik, just feels like one of the crew rather than any sort of ultimate evil. The Doctor spends virtually the entire novel doing nothing but muttering "My giddy aunt." Victoria gets threatened with rape several times. Mick Lewis tries throwing in some "style" by using Tim O'Brien stream of consciousness passages with the mercenaries. I suppose there is material here for those with slasher movies tastes. It left me with a bad taste in my mouth that I am still trying to rinse away.

[Nicholas Whyte · Rating 3 out of 5]

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2016156.html[return][return][return]This is an exceptionally violent Who book, taking the Second Doctor, Jamie and Victoria and dropping them into a vicious colonial conflict which is pretty clearly based on the Indonesian conquest of West Papua. This amount of sex and gore isn't really my thing (and seems wel out of place for a Who novel of the black and white era), but I found it a compelling read none the less - clearly the author is passionate about the setting (one of the more miserably botched decolonisations of the 1960s) and the story is tightly plotted and well told with compelling guest characters. Not yer typical Who novel, and not necessarily in a bad way.

[Kristine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Violent, but thrilling, full of action and tension...

The reason I started reading this book was because I just wanted to read something with Jamie in it, and after getting a bunch of titles recommended to me, I found this one the most interesting. This is the third Doctor Who novel I've read, and I was not expecting it to be so adult. Well, I've read Game of Thrones, and this was nothing in comparison, *spoiler ahead* but when the Doctor's companion walks into a bar to look at girls and gets drunk...?? I know Jamie sometimes flirted with girls in the TV series, but I'm still trying to decide if this is out of character or not. In the mood/style of the book, it seems okay though...

All in all the writing style reminds me of Michael Grant's (author of GONE and BZRK): violence, sex, grotesque things, psychopaths, but realistic characters. And we get POVs from the good guys and the bad guys, which is fascinating.

Cause the book wasn't bad! It was quite interesting really! Different; not your average Doctor Who. More mature. Very captivating too. I liked the setting and the mood of the story (not much running up and down corridors here!)

But it's a bit weird with all the violence and gore...

[LASFS Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society · Rating 1 out of 5]

The author seems quite taken with the history of cannibalism among the tribes of New Guinea.
The Doctor is used to bring his companions to a world where the native tribes have reverted to their ancestors' cannibalistic ways, under the influence of an alien mind controlling force. The companions are stuck dealing with the tribesmen, avoiding danger, rescuing people and being rescued, watching sympathetic characters getting killed and nearly getting killed themselves. And then the Doctor pulls a rabbit out of his hat and defeats the alien presence.
Then he's the device by which the companions leave this world.

This is one I don't intend to pass along to a new victim reader.

[Allie Sharpe · Rating 1 out of 5]

One of the worst books. Even bad Doctor Who books at least have a good line or okay idea. It hates Doctor Who and hates anyone who reads it.

[Frank Davis · Rating 2 out of 5]

For me this was barely a 2-star and in no real measure was it a Doctor Two story. I give it one star for having words in it and one more star for characterising the Doctor and Jamie pretty well but I'll recommend it only for those completionists who can drag themselves through a mundane story about whoring and killing.

I just read this horrendous thing three times in a row. I don't think I've ever finished a book that I love and immediately started it again but I finished this twice with a sense of not having gotten anything at all from the story and for some foolish reason felt compelled to jump right back in and look for what I was missing. The third time was not the charm and really I still don't know what purpose this story serves.

I did read a few other reviews before getting started with this one and I'm inclined to agree with much of what has been said by both positive and negative reviewers.

This isn't really a Doctor Two story and for me that's the most important feature that a Doctor Two book should have. While I did like some parts of the story, I am reviewing it in whole as a Doctor Two book.

The Doctor and co were occasionally familiar, even if it was hard to grab onto in this setting. Doc had a very familiar attitude to what he was seeing and I thought he was well in character throughout. Jamie was written better than he has been in other books, less antagonistic overall while still maintaining his avid fighting spirit. Unfortunately Vicky got a rough role which wasn't very enjoyable and she was frequently regarded in respect to her upbringing.

I actually didn't think the natives were as flat as other people have mentioned. I can't say I connected with anyone in particular, but they were real people even if we're not familiar with people living an experience like this. I suspected that the author passed either his own obsession or his own naivety into some of the overdone primality.

Maybe there is an important cultural story here. I might have read and enjoyed this story in another setting, but not fitting into the Whoniverse is a pretty big flaw when you're reading Doctor Who.

