Unnatural History (novel)

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Unnatural History was the twenty-third novel in the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures series. It was written by Jonathan Blum and Kate Orman, released 7 June 1999[source needed] and featured the Eighth Doctor, Sam Jones and Fitz Kreiner.

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

  1. I Was a Teenage Paradox
  2. If You Can Remember the Future, You Weren't Really There

Day Zero Minus Two

  1. Second String
  2. Bird of Paradox
  3. Licentious Moments

Day Zero Minus One

  1. The Unnaturalist
  2. Kraken Up
  3. The Memory Cheating Ain't What it Used to Be
  4. Abducted by Aliens
  5. Somewhere, Just Out of Sight, the Unicorn Are Being Gathered
  6. Kyra

Day Zero

  1. Stuffed and Mounted
  2. The Book of Lies
  3. Hero in Use

Night Zero

  1. Anything Not Nailed Down is Mine
  2. Anything I Can Pry Loose is Not Nailed Down
  3. What Lies, Behind Us
  4. Coming Unstrung

Free-Frame

  1. Buying Time
  2. The City Killer

The i Doctors

  1. Impossible Creatures

Day Zero Plus Seven

Epilogue: The Other Woman

Plot

In 2002, the Eighth Doctor comes to the apartment of dark-haired Sam, an alternate Sam Jones who never travelled with him, attempting to tell her about her life as blonde Sam. Sam brushes him off and goes to work, where she receives a call from her mother insisting that she come home and listen to what the Doctor is telling them. After work, Sam’s parents show her postcards and letters they’ve been receiving from blonde Sam for the past five years. She agrees to talk to the Doctor, who explains more about blonde Sam, and how she had recently fallen into a “dimensional anomaly” in San Francisco and been replaced by dark-haired Sam. Sam initially does not believe him, insisting that this is a prank, but when she runs she is threatened by a child wielding a knife. The Doctor tries to talk him down, but the boy stabs him. Sam takes the Doctor back to her apartment, attempts to treat his wound, and agrees to go with him to San Francisco.

Meanwhile, Fitz Kreiner is in San Francisco, investigating various supernatural phenomena in the area. Eldin Sanchez, who publishes Interesting Times (a paranormal zine), gives Fitz a few leads, including a woman named Kyra Skye, who has been tracking new ley lines around the city.

Sam and the Doctor fly to San Francisco. Fitz and the Doctor discuss the ongoing crisis and whether they can get back “their” Sam. Fitz suggests calling in UNIT; the Doctor says he already called Adrienne Kramer and was not able to secure her or UNIT’s help. The three go to the scar in reality, which the Doctor reveals to be a byproduct of his adventures on New Year’s Eve 1999. He has placed the TARDIS around the scar as a stopgap measure, but the TARDIS will be destroyed by the scar if they don’t find another way to seal or contain it in the next three days. He asks Sam to get closer and investigate herself. As she gets closer, she has flashbacks of her other self’s similar experience when she first visited the scar. She accuses the Doctor of trying to get her to fall into the scar to get blonde Sam back and attempts to run. She is stopped by soldiers in grey uniforms. She, the Doctor, and Fitz successfully fight them off, but Sam hits her head and falls unconscious as she is carried away from the scene by the Doctor.

While they regroup at the hotel, Sam, Fitz, and the Doctor realise that the boy who stabbed the Doctor is the same boy Fitz has been using as a source on supernatural phenomena. The Doctor, desperate, sends a hypercube to the Time Lords for aid. Sam asks Fitz if her other self and the Doctor are “shagging,” and Fitz says he isn’t sure. The three go and find the boy, who reveals himself as a member of Faction Paradox.

Sam and the Doctor get dinner while Fitz goes to meet with Kyra. Kyra and Fitz perform a ritual at a ley line, which causes strong energy readings and weather patterns. The Doctor hallucinates purple objects floating in the air at dinner, which Sam is able to calm him down about. Sam makes multiple attempts to flirt with the Doctor, including giving him a back rub, but he ultimately rejects her. The Doctor suggests that he and his unstable biodata might have been the reason Sam changed, and that his subconscious longing for a companion is what made blonde Sam who she was.

The Time Lords do not respond to the hypercube, leaving the Doctor, Fitz, and Sam scrambling. Fitz and Sam stake out the scar, watching the grey soldiers. The soldiers appear not to know exactly where the scar is, only the general location. Sam and Fitz lose track of the soldiers due to their ability to be as nondescript as possible. Sam offers Fitz a cigarette, which he declines, stating that with blonde Sam gone one of them must be the nice one. Sam then gets mugged by a unicorn.

The Doctor finds professor Daniel Joyce, a mysterious contact from his past who now works at Berkeley. Joyce and his colleagues have been studying the scar, and he agrees to help the Doctor. Joyce also gives the Doctor a key to his house and offers to let the Doctor stay with him and his wife if the TARDIS does leave him stranded, to which the Doctor politely declines.

The unicorn who mugged Sam gets captured by an unidentified man.

