Blood Invocation (comic story)
Blood Invocation was a Fifth Doctor comic story published in the Doctor Who Yearbook 1995. Written by Paul Cornell, it featured the Cult of Rassilon the Vampire, which was also pivotal to Cornell's Virgin Missing Adventures novel Goth Opera [+]Loading...["Goth Opera (novel)"], released earlier in the same year.
Summary[[edit] | [edit source]]
A distress signal from the Time Lord Cardinal Hemal calls the Fifth Doctor back to Gallifrey with Tegan and Nyssa. There, while Tegan, who's feeling a bit of poorly, stays in her room, the Doctor and Nyssa investigate a mysterious murder. Soon, they learn that the culprit is a member of one of the monkish covens, specifically one which has grown to believe that Rassilon was secretly a vampire. This particular cultist had found a sample of vampire DNA and gone all the way of turning himself into one himself. Returning to the TARDIS, they find that the escaped cultist has taken it over and begun to turn Tegan into a vampire, but the Doctor holds her back by using his faith in her true self as a shield. He and Nyssa then trick the vampire to his demise when he tries to pilot the ship to night-time London only to land ten hours off due to Nyssa adjusting the parameters, causing him to disintegrate into ash — whereupon Tegan reverts to her normal self with no memory of the incident.
Plot[[edit] | [edit source]]
At the heart of the Capitol of the Time Lords, in the gantries above the Panopticon, a Time Lord has been hung upside down from a metal railing and is being drained of blood by a jubilant vampire. As he feeds, the vampire delights in how easy it is proving to hunt his Great Vampire ancestors' fearsome enemies, who have grown complacent since the end of the great War.
Elsewhere in, the Fifth Doctor steps out of the TARDIS to meet Cardinal Hemal, who sent him a distress signal. Tegan and Nyssa step out with him, but Tegan proves to have the common cold and, after the Doctor gives her some pills goes back to her bedroom in the TARDIS to rest while the Doctor and Nyssa proceed with Hemal. He leads them to a morgue guarded by two Chancellery Guards, where he shows them the body of the murdered Time Lord, who was found, completely drained of blood and unable to regenerate.
Recognising the puncture wounds on his neck, the Doctor informs Hemal that Gallifrey is threatened with "a plague of vampires" and instructs the Cardinal to have the Time Lord's heart pierced with a wooden stake as soon as possible. He then hurries off. As Nyssa follows him in a brisk run, he explains that a tattoo on the victim's wrist identified him as a member of one of the "many hundreds" of monkish covens which "meet to regularly discuss the life and works of Rassilon". Before long they reach the meeting place of one of these cults, which worships Rassilon as a secret vampire and is even now in the process of sacrificing another one of their own.
Meanwhile, back in the TARDIS, Tegan wakes up from her short nap and remarks that she's feeling better, only to be ambushed by the vampire. Before long, the Doctor returns to the TARDIS with Nyssa, explaining what he learned from the cult — namely that one of their members got hold of some vampire DNA and injected into himself before vanishing from their radar. As they enter the control room, they are attacked by the vampirised Tegan. While the Doctor is able to repel her by using his faith in her as a psychic shield, the cultist takes advantage of this to skulk out of the shadows and take control of the TARDIS, attempting to pilot it towards the Earth so that he can begin to infect the universe. When he opens the doors, however, he is disintegrated to ash by the sunlight, with Nyssa explaining that she took advantage of him not paying attention to her to offset the TARDIS's temporal parameters to run ten hours fast.
With the true vampire gone, Tegan's initiated transformation immediately reverts and she wakes up on the floor with no memory of her brief stint as a vampire. Still concerned, Nyssa asks if there are "traces of the Great Vampire DNA" left anywhere else in the universe; the Doctor frowns, explaining that there are, "if you look in the right places", but he can't imagine that they'll be seeing any more trouble of that kind as few would be stupid enough to "deliberately resurrect a vampire". Even now, however, a group of human cultists in a graveyard seem to be proving him wrong.
Characters[[edit] | [edit source]]
Worldbuilding[[edit] | [edit source]]
- The Fifth Doctor explains that "the genetic material of the Great Vampire is ravenous", being able to "infest and reanimate a corpse" in a single day.
- The Doctor states that "there are cults that think of Rassilon as a saint, a great engineer, even one that sees him as a sort of cosmic traffic warden".
