August 07, 2024
Get your first look inside the Target adaptation of the first adventure from Season 1, released 8th August 2024.
Today marks the release of four novelisations of the Fifteenth Doctor and Ruby Sunday's onscreen adventures. Space Babies, 73 Yards and Rogue all join the Target range of novelisations, while The Church on Ruby Road also gets an additional paperback release.
To celebrate the release of Space Babies, written by Alison Rumfitt, you can read an exclusive excerpt from the novelisation below. There are also extracts from 73 Yards and Rogue available to read here and here.
Get your copy of Space Babies, written by Alison Rumfitt, in paperback or audiobook here.
It isn’t real, she thought. It can’t be.
There’s no such thing as ‘the Bogeyman’.
But looking at the video of it stalking through the dark, she felt that same fear deep in her gut. Some element of this creature activated something… primordial in her. Some part of her basic human core was terrified by it beyond rationality.
Of course it was scary, it was a monster with big teeth, but the fear she felt went further than that. Slime dripped from its ephemeral form. She could see no obvious eyes anywhere on its head, and wondered if perhaps it had none; why would it need eyes to survive in the dark?
There were teeth, though. The Bogeyman turned its head towards the camera, as if it knew they were watching, and its jaws cranked open. Why, what big teeth you have…
‘Doctor,’ Ruby said, her voice quivering. ‘Please turn that off.’ She was asking for the babies’ sake, of course. They were upset already, and seeing the thing was agitating them further.
But Ruby was asking for herself, too. Even thinking about it evoked true fear and disgust in her like she’d never known…
When she was little she’d got lost on a school trip to a museum. She had wandered around in endless circles from room to room. That was how seeing this creature felt, she thought. It felt like loneliness. Of course she’d been fine. Her teachers had found her. After, when she got home, Carla gave her a big hug and told her she’d never get left again, never, Carla would always come find her whenever she needed her to…
Ruby loved her life. Ruby was loved. But seeing this Bogeyman seemed to drown that out: she was alone in the dark and the cold with this thing getting ever closer, sniffing her out, dripping its disgusting slime across the floor…
The Doctor switched off the video feed, but the image stayed with her for a moment longer. She shivered.
He looked a little sheepish as he glanced from the rattled Ruby to the poor, upset kids.
‘Sorry, babies. Space babies.’ He chuckled to himself quietly. But he did look genuinely sorry.
It was clear to Ruby that he wasn’t going to be any help at calming them down, so she hauled Poppy up out of her captain’s chair – her captain’s booster seat – and carried her over to the others. How could she take their minds off the scary stuff? What did babies like?
They like stories, Ruby thought. The Doctor was still busy at the console. Sure, these babies were extremely smart babies but they were still babies. That was clear from their distress. They were babies, and they had nobody to look after them. No amount of technical ability changed that simple fact. So she was going to tell them a story.
Ruby set Poppy down. She looked a little grumpy about having been unceremoniously picked up and moved without her input. The babies were still sniffling, but they moved around her in a crescent motion. Perhaps story circles were something innate within the souls of the human race, from cavemen to space babies, because they picked the idea up straight away.
Ruby sat down too. Her face was level with theirs, despite how tiny they all were. They leaned forwards in their little chairs to listen.
‘I was a baby,’ she began, ‘just like you.’
It wasn’t the greatest opening in the world. Most people were babies at one point or another. But, hey, she had to start somewhere. ‘Younger than you. I was a day old and I was left. My poor old mum, she left me on a church step in the cold.’ She was about to say on Christmas Eve, but stopped herself. These babies probably had no idea what Christmas was, and she didn’t want to make this any more confusing for them than it already was.
Outside the church on Ruby Road, Ruby thought with a pang. Sometimes she felt the chill. Adults might not remember their time as babies, but things linger deep within. Babies who are surrounded by warmth might not grow up remembering all those soft blankets and cuddly toys but poor, abandoned things like these babies, like Ruby herself, grew up feeling the cold just a little more.
Get your copy of Space Babies, written by Alison Rumfitt, in paperback or audiobook here.
