Seeing I was the twelfth novel in the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures series. It was written by Jonathan Blum and Kate Orman, released 8 June 1998 and featured the Eighth Doctor and Sam Jones.
Much like PROSE: Deceit did before it with Ace, Seeing I returns companion Sam Jones to travel with the Doctor after having spent three or four years away from him. Unlike Ace (who spent her time travelling and in the Spacefleet), Sam spent most of her time on Ha'olam.
Publisher's summary
He has no idea why Samantha Jones ran away from him.
Sam is homeless on the streets of the colony world of Ha'olam, trying to face what's just happened between her and the Doctor. He's searching for her, and for answers. While she struggles to survive in a strange city centuries from home, the Doctor comes across evidence of alien involvement in the local mega-corporation, INC — and is soon confined to a prison that becomes a hell of his own making.
Where did INC's mysterious eye implants really come from? What is the company searching for in the deserts? What is hiding in the shadows, watching their progress?
Faced with these mysteries, separated by half a world, Sam and the Doctor each face a battle — Sam to rebuild her life, the Doctor to stay sane. And if they find each other again, what will be left of either of them?
Plot
to be added
Characters
References
Corporations
- Sam goes to join the Eurogen Village.
- The Eurogen Village is partially a project assisted by Livingspace.
- The Doctor uses data umphs to search through several companies data bases including Imogen and resulting in "Kisumu Interplanetary's intranet collapsed." Kisumu most likely refers to the Dione-Kisumu Company. The data umphs also attack Gray Corporation's systems.
Cultural references from the real world
- The Doctor describes what a perigosto stick is for: "You use it in a game of four-dimensional juggling".
- The Doctor uploads fragments of Down Among the Dead Men Again (whose author would likely be the same as Down Among the Dead Men, Bernice Summerfield).
The Doctor
- The Doctor uses the alias James Alistair Bowman.
- Whilst imprisoned the Doctor goes into detail of how he was held prisoner by the Tractites.
- The Doctor becomes a little bit claustrophobic after three years of being locked away.
The Doctor's items
- The Doctor still carries everlasting matches.
Foods and beverages
- Sam drinks coffee; she never used to after she had an experience with drugs.
- Number 15 is a system of moves that the Doctor and Sam came up with.
- Number 15 involves the Doctor using a banana and pretending it to be a gun to hold someone up, while in the confusion Sam takes the guard's gun.
Gallifrey
- The Doctor explains to Sam what happened to Savar: "It happened back when I was a student. Savar was a Time Lord who went on a mission in his TARDIS, but something went wrong and he had to abandon ship."
Individuals
- Sam's "Dark Sam" personality is referred to several times.
- DOCTOR is an artificial intelligence based on the Doctor, sounding a bit like him. He goes travelling with another AI called FLORANCE.
- The DOCTOR mentions to the Doctor, "I could name half a dozen of your school chums and all sorts of ancient lore and legends from Gallifrey."
- The Doctor tells Sam that he met his granddaughter Susan whilst searching for her.
- It's been three and a bit years since the Doctor last saw Sam, also the same amount of time that Ace spent in the Spacefleet. (The Doctor mentions this: "It was about three years after she left me that I saw Ace again.")
- The Doctor seems to indicate he was taught by Leonardo da Vinci.
- When Sam Jones met the Doctor she was nearly seventeen. When she arrived on Ha'olam she was nearly eighteen. She spent three years on Ha'olam and is now twenty-one.
- Sam remembers sleeping with a bat (Jasper in the TARDIS).
- At the novel's end Sam gives the Doctor a long passionate kiss and feels no compulsion to do it again...though she wouldn't say no.
- Shoshana Rubenstein was Sam's flatmate for a while.
Individuals by profession
- Dr David Akalu is Moral Facilitator at the Oliver Bainbridge Functional Stabilisation Centre.
- Rifaat is the head guard at the Doctor's prison. He's slowly driven mad and almost beats the Doctor to death.
Planets
- The Doctor continues with his search for Sam, stating, "I know she was there on the Kusk ship, I know she was on Mu Camelopides - but then where did she go?".
- The buses on Ha'olam are ornithopters.
- Sam watches a 3D TV with news stories concerning Mu Camelopides IV.
- The Doctor travels to Gallifrey, to return Savar's eyes, and to Neo-Sydney, to have a tailor recreate his outfit.
- INC owns 64 percent of Temporal Commercial Concerns, whose main assets concerned the planet Hirath.
- The Doctor babbles at one point about wanting to be on Stella Stora and New Mars.
- The Doctor posits that the I moved a Time Tree from Hirath to Tractis.
Prisons
- The Doctor is held prisoner at the Oliver Bainbridge Functional Stabilisation Centre.
- The Doctor states that he's escaped from the Tower of London to a Klein sphere.
Species
- Lacaillans and Caxtarid are some of the people that make up the population of Ha'olam.
- Sam mentions the Daleks and the Cybermen.
Technology
- The eye implants are far safer (supposedly) than the synch-op links.
- Shoshana Rubenstein gets an eye implant / replacement.
- INC use a sonic cannon to destroy the Eurogen Village which may have been surplus from the Thousand Day War.
- INC have a mind probe, which has 13 settings.
- INC also have recovered from a crash a Borelli elemental compositor, a tritium powered something, a Kosnax fruit machine.
- The I's ship is constructed partially of Tinclavic.
Notes
- The beginning of the book contains a quote from PROSE: Timewyrm: Revelation by Paul Cornell.
- Continuing what could be considered a trend for Kate Orman novels, the Doctor gets tortured in extreme and interesting ways.
- Sam has a relationship with a woman named Chris, confirming that she is bisexual.
- This book is also available as an ebook from the Amazon Kindle store.[source needed]
- 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.[source needed]
Continuity
- The Imogen Company first appeared in PROSE: Transit.
- The Dione-Kisumu Company appeared in PROSE: Sleepy.
- Gray Corporation appeared in PROSE: Kursaal.
- The Doctor's alias (James Alistair Bowman) comes primarily from TV: Doctor Who.
- Synch-op links were seen in TV: Warriors of the Deep.
- In TV: The Sensorites the First Doctor mentions the Tower of London. In AUDIO: Summer the Fifth Doctor ends up in the Tower and in PROSE: The Roundheads the Second Doctor, Polly Wright and Jamie McCrimmon end up in the Tower.
- The Doctor first mentioned a perigosto stick in TV: The Green Death.
- Eurogen Company merged with the Butler Institute (PROSE: Cat's Cradle: Warhead) to create Eurogen Butler, commonly known as the EB Corporation. They play a significant role in PROSE: Another Girl, Another Planet. Later they became the Spinward Corporation. (PROSE: Deceit)
- The Doctor was held prisoner and (effectively) tortured by Tractites in PROSE: Genocide.
- Sam refers to having seen cloned humans. (PROSE: Vampire Science)
- Sam witnesses a warehouse full of company-designed babies created for testing. This imagery would be used as a source for other media images in PROSE: Interference - Book Two.
- Savar's final fate in one universe is seen in PROSE: The Infinity Doctors.
- The concept of Dark Sam living in King's Cross is first seen in PROSE: Alien Bodies and actually seen in Unnatural History
- FLORANCE appeared in PROSE: Transit and Sleepy.