Unnatural History (novel)

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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.

Chapter Titles

  • Day Zero Minus Three
  • Chapter One: I Was A Teenage Paradox
  • Chapter Two: If You Can Remember the Future, You Weren't Really There
  • Day Zero Minus Two
  • Chapter Three: Second String
  • Chapter Four: Bird of Paradox
  • Chapter Five: Licentious Moments
  • Day Zero Minus One
  • Chapter Six: The Unnaturalist
  • Chapter Seven: Kraken Up
  • Chapter Eight: The Memory Cheating Ain’t What it Used to Be
  • Chapter Nine: Abducted by Aliens
  • Chapter Ten: Somewhere, Just Out of Sight, the Unicorns Are Being Gathered
  • Chapter Eleven: Kyra
  • Day Zero
  • Chapter Twelve: Stuffed and Mounted
  • Chapter Thirteen: The Book of Lies
  • Chapter Fourteen: Hero in Use
  • Night Zero
  • Chapter Fifteen: Anything Not Nailed Down is Mine
  • Chapter Sixteen: Anything I Can Pry Loose is Not Nailed Down
  • Chapter Seventeen: What Lies, Behind Us
  • Chapter Eighteen: Coming Unstrung
  • Freeze-Frame
  • Chapter Nineteen: Buying Time
  • Chapter Twenty: The City Killer
  • The i Doctors
  • Chapter Twenty-One: Impossible Creatures
  • Day Zero Plus Seven
  • Epilogue: The Other Woman

Plot

to be added

Characters

References

Books

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

  • The Doctor's biodata contains seventeen conflicting streams.
  • Griffin removes the Doctor's ability to see the colour violet (although later the Doctor fixes this).
  • The Doctor 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 been ten years old.
  • The Doctor might have got caught skinny-dipping with a pretty female cousin of his.
  • The Doctor no longer has a shadow.
  • The Doctor contacts UNIT through General Adrienne Kramer concerning what's going on in San Francisco.
  • The Doctor summons the Little Brother of the Faction Paradox using a ritual and an extract of his biodata.
  • The Doctor and his father's names were banned when they left Gallifrey.

Drugs and medicines

  • The Doctor last dropped acid in 1968.
  • The Doctor had flashbacks for decades as a result of Jo Grant's hayfever tablets.
  • Sam smokes Benson and Hedges cigarettes.
  • Sam Jones has needle injection scars on her arms.
  • Sam gives up cigarettes to be the "nice one", the good companion for the Doctor.

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, Romana 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."
  • Samantha Jones is dark haired. She lives in a King's Cross bedsit.
  • She gives the Doctor a back massage. He rather enjoys it. Then Sam tries to seduce him.
  • Sam has sex with Fitz.
  • Sam's parents have postcards and letters that Samantha Jones had/will been sending to them from:
  • The Doctor tells Sam Jones (dark haired Sam) that "his Sam" (blonde haired Sam):
  • The Doctor phones Dr Grace Holloway.
  • Blinovitch was a member of the Faction Paradox.
  • The Doctor mentions Tubby Rowlands.
  • Sam no longer finds the idea "that a few years from now she could be anywhere, doing anything" exciting.
  • Fitz Kreiner uses the alias "Fitzwilliam Fort" while working as a paranormal investigator for the Doctor.
  • 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.
  • Little Brother of the Faction Paradox calls the Doctor "granddad"

Languages

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

Locations

Media

Occult

Planets

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

Individuals by profession

Psychic powers

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 a chimera making it simpler, so it is just a dragon, a lion and goat.

Technology

  • The Doctor uses a "Time Lord message pod", a white cube to send to the Time Lords, requesting help. It appears to be intercepted (an impossible thing according to the Doctor) by Faction Paradox.

Timeline

  • The Faction Paradox agent takes an old memory of the Doctor's:
  • After her timeline is converged, Samantha Jones still gets flashes of memory from the "other Sam", including that her other self and Fitz "shagged like rabbits".
  • Little Brother 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

  • Little Brother 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

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."[1]

  • 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 DeLaurentiis, 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. :-)[2]

  • Following a deal with the Faction Paradox, their Representative (the Little Brother) 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?"
This can refer to the Other, but also several elements of PROSE: Cold Fusion.
  • "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 can actually refer to several things, the Second War in Heaven, which does involve the Enemy. However it can also refer to the Last Great Time War.
  • "Maybe you weren't always half-human."
First mentioned in TV: Doctor Who.
  • "Maybe you weren't always a Time Lord."
TV: Silver Nemesis suggests something of the sort, a scene cut from TV: 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."
TV: The Pilot Episode mentions the 49th century, an 'enemy overrunning your home' can be anything from the Enemy (first mentioned in PROSE: Alien Bodies) to the Daleks (who destroyed his home), first mentioned in TV: Dalek.
  • "Maybe there's no one left on Gallifrey..."
Quite possibly refers to the Time Lords abandonment of Gallifrey seen in PROSE: 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."
PROSE: 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.[source needed]

Continuity

External links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Jonathan Blum on 'Ask Kate Orman and Jonathan Blum' - The Doctor Who Forum at Outpost Gallifrey (Page 12) (ezyboard membership required)
  2. ↑ Jonathan Blum on 'Joyce and Savar! (SPOILERS)' - rec.arts.drwho
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