Who Reviews The Taking of Chelsea 426 by DJ Forrest

Written by David Llewellyn

For BBC Books

Published 2009

Doctor Who has always been about Dystopian futures, so terrifying that we can only imagine what it could be like. Trouble is, ten years or so on from this novel, we’re about to embark on a dystopian world grown from people’s desire for change, but then not in the way some envisaged when they popped their vote into the ballot box.

This story may not be set on Earth, but the centre plot, the characters, their attitudes towards Newcomers, and the general feel of the story, and, to be honest, many of the books I’ve read thus far, in my reviewing of Who novels, have all had a feel of life on Earth as it is since the present Prime Minister was elected. Turn every page of the novel, read every bickering comment from a settler on Chelsea 426, and you’ve the bloke across the road, the bloke on the telly reporting the news, the man in the White House, and whoever else is in power, threatening strife which will in turn threaten us all.

Chelsea 426 is having a flower show, exhibiting flowers that are not from their own planet, but were captured as spores in a cloud and grown and nurtured, and now the head honcho wants to share his plants with the ‘world’ or Newcomers, travelling from far and wide. But as you find, this plant has a few little side effects for anyone who stands too close – and sooner or later, you're singing to a different tune, exhibiting behaviour unlike your true self, and you don’t much like the new arrivals from the planet Sontar.

There’s something almost comical about the NuWho Sontarans that I like, over the frightening ones back in the ‘70s that scared the very pants off me. These seem to at least form a coherent sentence, and are often challenged by the Doctor, who for once, so far (haven’t finished the novel yet), hasn’t been fired at or threatened with certain death.

The Sontarans are on the planet to seek out the Rutans, their age-old enemies, who have made their way to Chelsea 426, only of course, the residents blame the Newcomers for the troubles that now face the planet, and insist that the Sontarans arrest and detain them – but of course, the Newcomers, have brought nothing with them other than the desire to view beautiful flowers that are extremely rare. And in true Chelsea Flower Show fashion, I imagined many other less interesting exhibits to build up the momentum of the big reveal under the glass dome, where many hundreds of people would eventually succumb to flower power!

There are some interesting characters that have hit home for me, the state of our own world, our judgemental attitudes to others. Our disregard for how we should behave – how children should be kept at chores and not enjoy growing up – and not mark every teenager as a waste of space, likely to clutter up the high streets in groups, chewing gum, dressing inappropriately, threatening and noisy.

We expect so much from the people around us, that we forget that it’s not them who need to change, but ourselves. There’s a lesson to be learnt in all the Who books from 2007 – 2010, that are beginning to ring true of our lives today.