[Ian · Rating 1 out of 5]

A Past Doctor Adventure featuring the Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton) and his companions Jamie and Victoria.
Attempting to engage in some innocent tourism on a jungle-covered island, the Doctor and his companions instead find themselves caught between an oppressive government military force and the ruthless freedom fighters opposing it. Worse still is the sudden and mysterious outbreak of savagery and primitivism among the locals, which leads them back into horrific ancient traditions.

Ask yourself if what you want to see from a Doctor Who novel is a scene where a missionary is presented with the severed head of another missionary and then force-fed the brains or a scene where one of the Doctor's companions is forced to watch as a friend is roasted and eaten by cannibals. If the answer is 'Yes', then you my friend are one sick son of a bitch.
This book is a veritable orgy of violence, cruelty, torture, rape and dismemberment. It is a story where every faction the Doctor and his friends encounter are utterly monstrous; be it the genocidal government, the psychotic rapist mercenaries, the brutal cannibalistic natives or the rebels who behead one of their civillian captives.

Now you might think that this is all a critique by the author on the horrors of jungle warfare (there's a definite South East Asia vibe to the setting) or the cruelty inherent in colonialism, but the problem is that this book doesn't seem particularly critical of all the violence and sadism. In fact, it revels in it.
I found the book to be nasty and mean-spirited and can't imagine anyone actually enjoying reading it (but then, I never understood why torture-porn films like 'Saw' and 'Hostel' are so popular either).

* More reviews here: https://fsfh-book-review2.webnode.com/ *

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

As Doctor who novels go this one's fairly gritty but that kind of makes sense as these books where mainly written whilst the series was off T.V. so it's likely Dr Who as a idea wasn't drawing in younger readers as it became a less familiar concept and the die hards would be getting older.
So as such with this book we have Gore,cannibalism and non gratuitous (pretty much implied) sexual content...and luckily a good enough tale..a kind of sci first 'Heart of darkness'...this features the second Doctor...as a added positive I found Jamie a lot less irritating than in other books.
Good fun...

[Jacob Licklider · Rating 1 out of 5]

Combat Rock is a book with a reputation. That is for good reason. The experience reading this novel can be described as unpleasant. Author Mick Lewis had already contributed a similarly unpleasant Past Doctor Adventures novel in Rags, and Combat Rock seems to wish to outdo that. That’s the point at the center of the novel, to be as unpleasant as one possibly can be while maintaining some sort of narrative. Or author Mick Lewis simply watched Cannibal Holocaust and thought that would be a good basis for a Doctor Who story, at least in terms of how it gained cult status and the cruelty it put on-screen, both real and fictional. That and other Italian horror films. Lewis as a person is unhinged, claiming to have spent time among a cannibal tribe, having a girlfriend descended from cannibals, and other wild claims just short of partaking in cannibalism himself. Talking about this novel is generally an odd thing to do. It lacks narrative cohesion, Lewis using a generic plot of once again space marines fighting against native inhabitants, but this time there are zombies. The jungle planet of Jenggel (get it?) was a post-colonial holiday planet, but the indigenous natives have begun to fight back after literally raising the dead and causing a series of gruesome murders. To give Lewis the benefit of the doubt, there is potential for a story with an incredibly strong anti-colonialist message throughout, the team of space marines in the OPG are portrayed largely as bad people, but the natives are presented equally as gruesome. This comes across as Lewis thinking he’s being complex about how different cultures interact, but then just making the natives literal savages who are doing things that are unnatural.

The native characters are hardly characters, Lewis taking inspiration from several horror films for their portrayal at the best of times. This sadly isn’t a novel with many a best of times, as Combat Rock’s indigenous characters more often are presented as part of Mick Lewis’ general fetish for strong, black women. Practically every female character in this novel, and there are many, is reduced to being a sex object, has some form of sexual assault perpetrated against them, or is at the very least threatened with it. The treatment of Victoria Waterfield in particular is horrendous, in terms of contributions to the plot she is damseled and forced to watch horrific acts of torture and murder while also being threatened with sexual violence. Outside of what happens to her Lewis makes a point to go into how conservative she is which you think is going to be a comment on what a character like Victoria would be in reality and not in universe, but he also has characters go on about how pure her white skin is coming dangerously close to white supremacist talking points that go completely unexamined. While I want to give Lewis the benefit of the doubt, already there was so much racism and sexism in Combat Rock that you can only give so much before it becomes a problem.