- The vampire refers to Earth as "the tactical centre of the Milky Way".
Notes[[edit] | [edit source]]
- Despite the similarities to Goth Opera [+]Loading...["Goth Opera (novel)"], Paul Cornell claimed that he did not intend for these stories to be linked, with him years later being somewhat baffled at his own reuse of all the similar elements. (REF: The Clockwise War: Commentary - Blood Invocation)
Continuity[[edit] | [edit source]]
- This story builds on the history of the "War against the Great Vampire" fought by Gallifrey against the Great Vampires and their leader "long ago", as established in TV: State of Decay [+]Loading...["State of Decay (TV story)"].
- Nyssa's outfit is the same one she wore in TV: Snakedance [+]Loading...["Snakedance (TV story)"].
- Nyssa recalls her previous trip to Gallifrey, during the events of TV: Arc of Infinity [+]Loading...["Arc of Infinity (TV story)"], noted that its circumstances availed her little time to learn more about Gallifreyan physiology despite her curiosity.
- The murdered Time Lord has a single heart. Though seemingly contradicting the assertion in most stories postdating TV: Spearhead from Space [+]Loading...["Spearhead from Space (TV story)"] that having two hearts is one of the principal physical characteristics of a Time Lord, a few stories predating this retcon had shown the First Doctor to have a single heart, such as TV: The Edge of Destruction [+]Loading...["The Edge of Destruction (TV story)"]. Later sources such as PROSE: The Man in the Velvet Mask [+]Loading...["The Man in the Velvet Mask (novel)"] an PROSE: The Book of the War [+]Loading...["The Book of the War (novel)"], following the frequently-accepted premise of the First Doctor as the Doctor's first incarnation, would go on to suggest suggest that at least some Time Lords were born with a single heart, and only grew a second one with their first regeneration.
- The Doctor discusses the infectious nature of "the genetic material of the Great Vampire", or "vampire DNA". The "V Factor", or "Yssgaroth Taint", would be discussed in similar terms in PROSE: Vampire Science [+]Loading...["Vampire Science (novel)"] and PROSE: The Book of the War [+]Loading...["The Book of the War (novel)"].
- The Doctor describes the "minor committees" which worship Rassilon as "monkish covens" and states that some of their members "have gone wrong before". This is a reference to the Doctor's old foe the Monk, as introduced in TV: The Time Meddler [+]Loading...["The Time Meddler (TV story)"]. While in the context of the original TV story, the renegade's nickname seemed to simply be based on his current disguise on Earth, a deleted chapter from Paul Cornell's own novel PROSE: No Future [+]Loading...["No Future (novel)"] elaborated on the link between the Rassilon-worshipping covens and Cornell's notion of the Monk's backstory and identity, "Mortimus".[1]
Mortimus was an agent of the Celestial Intervention Agency, recruited from his contemplations in the Order of Rassilon, those monks who kept alive the works of the Hero. He had intervened on several worlds, diverting them away from the dangerous courses that they had embarked upon with the bullet and the knife.
- The Doctor's statement that some of the "minor committees" think of Rassilon as primarily being a "great engineer" echoes Engin's claim in TV: The Deadly Assassin [+]Loading...["The Deadly Assassin (TV story)"] that "in his own time he was regarded mainly as an engineer and an architect".
- The Doctor shields himself from the vampirised Tegan by using his very faith in her as a psychic shield. Faith in itself, separate from its object, being a protection against vampires was a mechanic introduced in TV: Battlefield [+]Loading...["Battlefield (TV story)"] when the Seventh Doctor faced the Haemovores; there, the Doctor similarly used his faith in his companions as a shield.
- The Cult of Rassilon the Vampire would play a pivotal role in Paul Cornell's roughly contemporary Fifth Doctor novel PROSE: Goth Opera [+]Loading...["Goth Opera (novel)"], where it is Nyssa instead of Tegan who is temporarily turned into a vampire.
- This story seemes to use "the Great Vampire" as a title for the King Vampire, as opposed to the more common usage of "Great Vampires" being a name for the species and "the King Vampire" being the leader's title. This would recur in PROSE: Gallifrey: A Rough Guide [+]Loading...["Gallifrey: A Rough Guide (short story)"].
Footnotes[[edit] | [edit source]]
- ↑ Nate Bumber (18 January 2024). Cut excerpt from Paul Cornell's No Future. On the Fringes of War. Archived from the original on 9 April 2024.
