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A review by trin
Doctor Who: The Nemonite Invasion by David Roden
1.0
The Doctor and Donna crash land in the sea by Dover the night before the evacuation of Dunkirk and it's a really interesting historic-- oh no wait it's another story about soldiers turning into alien bug creatures.
But that's not why this gets one star.
Toward the beginning, the Doctor and co. pursue some sort of creature onto a damaged U-Boat; the creature has attacked and killed everyone on board save one man, who seems ill. It's discovered that the U-Boat is carrying Zyklon B and the Doctor notes it must be "heading to a concentration camp." (Why would a U-Boat be transporting this? Why near Dover?) At this point I paused and was like, "yikes, not something I want evoked by my escapist sci-fi media, why would they even...oh no."
Because I had guessed, correctly, that they were going to use the Zyklon B to kill the aliens.
Yup.
The aliens who, it's later revealed, are the last of their kind, because they are victims of previous genocides, but they need to consume the blood of host species to survive and breed, so...
This story provides a direct connection between Jewish victims of the Holocaust and these blood-drinking aliens (through the specific evocation of Zyklon B, the substance used in Nazi gas chambers) and then proceeds to wipe them out. The Doctor is sad, but still helps.
(Side note: the Doctor is also the one who insists on bringing the injured Nazi back to the English base; this directly leads to him infecting 30 or so more people there and their deaths. If he'd just let the Nazi die it seems the alien problem might have resolved itself, so all the English casualties are also sort of his fault? Great work!)
I want to believe that this was just an unfortunate accident on the part of the writer, editing team, etc. But why would you do this. Why would you do any of this.
Negative a thousand stars.
But that's not why this gets one star.
Toward the beginning, the Doctor and co. pursue some sort of creature onto a damaged U-Boat; the creature has attacked and killed everyone on board save one man, who seems ill. It's discovered that the U-Boat is carrying Zyklon B and the Doctor notes it must be "heading to a concentration camp." (Why would a U-Boat be transporting this? Why near Dover?) At this point I paused and was like, "yikes, not something I want evoked by my escapist sci-fi media, why would they even...oh no."
Because I had guessed, correctly, that they were going to use the Zyklon B to kill the aliens.
Yup.
The aliens who, it's later revealed, are the last of their kind, because they are victims of previous genocides, but they need to consume the blood of host species to survive and breed, so...
This story provides a direct connection between Jewish victims of the Holocaust and these blood-drinking aliens (through the specific evocation of Zyklon B, the substance used in Nazi gas chambers) and then proceeds to wipe them out. The Doctor is sad, but still helps.
(Side note: the Doctor is also the one who insists on bringing the injured Nazi back to the English base; this directly leads to him infecting 30 or so more people there and their deaths. If he'd just let the Nazi die it seems the alien problem might have resolved itself, so all the English casualties are also sort of his fault? Great work!)
I want to believe that this was just an unfortunate accident on the part of the writer, editing team, etc. But why would you do this. Why would you do any of this.
Negative a thousand stars.