Having any sort of focus is the biggest structural problem with Combat Rock, Lewis clearly going for shock value. The title is taken from an album by The Clash, a band I am honestly not at all familiar with nor an album I have listened to. Lewis alludes to it in the text by referring to combat rock as a type of music once or twice, but that’s about it. Especially odd since Rags, his other Doctor Who novel, at least had a connection to music because this one really doesn’t. The actual plot is paper thin, despite running the full 280 pages the BBC Books allow, there isn’t a whole lot that actually happens narratively. There’s a lot of supporting characters that are almost entirely one-note and fitting into some bigoted stereotype. The racism and sexism is clearly coming from a fetishistic place, but there’s also a character called Pretty Boy whose introduction quite literally reads “bisexual, deadly, always wore black lace over his shining black leather; eyes underscored with just a little touch of liner. But call him effeminate and it would be the last thing you ever did. And yes, he was pretty. Dyed black hair thick and wavy, cheekbones raw but sleek, a sensuous mouth, and not a scar on him.” (43-44) The novel treats its one confirmed queer character as a complete freak and implied predator, though he is among a group of explicit predators. Even Jamie McCrimmon is given the treatment, portrayed as impossibly horny for about the first 100 pages, right up until the moment Victoria is kidnapped and then he becomes violent and determined to find her.

Somehow, the Second Doctor makes it through the novel unscathed, Mick Lewis unironically capturing the character better than most other authors who have attempted to do so in prose. Don’t ask me how.

When I reviewed Rags three years ago, I implied Mick Lewis didn’t put effort in, yet for Combat Rock there is effort. It’s effort into almost entirely the wrong things except the Doctor’s characterization to make the novel a truly unpleasant reading experience that doesn’t have anything to say outside of violence. Any commentary is undercut by just how uncomfortable everything about the novel is and how much it’s clear Lewis is enjoying what he’s writing here. Yet, it’s also no worse than Rags which already was quite bad. 2/10.

[Simon Curtis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Different, I'll give it that!

[DevryBasketball · Rating 1 out of 5]

To quote the Sixth Doctor; "Do you ever do anything but kill?" Rather rendering my job here pointless, as no words could be as apt as those for Combat Rock, the worst Doctor Who book I have ever read (and I've read The Pit.)

I'm really at kind of a loss here, and I don't want to seem like some pearl-clutcher bandying about the wordy 'problematic' at the faintest provocation. Heck there's an extended reference to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, one of my favourite movies, in here. Point is, I can trawl through muck with the best of them. Whatever moral issue one has with Combat Rock's truly bizarre fixation on sex, violence and taboo is more of a subjective issue. The problem it poses narratively is far more concrete. And, not to put too fine a point on it, but why Doctor Who? Why this?

In truth, I knew about Combat Rock through reputation, and it's morbidity contrasted with the TARDIS crew of the Second Doctor, Jamie and Victoria was a fascinating prospect to me. This group, while primarily centred in the horror-packed fifth season of the TV series, was always a lot more whimsical and G-rated than many others. The horrors they faced were generally of the silvery-suits and rubbery-tendrils ouvre. To have them come up face to face with the barbarity of colonialism, cannibalism, rape and torture is another one entirely. If Doctor Who doesn't have the nuance to handle something as fraught and sensitive as colonial subjugation, this particular crew are perhaps the least suited to it.

And that's before you come up on how weirdly dated and unacceptable this particular portrayal of, well, the vague amorphous British occupied picture of "the dark continent", to be frank. Its being an alien planet is about as compelling a defense as the insanity plea, the allegory here is not so much obvious as barely even attempted in the first place. It has a mean and cruel attitude towards tourists and a borderline fascistic approach to preserving the national identity. But for all of its bluster the author bio opens on the phenomenally yikes sentence "Mick Lewis likes cannibals." Perhaps the author resents what he recognises in the tourists he delights in seeing tortured and bisected in such gruesome detail, perhaps it hits a little close to home. But I'm not here to psychoanalyse the guy. I'm merely here to point out that these depictions of African revolutionaries, noble savages and cannibals would have felt dated in a 1930s adventure serial, and yet here they are published without a trace of irony or self awareness in 2002, in a book purportedly about the negative consequences of colonial expansion. The irony is overwhelming.

