An Alien Drawn on Celluloid

As someone who loves the movies, I found this to be a fun romp. It's Doctor Who paying obeisance to the likes of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. The Doctor, Ben, and Polly find themselves in Los Angeles in 1947 where they stumble upon a cult looking to spread their gospel in the form of Midi-chlorian-like aliens smeared on celluloid to be projected to the unsuspecting masses.

Dying in the Sun is a very noirish affair. There's our (anti-)hero, Robert Chate, who's a drug dealer, Maria Coleman, a down and out actress who is the story's femme fatale, lots of sordid activities, corrupt cops, and plenty of murder.

Exposure to the aliens, whether by ingestion or watching a print tainted with them, imparts feelings beatific as well as egoistic to the person whose mind is being influenced by the creatures punningly called the Selyoids.

While this tale doesn't stray far from the conventions of Doctor Who, it is a really fun read. Our heroes are written well, even if the Doctor is a bit generic. I appreciated that the cult wasn't evil per se, but rather severely misguided. They weren't imposing the aliens onto people out of a desire to conquer or subdue, but rather out of a sense of paternal benevolence.

There's a scene that stays with me that involves Det. Fletcher. The Selyoids can animate corpses and they do so to interact with the cult leaders. As chaos reigns near the end of the story, Fletcher is under the influence of the Selyoids and gains an insatiable desire to have more of them inside of his body. Using a letter opener that he had filched, he punctures the skull of one of the corpses that has been brought to life...

A wide smile crossed his face and he scooped the Selyoid essence out of the corpse’s skull with his hands. He shoveled it in to his mouth and drank it, pools of glowing liquid spilling through his fingers.

Criticism of consumerist culture is a bit on the nose - at one point, Polly argues with the Doctor that people don't object to advertising so how is the tainted film any different?  (I think that's the gist of it. I cannot find that section.) - but I still enjoyed the story. That the cops are crookeder than a dog's hind leg while the ostensible evil villains are more deluded than malevolent was a nice touch. Plus, I simply liked the whole noir atmosphere, tropes and all.