Unnatural History (novel)

Unnatural History
Doctor:	Eighth Doctor
Companion(s):	Sam, Fitz
Main enemy:	Griffin, Faction Paradox, Kraken
Main setting:	San Francisco, 2002; London, 2002
Key crew
Publisher:	BBC Books
Writers:	Jonathan Blum, Kate Orman
Cover by:	Black Sheep
Release details
Release number:	23
Release date:	7 June 1999
Format:	Paperback Book; 30 Chapters, 281 Pages
ISBN:	ISBN 0-563-55576-9
BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures
← Previous	Dominion
Next →	Autumn Mist

Unnatural History was the twenty-third BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures novel. It was written by Kate Orman and Jonathan Blum. It featured the Eighth Doctor, Fitz Kreiner and two versions of Samantha Jones. This novel explained several issues concerning Sam Jones that were introduced in Alien Bodies.

Publisher's summary

"They called it the Millennium Effect", said the Doctor. "But the millennium was only beginning."

San Francisco has changed since the start of 2000. The laws of physics keep having acid flashbacks. There are sightings of creatures from outside our dimensions, stranded aliens and surrealist street performers. The city has become a mecca for those who revel in impossible creatures — and those who want to see them pinned down and put away.

Sam's past is catching up with her — a past she didn't know she had. The Doctor is in danger of becoming the pièce de résistance in a twisted collection of creatures. And beneath the waters of the Bay, something huge is waiting.

With time running out, the Doctor must choose which to sacrifice — a city of wonders, or the life of an old and dear friend.

Plot

to be added

Characters

• Eighth Doctor
• Samantha Jones (Dark haired Sam)
• Samantha Jones (Blonde Sam)
• Fitz Kreiner
• Eldin Sanchez
• Kyra Skye
• Professor Daniel Joyce
• Griffin the Unnaturalist
• Boy of Faction Paradox

References

Books

• Introduction to Quantum Esotericism is by Watkinson.
• Thripsted discusses the Book of Lies.

Biology

• Griffin manipulates the Doctor's biodata, removing his awareness of violet and all the UV ranges.
• Fitz states that there are several unconfirmed "cryptozoological sightings."

Culture

• The Doctor can't remember etiquette and gets confused between "twenty-first century America and the planet Quinnis in the fourth universe."

The Doctor

• The Doctor once again uses the alias "Doctor Bowman".
• The Doctor tells Sam (upon seeing her light up) that he gave up smoking "six or seven lifetimes ago".
• The Doctor might have got caught skinny-dipping with a pretty female cousin of his in one timeline.
• The Doctor contacts UNIT through General Adrienne Kramer concerning what's going on in San Francisco.
• The Doctor summons a boy of the Faction Paradox using a ritual and an extract of his biodata.
• The Doctor and his father's names were banned in one potential origin when they left Gallifrey.

Drugs and medicines

• Sam smokes Benson and Hedges cigarettes.

Fashion and clothing

• Fitz wears a fedora and a long black coat while gathering information from his "contacts". He also wears small round sunglasses like John Lennon.
• Fitz's hair is still growing back after his experiences with communist China.

Foods and beverages

• The Doctor pours out a bottle of beer in Kyra Skye's memory.
• Sam takes her coffee black; Fitz, white with two sugars.
• Daniel Joyce offers Sam some tea. She says she prefers coffee.

Gallifrey

• The Doctor is not sure who is President of Gallifrey at this point, Romana II or Flavia.

Individuals

• The Doctor tells Sam (dark haired) "about being President Elect of the High Council of Time Lords, keeper of the Legacy of Rassilon, Defender of the Laws of Time and Protector of Galloway. Or something."
• Sam is originally dark-haired. This original version of her lives in a King's Cross bedsit.
• Sam has sex with Fitz.
• Sam's parents have postcards and letters that Samantha Jones had/will been sending to them from:

• San Franscico, 1 August, 1997
• A letter from 1894, London
• A postcard from Kursaal
• A photobooth postcard with her and the Doctor from Paphos
• They began arriving around the Mars, 1997 mission.

• The Doctor tells Sam Jones (dark-haired Sam) that "his Sam" (blonde haired Sam):

• Stopped the smugglers of Nephelokokkugian and the Dalek invasion of Tuvulu.
• Battled the tyrant queen of Hyspero.
• Returned a Triceratops infant to its mother.