The Doctor meets up with Eldin Sanchez to look for more information, but is spotted by one of the grey soldiers and runs, jumping onto a tourist boat in the bay. He is greeted there by another grey soldier, Bob, who acts casually, as neither of them have anywhere else they can go. The Doctor deduces that he and the other soldiers are Henches, generic soldiers and servants who were supposed to be delivered to a warzone on Teso Peope and were stranded before they were given any command. They’ve “imprinted” on someone in San Francisco and are following their commands, but it is unclear who. The Doctor jumps off the boat.

Sam and Fitz get a call from the Doctor asking them to meet him at the centre of the Golden Gate Bridge. The Doctor explains that the scar has attracted the attention of a Kraken, an extradimensional entity that will eat the scar (and the city along with it) in "about a day and a half." A pulse of energy runs through the city and towards the scar, which Sam perceives as a "Wild Hunt," though others perceive it differently. It effects Sam more than Fitz and the Doctor, destabilizing her biodata and rewriting her into another slightly different version of herself. Sam panics about this, and the Doctor talks her down by telling her that who she is now is more relevant than what the exact details of her past are. Fitz gets new information about where the Henches might be reporting to, and the three go to investigate.

The information Fitz received was apparently a trap, and the three are kidnapped. All three are blindfolded while a mysterious figure with seemingly too many hands experiments on them, removing the Doctor's ability to see the color purple and adding tags to all three's nervous systems. They are released on the street, with no clue as to where they were taken. Fitz mentions the ley lines, to which the Doctor reacts with excitement. They go to the site of Kyra's ritual, where they find a strand of the Doctor's biodata visible in space, with more apparently spread all across the city. They use the strand of biodata to remove their tags.

Griffin, the man who captured them, reads a children's alphabet book, admiring the simplicity of its "A is for Ant" categorizations. He is what the Doctor terms an "unnaturalist," a higher-dimensional being who studies and categorizes "lower" life forms by altering their biodata. He separates a chimera into a goat, lion, and dragon.

The Doctor meets up with the pack of unicorns, who confirm that Griffin has been capturing the various supernatural creatures drawn to San Francisco by the scar. Fitz realises that Griffin is likely using the same network of contacts about supernatural phenomena that he is, and that he can no longer trust most of his sources.

Fitz, Sam, and the Doctor go and talk to Kyra and confirm that she has talked to Griffin. They explain what he is doing, and she agrees to help them. She gives Griffin a fake location where she claims to have found more strands of the Doctor's biodata, and they agree to meet there the next day. Fitz and Sam talk about Fitz's experiences in China and how blonde Sam would attempt to be more kind and understanding, which would irritate Fitz.

The Doctor visits Joyce again, anxious for a solution to his impending problem. Joyce encourages the Doctor to accept the possibility that the TARDIS could be destroyed.

The Doctor, Sam, Fitz, and Kyra prepare a higher-dimensional trap for Griffin at the agreed meeting place. Griffin only appears amused by this. He offers to "fix" the Doctor's biodata, giving him a single history. Kyra attempts to interfere, and Griffin immediately kills her and escapes, having never been confined by the trap in the first place.

The Doctor drops Sam and Fitz back off at the hotel for their safety. Sam kisses Fitz, appreciative of him because he is human and understandable to her. They have sex, but the Wild Hunt runs through multiple times while they are together, changing the exact events of the encounter. Briefly, Sam becomes a version of herself with a much stronger heroin addiction who has not been allowed to leave the hotel room since arriving in San Francisco.

The Doctor does a ritual to summon the Faction Paradox boy. He gives up an early memory in exchange for the location of Griffin's hideout. The boy further taunts the Doctor, relishing in the idea that all of his contradicting histories could be simultaneously true. The Doctor finds out that the boy had intercepted his hypercube.

The Henches arrive at the hotel room and kidnap Fitz, but he manages to divert them and protect Sam. Griffin puts Fitz in one of his extradimensional cabinets. The Doctor and Sam meet back up and go to Griffin's hideout. The Doctor goes in first, almost immediately getting captured as well. Sam starts a fire outside, which the Doctor identifies as number five of his and blonde Sam's pre-arranged plans. Sam is captured, but only after giving the Doctor the tool he needs to free himself and talking to Griffin long enough to keep him distracted. Griffin takes DNA and Biodata samples from both. Sam and the Doctor leave, forced to leave Fitz behind.

The Doctor and Sam gather a group of impossible creatures and encourage them to combine their strength against the Henches looking for them. They then go to Joyce's lab, who has not quite finished the tool they need yet. Sam discusses with Joyce and then with the Doctor whether the Doctor is capable of settling down somewhere.

Joyce gives them the stabilizing device, and they return to the scar. The device does not work as hoped; it will only pull the TARDIS out of the scar, not heal it altogether. Griffin arrives at the scar threatening to stabilize both the Doctor and Sam's biodata with vials he synthesized from the samples he took. The Doctor threatens Griffin with the stabilizer, which has the ability to seriously harm him. Sam, believing her vial is what caused blonde Sam to be created, smashes the vial.

