Nuclear Time

Oli Smith

2010

The TARDIS deposits the crew in the depths of the Colorado desert. Only the crew find themselves in a town called Applewood. Aprt from its rather isolated position Applewood appears to be the typical American small town with the average sort of people in it.

Except for the rather unkempt guy in the upsairs bedroom of one of the houses. This being the crew of the TARDIS, they are quickly separated and they find out that the strange inhabitants of the town are actually robots designed to look human. Their purposes to look human enough so that they can be infiltrated as assassins and kill their targets. The only snag is that they were also designed to kill anyone who had found out their true nature. And the programme had been canned and it had been deemed cheaper to nuke them all. Only, the nuclear weapon was on its way and due to go off within the next few minutes. When they get to where the TARDIS had been, Rory and Amy find it has gone leaving them in imminent danger of death by nuclear explosion.

The Doctor was having problems of his own; a copy of himself kept appearing, but going in reverse, living backwards in time even while trying to help out his earlier self.

This story is intercut with the story of the scientist and his military masters who developed the robots.

The intercutting was a bit intrusive but was okay. The bits of the story with the Doctor running in reverse compared with the rest of the world was more difficult to carry forward and it wasn't always clear where we were. Overal, though, the book was a good read and it captures the feel of the trio well when compared to their on screen portrayal.

---