Beltempest (novel)

Beltempest
Doctor:	Eighth Doctor
Companion(s):	Sam
Featuring:	Conaway, Bellis
Main enemy:	Hoth, Eldred Saketh, Major General Smoot
Main setting:	Bellannia IV
Key crew
Publisher:	BBC Books
Writer:	Jim Mortimore
Release details
Release number:	17
Release date:	16 November 1998
Format:	Paperback Book; 12 Chapters, 249 Pages
ISBN:	ISBN 0-563-40593-7
BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures
← Previous	The Janus Conjunction
Next →	The Face-Eater

You may be looking for the unrelated character.

Beltempest was the seventeenth novel in the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures series. It was written by Jim Mortimore, released 16 November 1998 and featured the Eighth Doctor and Sam Jones.

It was Mortimore's only contribution to the EDA range.

Publisher's summary

The people of Bellania II see their sun, Bel, shrouded in night for a month following an impossible triple eclipse. When Bel is returned to them a younger, brighter, hotter star, it is the beginning of the end for the entire solar system...

100,000 years later, the Doctor and Sam arrive on Bellania IV, where the population is under threat as disaster looms — immense gravitational and dimensional disturbances are surging through this area of space.

While the time travellers attempt to help the survivors and ease the devastation, a religious suicide-cult leader is determined to spread a new religion through Bel's system — and his word may prove even more dangerous than the terrible forces brought into being by the catastrophic changes in the sun...

Plot

to be added

Characters

• Eighth Doctor
• Sam Jones
• Surgeon Major Alesis Conaway
• Alexis Denadi
• Eldred Saketh
• Captain Ruthelle Bellis
• Ruthelle Bellis' son
• Ruthelle Bellis' grandson
• Ruthelle Bellis' child
• Aellini
• Major General Donarrold Lesbert Smoot
• Skywatcher
• Fastblade
• Skywatcher's father
• Jenny
• Ranald
• Sully s'Vufu
• Geoffran
• Catheline
• Jonaghan
• Jonaghan's father
• Sehnadi Oleen
• Masari Oleen
• Denelden Oleen
• Joe
• Maresley
• Harome Janeth
• Cherry
• Jarold Farnham

Worldbuilding

Culture

• Conaway likes opera.

The Doctor

• The Doctor mentions, "I was in my early nineties before I could bring myself to admit that I still liked to play with my perigosto stick."
• The Doctor has degrees in psychology and the social dynamics of machine intelligence.

Drugs and medicines

• Sam takes speed.

Foods and beverages

• The Doctor likes chocolates with soft centres.
• Sam doesn't like ham.
• The Doctor requests some Broken Orange Pekoe tea.

Planets

• Belannia XXI is too dangerous for colonisation or mining due to the radiation.

Religion

• While considering religion, Sam recalls Kyle Dale and Micawber's World (and the Church of the Way Forward's role in all that occurred).

Species

• The Seekers are planet-like beings that live for billions of years and dwell in the depths of Deep Time.
• The Hanakoi built many of the cities on Belannia VIII which are now inhabited by humans.

Technology

• Sam gets infected with nanotech and (she believes in some ways) "dies".
• The Doctor uses an emergency button from a sandminer to control a generator for his gramophone.

Notes

• In 2020, author Jim Mortimore self-published an "Intermix" of Beltempest which fixed many of the original structural issues and added ten thousand words of new material.

Continuity

• The Doctor wonders if the TARDIS is taking them to planets with odd suns. The previous book, The Janus Conjunction, also featured an odd sun.
• Sam wonders to herself what decompression would be like, despite having gone through it three times in Dreamstone Moon.
• Sam recalls the events of Placebo Effect.
• Similar nanotechnology also appears in The Doctor Dances.

External links

• Beltempest at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
• The Discontinuity Guide to: Beltempest at The Whoniverse
• The Cloister Library: Beltempest