Blood Heat (novel)

Blood Heat
Doctor:	Seventh Doctor
Companion(s):	Ace, Benny
Featuring:	Liz, Jo, the Brig, Benton
Main enemy:	Silurians, Sea Devils
Main setting:	Silurian Earth, 1993
Key crew
Publisher:	Virgin Books
Writer:	Jim Mortimore
Release details
Release number:	19
Release date:	21 October 1993
Format:	Paperback Book; 6 Chapters, 309 Pages
ISBN:	ISBN 0-426-20399-2
Virgin New Adventures
← Previous	Iceberg
Next →	The Dimension Riders
DWM's "New Adventures order"
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Next →	The Dimension Riders

Blood Heat was the nineteenth novel in the Virgin New Adventures series of novels. It was written by Jim Mortimore and features the Seventh Doctor, Ace and Bernice. This is the first New Adventure novel to delve into an alternate universe, spawned from alternate events of Doctor Who and the Silurians.

Publisher's summary

Not men, Ace. Silurians. The original rulers of the Earth.

The TARDIS is attacked by an alien force; Bernice is flung into the Vortex; and the Doctor and Ace crash-land on Earth.

An attack by dinosaurs convinces the Doctor that he and Ace have arrived in the Jurassic Era. But when they find a woman being hunted by intelligent reptiles, he begins to suspect that something is very wrong.

Then they meet the embittered Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, leading the remnants of UNIT in a hopeless fight against the Silurians who rule his world. And they find out that it all began when the Doctor died...

Plot

to be added

Characters

• Seventh Doctor
• Ace
• Bernice Summerfield
• Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart
• Liz Shaw
• Jo Grant
• John Benton
• Manisha Purkayastha
• Alan
• Julia
• Jan
• Frank Hobson
• Morka
• Imorkal
• Chtaachtl
• Chtorba

References

Aquatic vessels

• The HMS Revenge carries nuclear missiles.

Biology

• Morka injects Bernice Summerfield with a virus which cures the race memory malaise.
• The Silurian virus is known as "the Nightmare".

The Doctor

• The Doctor has two more ribs than a human.
• Morka killed the alternative Third Doctor.
• The Doctor performs a time ram to destroy this universe to save his own.

The Doctor's items

• Ace finds a sonic screwdriver in the (dead) Third Doctor's pockets.

Individuals

• Jo Grant was sent to retrieve the launch codes the Brigadier planned to use. She goes insane from radiation exposure and race memory malaise.
• Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart injects a stimulant into Jo Grant to get information from her. It kills her.
• Liz Shaw married a man named James Lester. He hit his head looking for food and died.
• Manisha saw her version of Ace die, an inversion of events in the primary universe, where Ace saw Manisha die when her flat was firebombed. (TV: Ghost Light)
• Rod was part of the group getting supplies.
• Harry Sullivan serves as the HMS Revenge's surgeon.

Locations

• Ophidian is a Silurian city on Earth.
• Sam Meredith works with UNIT.
• The Doctor notices that Zanzibar is almost totally submerged.

Military

• Ace has been out of the Spacefleet for a few months, though she still wears the uniform/body armour.

Species

• The dilophosaurus is a type of theropod dinosaur.
• The Doctor refers to Silurians as psionosauropodomorpha.
• Ace adopts a compsognathus as a mascot.
• An edmontonia knocks the TARDIS into a tar pit.
• The Doctor, Ace and Jo ride ornithomimuses into a herd of seismosauruses.
• The large theropod dinosaur baryonyx is shown to hunt the human survivors horses.
• A pack of raptors attack Mamisha's house.
• A large species of pterodactyl are used by the Silurians as mounts.
• Sea Devils use kronosauruses and plesiosauruses to attack the submarine, The HMS Revenger.
• Silurains are revealed to use mammoths for food and presumably milk and wool.
• Silurians use herrerasauruses as hunting beasts.
• Other dinosaurs are featured including tyrannosaurus rex, triceratops, brontosaurus, hadrosaurus, stegosaurus, camarasaurus, deinonychus, diplodocus, and archaeopteryx.

TARDIS

• The TARDIS falls through a puncture in the Time Vortex.
• Ace lifts the TARDIS belonging to the alternate Doctor (which had fallen on its doors) single-handedly and with a broken arm.
• Ace makes the (alternate universe) TARDIS materialise around the entire planet Earth, placing everything in a state of temporal grace.
• The Doctor uses the secondary console room.
• The Doctor takes his third self's TARDIS from the alternate universe as his is lost in a tar pit. This TARDIS has a working Chameleon Circuit.

Weapons

• Ace's new variant of Nitro-9, Nitro-9 smart bombs, can fly and accept verbal commands.
• Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart launches a nuclear warhead at the Silurian capital city in Africa.
• Ace has an oval scar on her stomach caused by a Special Weapons Dalek.

Notes

• A prelude to this novel was published in DWM 205.
• Blood Heat marks the beginning of the pentalogy of New Adventure novels loosely known as the Alternative Universe Arc. This is comprised of this novel, The Dimension Riders, The Left-Handed Hummingbird, Conundrum, and No Future.
• In 2015, Jim Mortimore self-published a "Director's Cut" version of the novel with several significant changes from and expansions of the original:
  • All of the non-original characters were renamed to avoid copyright violation; their backstories were also altered to connect to the book's themes.
  • Nearly every scene was expanded, including new added action sequences.
  • The novel was given a more in-media-res start by moving the original book's beginning to near the end.
  • Minor original characters from the original novel were given fuller characterisations.
  • The roles of "Berenice" and "Joanne" were significantly expanded, with the former joining a "Siluria'an" Caravan and raising Imorkal, and the latter featuring in multiple flashback scenes.
  • Mortimore created a new mythology for the Silurians, including an explanation of the Ice Warriors and Draconians as descendants of Silurian space-farers.
  • The Doctor and his TARDIS were replaced by "Dr. Jon St.Myth" and his "Trisected Abutment Reality Disconnect", and the alternate universe arc was replaced by a plotline about the universe undergoing a quantum collapse.
  • The book had a different ending, a cliffhanger to be continued in Mortimore's further "Director's Cut" novels.
• Following his "Director's Cut" of Blood Heat, Jim Mortimore collaborated with Niki Haringsma to make the comic To Be Born, which presented an alternative take on a scene from the Director's Cut and was published in the 2019 charity anthology Unbound: Adventures in Time and Space.

Continuity

• The Seventh Doctor, Ace, and Benny also encountered Silurians and UNIT in an alternate universe in COMIC: Final Genesis. Both adventures were described by the Doctor as having the events of TV: Doctor Who and the Silurians as their starting points.
• The Doctor's original TARDIS is lost in a tar pit. It will be returned to him in PROSE: Happy Endings.
• Manisha was first mentioned in TV: Ghost Light.
• The TARDIS similarly falls through a puncture in the time vortex into an alternate universe in TV: Rise of the Cybermen.

Cover gallery

• 

  Virgin New Adventures cover

• 

  Director's Cut cover

External links

• Prelude to Blood Heat as published in DWM #205
• Blood Heat at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
• The Discontinuity Guide to: Blood Heat at The Whoniverse
• The Cloister Library: Blood Heat
• Beyond the Book: Blood Heat by Paul Scoones (Article) - TSV 37
• Neil Is the Best Dalek: The Virgin Novels #20 – Blood Heat: Director's Cut by Jim Mortimore