Camera Obscura (novel)

Camera Obscura
Doctor:	[[doctor::Eighth Doctor]]
Companion(s):	Fitz Kreiner, Anji Kapoor
Main enemy:	Sabbath, The Octaves, Angel-Maker
Main setting:	Earth Wales, Dartmoor and Capel Gorast, late July and early August, 1893
Key crew
Publisher:	[[publisher::BBC Books]]
Writer:	Lloyd Rose
Release details
Release number:	59
Release date:	July, 2002
Format:	Paperback Book, --- Pages
ISBN:	ISBN 0-563-53857-0
BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures
← Previous	History 101
Next →	Time Zero

Camera Obscura was the fifty-ninth novel in the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures series. It was written by Lloyd Rose. It featured the Eighth Doctor, Fitz Kreiner and Anji Kapoor.

Publisher’s Summary

The Doctor sat alone and listened to the beat of his remaining heart. He had never got used to it. He never would. The single sound where a double should be. What was this new code hammering through his body? What did it mean? Mortal. No, he’d always known he could die. Not mortal. Damaged. Crippled. Through his shirt, his fingers sought the thick ridge of his scar. Human...

The Doctor’s second heart was taken from his body -- for his own good, he was told. Removed by his sometime ally, sometime rival, the mysterious time-traveller Sabbath. Now, as a new danger menaces reality, the Doctor finds himself working with Sabbath again. From a seance in Victorian London to a wild pursuit on Dartmoor, the Doctor and his companions work frantically to unravel the mystery of this latest threat to Time... Before Time itself unravels.

Characters

• The Eighth Doctor
  • Nearly dies when a sandbag is dropped (from great height) onto his chest, crushing his remaining heart and smashing his ribs so hard they poke out his back onto the floor.
  • The Doctor tricks the Angel-Maker into stabbing him through the heart (in order to venture into Death’s realm).
• Fitz Kreiner
• Anji Kapoor
• Sabbath (alias Mr G.K. Thursday)
• Angel-Maker (aka Elizabeth Kelly)
  • She's a time sensitive.
• Death
• Constance Jane
• George Williamson
• Hugo Little
• Micah Scale
• Nathaniel Chiltern
• Nora
• Octave
• O'Keagh
• Sebastian Chiltern

References

• The Jonah, Sabbath’s time vessel, is mentioned.
• The Doctor travels down into the realms of Death.
• Chilitern’s time machine works along principles of temporal interferometry.
• Trapped in Chilitern's time machine, the Doctor sees his previous incarnations in agony.
• With the removal of the Doctor’s old blackened heart from Sabbath’s chest, the Doctor is able to "grow" a new one.
• The Doctor quotes Hound of the Baskervilles.

Notes

• There is a brief appearance by "William the Bloody Awful Poet". This is the human who will become the vampire Spike in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (played by James Marsters, who later played Captain John Hart in Torchwood). In ST: Homework, reference is made to Buffy as fictional.

Continuity

• The Doctor speaks of Sabbath’s previous ploys including Station One and Barcelona. (EDA: Anachrophobia, History 101)
• When the Doctor is crushed by the sandbags, it is his connection to Sabbath through his second heart, which was removed in EDA: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street and that Sabbath implanted in his own body, that keeps him from dying.
• Fitz goes to a history lecture on Siberia and meets explorer George Williamson. The expedition appears in EDA: Time Zero.
• Fitz recalls his visit with the Doctor to San Francisco and shares his limited knowledge of biodata. (EDA: Unnatural History)
• Sabbath says that Scarlette was the only woman the Doctor ever got close to. (EDA: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street)

Timeline

• Camera Obscura takes place after EDA: History 101.
• Camera Obscura takes place before ST: Notre Dame du Temps.

External links

• Camera Obscura at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
• The Discontinuity Guide to: Camera Obscura at The Whoniverse