• The Doctor phones Dr Grace Holloway.
• Blinovitch was a member of the Faction Paradox according to the boy.
• The Doctor mentions Tubby Rowlands.
• Professor Daniel Joyce has a tattoo on the cuff of his sleeve that he looks like he has tried to get rid of. He has a red headed assistant called Larna.

Languages

• Despite Fitz' months in Mao's communist people's collective in China, he never learnt how to read much Chinese.

Locations

• The location of the Scar is the alleyway where the Doctor was shot.
• Fitz has meditated on top of Mount Tamalpais.
• Griffin is from one of the higher dimensions. He's from somewhere near the Needle.

Media

• Eldin Sanchez writes for the Interesting Times.

Occult

• Kyra Skye says she is a witch.

Planets

• The Doctor cleared up the after effects of Daniel Joyce's visit to Youkali.

Individuals by profession

• Daniel Joyce does work for the Advanced Research Projects at Berkeley.

Psychic powers

• Kyra Skye can see/read the "ley lines" of San Francisco. She discusses psychokinesis and Snoopy when she first meets Fitz.

Species

• A Kraken comes from the higher dimensions and floats in the void, almost twisting itself through incomprehensible space. It grazes on exotic matter, plumes of raw cosmological power, fountains of energy in the upper reaches that is undetectable in N-Space. It's big enough to flatten San Francisco.
• The unicorns can teleport, but the Scar prevents them from escaping San Francisco.
• Griffin takes apart an artificial chimera making her simpler, so she is once again a dragon, a lion and goat.

Technology

• The Doctor uses a "Time Lord message pod", which appears to be intercepted by Faction Paradox.
  • He expected a reply "once the epistopic interfaces of the space-time continuum are properly aligned."
• Datagel is compact "but if you rupture the cell your computing power oozes out through the cracks."
• The Henches (the "men in grey") are from BioHazCorp and were supposed to be delivered to a warzone on Teso Peope.
• Daniel Joyce got a spare beryllium chip for Wagg following the Doctor's theft of his first one.

Timeline

• On 31 December 1999 a singularity opened in San Francisco and the Earth was forced through an opening the size of a bath plug.
• The Faction Paradox agent takes an old memory of the Doctor's:

• The fruity scent of karmine pudding.
• When the Doctor was barely a Loomling.
• When his father was present in a Great House.
• He'd caught a cobblemouse.
• Mr Saldaamir is present.

• The boy comments on "the whole post-destination thing with the Vervoids," and the way the Doctor "tricked the Dalek Empire into tangling their timeline so bad that their history collapsed under the weight of the paradoxes."

Time travel

• The boy uses a Blinovitch generator to create copies of himself and time travels using the energy built up from crossing his timestream.

Theories and concepts

• The paradox agent takes the Doctor's Volkswagen Beetle as payment for information, intending to take it back in time and melt it down, ensuring that its own steel would be used in its construction: a paradox.
• Kyra Skye is killed by Griffin by folding her through the higher dimensions.
• The Wild Hunt is part of the Scar's healing process, energy washing out in a reverse ripple. When it hits Sam she experiences alternate timelines and if the energy catches her up in it minutely alters her biodata.

Vehicles

• The Doctor's Volkswagen Beetle has a customised Y2K number plate.

Notes

• Whilst writing Unnatural History both Kate Orman and Jon Blum didn't deliberately make it part of "the War arc"; however:

  "When it comes to the Faction Paradox / War stuff, there is one big bit of foreshadowing for "Ancestor Cell" -- but we had no idea that we were foreshadowing it, we intended that bit as a red herring at the time! There were, however, deliberate bits of foreshadowing for the Earth arc, which went onto the drawing board while we were writing the book."

• There are suggestions in various fan-reviews that Daniel Joyce is Professor Chronotis (from Shada), but there are only (very vague) hints; he has a tattoo on his arm which could be a mark of an exiled Time Lord. The house that he gives the Doctor a key to has some vague similarities to Chronotis' rooms from Shada. However, this has been denied by Blum on Usenet:

  Oh, and about the Chronotis connection -- the only connection between Professor Joyce and Chronotis is that Robert DeLaurentis, who heavily influenced Joyce's character, was in turn inspired by "Shada". Other than the surface connection of the university, though, I don't think there's many other similarities... Joyce is much more connected to the world outside the university than the dried-up old don. :-)

• Following a deal with the Faction Paradox, their representative asks the Doctor some interesting questions about his past:

• "Is this the version where they banned all mention of his name, and yours, for consorting with aliens? Or the one where he got every record of himself deleted from the files?"
• "Maybe you didn't use to have a father."
• "Maybe you're living in the middle of a time war. Maybe there's an Enemy out there... who's rewriting you when you're not looking."