Stripped of its juvenile conceit it's miserably plotted, the threadbare narrative existing as a flimsy justification for the gorehound setpieces. The Doctor spends an overwhelming majority of the book with his hands in his pocket, buffeted by the whims of the plot without actually contributing, asserting his presence every so often to tell desperately unlikable stock characters to stop bickering. Then of course once he reaches the proverbial Colonel Kurtz in the last act, his function is to explain the plot to the audience in as bland and prosaic a fashion as you can imagine, without even having a hand in its conclusion. Jamie and Victoria fare slightly better, even if they have a nasty habit of disappearing inexplicably from the plot for long stretches of time.

If, like me, you're curious as to how the cherub faced protagonists of season five react to a crushingly edgy Virgin New Adventures style romp you'll find the novelty fades quickly. Good ideas, such as contrasting Jamie's own revolutionary actions against an occupying force, or confronting Victoria with her own British imperialist background are really only afforded casual lip service. Given the interminable scenes of pointless gory chaos or extended vacations into the psychoses of mercenaries whose only feature is that they're reprehensible, it feels like confused priorities to put it charitably. Theming was just one of those things left on the cutting room floor, I'm afraid, just above "compelling characters" and just below "satisfying narrative logic".

But like I said, all of these are useless words. Trying to rationalise this waste of time is as pointless an exercise as reading it in the first place. So instead, have a cup of tea, put on some stupid shit like Time and the Rani, curl up with your pet and just put it out of your mind. Once I've submitted this review that's what I plan to do.

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

Penis gourds. Whores. Guy who likes to have sex with whores and maybe kill them. Cannibals. There's no way the BBC would have broadcast this at seven o'clock on a Saturday night.

Published in 2002, this is very much the product of a franchise that was - as far as anyone was concerned - dead and buried, at least regarding an actual TV show. A couple of years down the line and RTD would be bringing it back and pushing it to levels of popularity that it hadn't known since the mid-70s and novels like this wouldn't see the light of say again.

But is it any good? The characterisation is very good, particularly Jamie. Whilst the Second Doctor makes for an interesting choice for what is essentially Cannibal Holocaust on an alien planet (one suspects the Sixth Doctor with his history of acid baths and flesh hungry Androgums might have been a more obvious choice for the story) his two companions, Jamie and Victoria, both coming from Earth's past allow Lewis to make some interesting asides, particularly Victoria's British Empire outlook. But the plot is buried under an unpleasant morass of violence and nastiness. Only one of the characters outside of the TARDIS crew is anywhere near likable, leaving lots of pages to wade through unpleasant people doing unpleasant things. Only in the last eighty pages or so do things come together, and even then, the denouement is more a fluke than by any effort on the part of our heroes.

The characterisation saves it from being a one star book. But I honestly can't recommend it. It's a brave experiment though, the type of which is never really seen in tie-in fiction, so kudos for the attempt.

[Catherine · Rating 1 out of 5]

My feelings about this book can best be summed up by @timespace’s post on Tumblr: “instant block for anyone who says they like combat rock.” This book contains gratuitous violence, extreme mistreatment, violence and degradation of sex workers, cannibalism and much more that I have blocked out. It would have been nice to have a bit of warning, but I’m willing to accept some blame for not looking at the cover properly. There’s also a lot of girl-on-girl violence (physical and metaphorical), which really rubs me the wrong way, especially when it’s written by a male author. Combat Rock reads like one of those torture porn horror movies from the early 2000s. I will say, the only thing that makes me feel slightly better about having to give it 1 star is the way it discusses colonisation. It explores, in short bursts, the colonisation of a set of islands and how the different cultures, both the new and the already existing, interact within the new context of a colonised society.

[Samuel · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is supposed to be a Second Doctor story. It's about as far away a thing as I can possibly imagine.

[Gavin Mills · Rating 1 out of 5]

Utter trash. Shame I can't give 0 stars. Nothing redeeming whatsoever. No idea how it has the BBC brand on the cover.

[Jas · Rating 1 out of 5]

The writing is mediocre, but the racism, sexism, and extremely-out-of-character characters push this book to straight up bad.

[Denis Southall · Rating 1 out of 5]

Utter garbage. O stars in reality. If only I didn't feel the need to finish a book once started.

[John Wilson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ergh.

[Dan Hodges · Rating 2 out of 5]

Doctor Who meets Cannibal Holocaust is not something I thought I'd ever experienced and now I wish I could forget it. Not a completely terrible book, but the dark, violent, or adult-themed stories that came out of the Wilderness Years are interesting though often failed experiments.