They free Fitz shortly before the kraken arrives and put Griffin in his own cabinet. The boy reappears, offering information on where Sam's second set of biodata really came from and revealing that Griffin's vial had nothing to do with it. The Doctor, unable to cope with the loss of the TARDIS, pulls it out of the scar, leaving the city vulnerable. Sam goes to her TARDIS bedroom, finding remnants of her other self. She writes a postcard to blonde Sam.

At the bay, the Doctor tries to use the TARDIS to hold back the kraken. They use Sam to ride the Wild Hunt back to the scar, where Griffin is waiting for them. The Doctor tells Sam to execute plan number eighteen, which she doesn't know. She runs into the scar, becoming blonde Sam again. She pushes Griffin and his cabinet into the scar, which contains and seals it.

In an epilogue, Sam goes and settles what is left of dark-haired Sam's life. In the postcard she left for herself, she was told to leave with the Doctor, and so she does. She also was told that her other self loves Fitz, which she decides not to act on. The boy tells the Doctor that it was Faction Paradox that ensured Sam had two sets of biodata. San Francisco still has impossible creatures, and the Doctor and Sam remain strange and anomalous.

Characters

Worldbuilding

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 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

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, Flavia or someone else.

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 Sam Jones had/will been sending to them from:
  • The Doctor tells Sam Jones (dark-haired Sam) that "his Sam" (blonde haired Sam):

Languages

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

Locations

Media

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

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 an artificial chimera making her simpler, so she is once again a dragon, a lion and goat.

Technology

Timeline

  • 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 (although it only transforms her if she in the same location as an alternate version of herself; as an example, while in her room she transforms into a drug addict in need of her next hit who has remained in the room since arriving in San Francisco, where other versions of her have left the room).
  • The Doctor initially speculates that blonde Sam could have been created when his unstable biodata after his last regeneration latched onto dark Sam and transformed her into his 'perfect' companion; Joyce dismisses this idea as the Doctor could never have had that kind of impact on someone he would never have met without that biodata manipulation taking place in the first place, but his words suggest that it could have happened if the Doctor was influencing the biodata of someone he was more familiar with.

Vehicles

Notes

  • Whilst writing Unnatural History both Kate Orman and Jon Blum didn't deliberately make it part of the War arc, though it did contain accidental foreshadowing for PROSE: The Ancestor Cell. However, there were intentional references to the Earth arc, which was being planned at the time.[1]
  • There are references to various characters and events from PROSE: The Infinity Doctors. Professor Joyce 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. Parkin's later PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles would show Larna beginning a partnership with Ulysses and Penelope Gate, implied to be the Doctor's parents.
  • 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." In PROSE: Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible and PROSE: Lungbarrow, the Doctor is stated to have been born from biologically but from a Loom.
  • "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 Heaven introduced in PROSE: Alien Bodies.
  • "Maybe you weren't always half-human." The Doctor's half-human status was 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 that the Doctor is from the 49th century.
  • "Maybe there's no one left on Gallifrey..." This likely 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 PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles both explore this concept.
  • "Or maybe someone wanted us to handle it." An excerpt of the Book of Lies in Unnatural History shows Rassilon making a deal with Faction Paradox to erase the events of PROSE: Lungbarrow from Gallifreyan history. This explains the "small improvements to the pattern of history" that Rassilon used the Eighth Doctor to make in PROSE: The Eight Doctors, as well as clarifying why Flavia is President in that novel and why the Eighth Doctor is travelling with Sam rather than Grace Holloway.[2]
  • The Boy's mention of a "greyness" destined to fall over the universe is a reference to the end of the universe seen in Lance Parkin's The Infinity Doctors. Implications in Parkin's Father Time and Miranda link this greyness to the post-War universe. Mark Clapham's Analysis, a short story published in Walking in Eternity, shows the amnesic Eighth Doctor's premonitions of a lifeless grey "nothing." Clapham is the author of Hope, which takes place in the same future seen in Father Time and Miranda.
  • Many fans speculated that Daniel Joyce is Professor Chronotis, but Blum denied this on Usenet, saying Joyce was much more connected to the outside world than Chronotis, and the only connection between the two was that Robert deLaurentis, whose character John Smith heavily influenced Joyce, was in turn inspired by Shada.[3] DeLaurentis was thanked in the notes of the book.
  • Many fans were upset with the portrayal of the Faction in the book, but Blum explained on Usenet that he actually collaborated with Lawrence Miles on this portrayal, agreeing that there were multiple different aims and attitudes within the group.[4]

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 'Is it possible to reconcile "The Eight Doctors" with "Lungbarrow"?' and 'So, no one is annoyed about Moffat trying to make Alien Bodies non-cannon?' - GallifreyBase (requires log-in)
  3. ↑ Jonathan Blum on 'Joyce and Savar! (SPOILERS)' - rec.arts.drwho
  4. ↑ Jonathan Blum comment rec.arts.drwho
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