This refers to the War, in which the Time Lords fought the Enemy.

• "Maybe you weren't always half-human."

First mentioned in the Doctor Who TV movie.

• "Maybe you weren't always a Time Lord."

The television story Silver Nemesis suggests something of the sort; a scene cut from Remembrance of the Daleks suggests that the Doctor is "more than just another Time Lord".

• "Maybe you originally came from some planet in the forty-ninth century. Fleeing from the Enemy who'd overrun your home."

"The Pilot Episode" mentions the 49th century, an "enemy overrunning your home" can be anything from the Enemy (first mentioned in the novel Alien Bodies) to the Daleks (who destroyed his home), first mentioned in the television story Dalek.

• "Maybe there's no one left on Gallifrey..."

Quite possibly refers to the Time Lords abandonment of Gallifrey seen in the novel Dead Romance.

• "Maybe they all left. Or maybe the whole planet's being destroyed, and undestroyed, and destroyed, and you just caught them at the wrong moment."

The novels The Ancestor Cell and The Gallifrey Chronicles both cover this concept.

• BBC Books has announced that a "print on demand" reprint edition of this novel will be made available as of 30th September 2011 as the imprint revisits adventures featuring the first eight Doctors.

Continuity

• Sam's postcards are from San Francisco, (PROSE: Vampire Science) 1894, (PROSE: The Bodysnatchers) and Kursaal. (PROSE: Kursaal)
• The Doctor mentions himself and Sam (blonde) defeating the tyrant queen on Hyspero and meeting Iris Wildthyme, both during PROSE: The Scarlet Empress.
• The Doctor mentions that he used to smoke. The only televised occasion of this was TV: An Unearthly Child.
• The events of the Mars 1997 mission were covered in PROSE: The Dying Days.
• The events of PROSE: The Eight Doctors occurred, only without Sam or the Doctor's involvement (the first time around).
• Fitz talks about his time in communist China with Sam (dark haired). His hair is still growing back following the events of PROSE: Revolution Man.
• The planet Quinnis was mentioned (briefly) by the First Doctor and Susan in TV: The Edge of Destruction. Their experiences there were documented in AUDIO: Quinnis.
• Youkali was mentioned in PROSE: Return of the Living Dad.
• Joyce states/accuses the Doctor of toppling governments on his spare weekends (a long list but for example): TV: The Happiness Patrol, The Christmas Invasion.
• When the representative of the Faction tries to tell the Doctor of his future exploits he says, "No spoilers," a statement that would come back to him in TV: Silence in the Library, but also because he doesn't want to know about the future he first learned of in PROSE: Alien Bodies.
• The Doctor last dropped acid in 1968 and nearly got transformed into an Aztec god in PROSE: The Left-Handed Hummingbird.
• The events of TV: Doctor Who began the anomalies throughout San Francisco.
• The Doctor was last in San Francisco in PROSE: Vampire Science.
• PROSE: Alien Bodies first introduced the concept of an alternate version of Samantha Jones who smoked Benson & Hedges cigarettes and had dark hair.
• Blinovitch (of the Blinovitch Limitation Effect) was first mentioned in TV: Day of the Daleks.
• The Doctor doesn't have a shadow after the events of this book. Reasons for this are revealed in PROSE: Interference - Book Two.
• There are references to various characters and events from PROSE: The Infinity Doctors. One of these is Professor Joyce who works at Berkeley — in The Infinity Doctors the Doctor thinks that his father might be a professor at Berkeley. Larna from The Infinity Doctors is implied to be Joyce's assistant. Griffin is from the Needle, originally seen in The Infinity Doctors. PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles suggests that Professor Daniel Joyce and his wife are the Doctor's parents.
• The Doctor also contacted Grace Holloway in COMIC: The Fallen.

External links

• Unnatural History at the Faction Paradox wiki
• Unnatural History at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
• The Discontinuity Guide to: Unnatural History at The Whoniverse
• The Cloister Library: Unnatural History