By Steve Cole

BBC Books, out now

The TARDIS arrives in Gaul in 451AD, on the eve of battle between the forces of Attila the Hun and those of the crumbling Roman Empire. But the Doctor soon finds that both sides are being helped by sinister, supernatural creatures.

Steve Cole’s celebrity historical fixes its eyes on Attila the Hun, and wouldn’t you know that the witchcraft that’s controlling the direction of the battle is an alien plot. There’s an epic sweep to the tale, most evident in the battle scenes between Roman and Gaul where a TV budget could never deliver what’s described.

The author also wrote the 9th Doctor’s The Monsters Inside and the 10th’s The Art of Destruction, and he’s having a great time here with the new TARDIS crew. Not satisfied in just splitting up the quartet into two groups (this time it’s the boys and the girls) he also splits them down to individuals, meaning that at any point in time there’s four narrative threads running through.

Graham is very well-served, becoming a surgeon on the battlefield, and Cole has great fun throwing in the pop culture references – we get mention of Asterix, and the location being like a reconstruction that Blue Peter presenters would visit! His East End patois helps bring him to life, and we also get a strong Ryan, still playing up to his main teenage life skill of knowing everything about mobile phones and being aware of his dyspraxia. Yaz also gets a key moment on her own when the Tenctrama take her back to their ship, but Cole is at his happiest and most confident when bouncing this brave new Doctor from one moment of jeopardy to the next.

Again, per the remit of Series 11, there’s no returning monsters, but there are references to the blue ‘ghostly casket’ on its previous visits to Rome (The Romans) and Pompeii (The Fires of Pompeii). ‘Aliens masquerading themselves as witches’ has been done before in The Shakespeare Code, the villains here being decent baddies (rather than misunderstood). The story romps along like a DWM comic strip, and I definitely felt the spectre of The Iron Legion.

Verdict: Short, snappy chapters tempt you to go ‘just one more before I go to bed’ and before you know it you’ve binged the lot. History, but without the boring bits, there’s also a satisfying payoff to all the alien interference. Great fun. 8/10

Nick Joy

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