The Left-Handed Hummingbird (novel)
Publisher's Summary
He took up a firing stance, holding the thirty-eight out in front of him. ‘Mr Lennon?’ he said.
1968: Cristian Alvarez meets the Doctor in London.
1978: The great temple of the Aztecs is discovered in Mexico.
1980: John Lennon is murdered in New York.
1994: A gunman runs amok in Mexico City.
Each time, Cristian is there. Each time, he experiences the Blue, a traumatic psychic shock. Only the Doctor can help him -- but the Doctor has problems of his own. Following the events of Blood Heat and The Dimension Riders, the Doctor knows that someone or something has been tinkering with time. Now he finds that events in his own past have been altered -- and a lethal force from South America’s prehistory has been released.
The Doctor, Ace and Bernice travel to the Aztec Empire in 1487, to London in the Swinging Sixties, and to the sinking of the Titanic as they attempt to rectify the temporal faults -- and survive the attacks of the living god Huitzilin.
Characters
- The Aztecs call the Doctor a 'Midwife' - healer, curer.
- Ace
- Has a Hard Rock Café Svartos t-shirt.
- Gets hit by a telepathic bomb.
- Asks the Doctor if this could be another Ishtar mucking around with history.
- Bernice Summerfield
- Upon first viewing Star Trek: The Next Generation, thinks it's a documentary.
- Has pizza for the first time.
- Doesn't trust the Doctor.
- Attacks someone with a frying pan after a telepathic event attacks her.
- Sends the Doctor, Ace and Bernice a letter, through UNIT.
- Known as Cris in 1968.
- Professor Lawrence Fitzgerald
- Knows the Doctor.
- Was a slave to be sacrificed.
- Was rescued by Ace.
- Dies after a fight he and Ace get into with some warriors; he drowned in a canal after a warrior split his rib cage open.[1]
- Is a judge.
- Is Iccauhtli's father.
- Ce Xochitl's other son.
- Is a novice priest.
- Is touched by the Blue.
- Dies from taking the magic mushrooms that allow some people to see the Blue.
- Lt. Hamlet Macbeth
- Hamlet Macbeth was part of UNIT. He created the Paranormal Division.
References
- The Doctor, Benny and Ace were holidaying in Switzerland in 2030 prior to getting Christian's message.
- There are some blocks of dialogue referring to their previous adventures;
Benny watched him. "Do you think it's got anything to do with what happened in Oxford?"
"Maybe. Too early to tell. It's certainly not the Garvond."
"You know I didn't mean that."
"Yes, I do. You mean whatever caused our brush with our skull-faced friend, and the jaunt with the Silurians too." [2]
- Huitzilopochtli pronounced Weet-Zeelo-Potch-Tlee.[3]
- The Doctor (when they arrive in 1968) suggests they visit Woodstock, two of his previous incarnations are there.
- The Blue that infected Huitzilin was from a crashed Exxilon device.
- The Doctor and companions follow Huitzilin to the Titanic.
- Benny compares how they received Christian's note to like Back to the Future.
Drugs
- The Doctor eats psilocybe mexicana, mushrooms. They enhance telepathic abilities.
- The Doctor has three lumps of LSD-spiked sugar in 1968.
- Through drugs and alcohol the gods can make paths into the world; "The cactus wine, the morning glory seed, the mushrooms - they are the causeways along which Huitzilopochtli can journey into Tenochtitlan."[4]
Psychic powers
- Ace recalls Saul and the natural way the psychic energy pooled to create him.
- When the casing of a Dalek shatters it sounds like chips in hot oil, according to Ace.
- During a conversation about vampires the Doctor says "The Mara fed on raw emotion (and) the Fendahl sucked souls whole."[5]
TARDIS
- The Doctor fixes the chameleon circuit in his adopted TARDIS from the alternate universe where he died.
UNIT
- Bernice calls in Hamlet Macbeth, who brings UNIT when the Doctor becomes infested by Huitzilin.
- Ace contacts Air Commodore Gilmore to try and get clearance to get the Doctor out of the UNIT facility.
- By 1994 Mike Yates doesn't speak to anyone, shunning reporters.
- Corporal Bell was promoted to Captain, but was brain damaged in a car accident.
- Harry Sullivan had made a nurse sign Hubert Clegg's death certificate as heart attack.
Notes
- Kate Orman becomes the first -- and, ultimately, the only -- woman to write an original full-length novel for either of Virgin's post-series lines; she would write or co-write several more books in the New Adventures series up to 1997.
- Interlude 3 (page 213) is written from Bernice's diary.
- A prelude to this novel was published in DWM Issue 207.
Continuity
- The Doctor visited the Aztec period in DW: The Aztecs, Barbara's attempt to change history is mentioned several times throughout this novel.
- Corporal Bell appeared in DW: The Mind of Evil and The Claws of Axos.
- Hamlet Macbeth reappears in NA: Happy Endings.
- Gilmore first appeared in DW: Remembrance of the Daleks.
- The Doctor gets put on a gurney and wheeled into a morgue with 'John Doe' on his toe tag, exactly what happens later in DW: Doctor Who.
- The Doctor mentions visiting Woodstock and that at least two of him are there already, one is the Second Doctor in TN: Wonderland.
- Hubert Clegg died in part one of DW: Planet of the Spiders.
- The Garvond and Silurians that the Doctor mentions appeared in NA: The Dimension Riders and Blood Heat (respectively).
- Exxilons previously appeared in DW: Death to the Daleks.
- Corporal Bell also appears in PDA: The Face of the Enemy.
External Links
- Prelude to The Left-Handed Hummingbird as published in DWM #207
- The Doctor Who Reference Guide detailed synopsis of The Left-Handed Hummingbird
- The Discontinuity Guide to: The Left-Handed Hummingbird at The Whoniverse
