I loved this story - I'm not sure why. Perhaps it was seeing familiar faces like the Brigadier grown into different people due to circumstances - parallel universes are a great way to explore the nature/nurture debate. I thought the conclusion was the best part - the Doctor trying, and failing, to get out of this hideous dilemma. But since when can you only have one universe in existence?
What I really didn't like was the romance. It was mercifully brief, but by this stage I'm sick of Ace falling for men who drop dead within days! The universe is a big place, but surely by now word will have got out: if you meet a time-travelling girl who yells 'Doctor' and hurls explosives around, don't even ask her out to the cinema, unless you have a death-wish. I'm not saying this is the New Adventures fault - they're only carrying on a tradition started in Curse of Fenric and Remembrance of the Daleks.
I thought the story was good enough but I felt the quality of the writing seriously let it down. It got a bit bogged down and even some of the grammar was worrying. I just felt it could have done with better editing.
As for the time ram - and it's a while since I read it - TARDISes have to occupy exactly the same point in space-time for the timeram. From memory, the third Doctor's TARDIS would simply be surrounding the seventh's TARDIS. Otherwise there would have had to be a timeram Logopolis when the Master's TARDIS was inside the Doctor's.
Please forgive me if I misremembered the circumstances in this book.
The first I read the book, I thought was good, but as I often read books too quickly, I thought I'd reread it, and I agree with Chris about the quality of the writing. The same was true about the author's other NA Parasite.
Chris, you're right about the TARDISes. But now I have to wonder why we didn't see the infinite regress situation that occurred in "Logopolis.
I'm guessing but I thought the situtaion in Logopolis was brought about by the Master, not through the physics of a TARDIS being within another TARDIs.
Picky nit- the title is Blood Heat, not Bloodheat. (IIRC)
So is the setting of this book an altenate Earth, along the lines of the alternate Earth seen in Inferno? Or has someone changed history?
Someone changed history, I think, by murdering the Third Doctor during the events of The Silurians.
I believe in the NA "No Future" we found out....
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...that it was Mortimus, the Meddling Monk, who's been fooling around with the Doctor's history. He gets his in the end, though---he's eaten by a Chronovore.
There's an emergency in the TARDIS!! So Ace goes to her room to change (why?) and then...goes to sleep. I'm not exactly a battle-trained soldier myself, but I'm fairly sure that's the wrong response to an emergency.
Ace doesn't seem to give a toss that the Doctor and Benny are apparently dead. Even NA Space-B**** Ace should maybe express SOME irritation.
It's 'a couple of years' since Ace met the Brig. I thought she'd been in Spacefleet or whatever it was for THREE years, not to mention all the rest of the time that passed between Battlefield and Blood Heat?
Jo is WEARING MAKE-UP? After TWENTY YEARS being hunted like an animal and being mortally injured by giving birth and suchlike? Jeez.
WOULD you get a 'freezing wind' on a planet that hot?
Benny's 32 years old. (Sorry, very boring and as far as I can see correct fact. I'm just making a note of every time her age is mentioned cos it'll soon be going pear-shaped.)
'Long ago, in Cambridge, where she'd taken her degree' - her WHAT! Liz has a DOZEN degrees!
Can't believe the Brig didn't have the rep sedated sooner.
Liz is just so...CIVILISED. It's annoying. Twenty years of hell on Earth, humanity wiped out by the Silurian scum (with a good deal of the guilt on HER shoulders), her husband dead after a mere two years...but she regards the Brig's determination to fight back as a disgusting insanity. Until suddenly she takes a good at Jo Grant - an unconscious stranger, ill after giving birth which one can hardly blame on the Silurians - and suddenly decides that, oh gosh, the Brig was right all along!
The Doc's got 'curiously cold' skin. Funny the books seem hellbent on propagating this idea when it's never mentioned on-screen.
Ace contemplates BURYING her dead horse? WHY, for heaven's sake?
'The only force capable of invading a TARDIS is the primal force of the universe itself, the entropy of time.' - has anyone told the TARDIS that? Cos she lets in any pathetic Malus or piece of junk mail.
'Only one universe can exist, the laws of matter and energy dictate that inescapably.' - frankly I MUCH prefer this attitude to New Who's 'every action we take creates a new universe' which renders the Doctor's EVERY ADVENTURE (bar Journey's End) entirely pointless (so what if he DOES lose and Earth gets destroyed? There'll've been thousands of new Earths created in the process, no doubt plenty of THEM will have made it). But HELLO! With breathtaking arrogance it's completely ignoring minor matters like INFERNO and BATTLEFIELD.
'Plasma burn from a Special Weapons Dalek.' 'Why aren't you dead?' - QUITE.
'She stared up at the Sergeant, searching for some clue to his motivation' - Hmm. Call me simplistic but I think the motivation for mercy-killing is, well, mercy.
Why are all the rabid dawgs Labradors, Jack Russells, Afghans, Setters, etc - twenty years after civilisation fell, you'd think they'd've been a bit of INTERBREEDING (never mind the rapid mutations of everything else...).
Well, thank the GODS some people have secret motivations for their frankly insane and incredibly dangerous (duly killing most of 'em) several-day trip to London to get medicine for a dying woman (duly dead by the time the survivors get back). It's still incredibly blatant and long-drawn-out padding, though. And plenty of 'em didn't KNOW about the secret missions so why exactly weren't they whinging about putting their lives on the line for stranger Jo Grant? Shouldn't they have developed a more callous attitude to life and death, living amid the ruins of civilisation? And geography isn't my strong point, but couldn't they find any hospitals closer than London?
Why not just GET THE TARDIS OUT OF THE TAR PIT and use its medical bay to cure Jo? How serious WAS that thing that attacked the TARDIS, and why is the Doctor happy to abandon poor Sexy to its mercy as soon as a younger model turns up?
'How was one bomb going to help them against dozens of dogs' Ace wonders...two pages before using said smartbomb to blow every dog's brains out. DUH!
I don't see how even the Meddling Monk could have ensured the levels of coincidence that resulted in the Doctor bumping into Jo Grant, as well as Liz Shaw and the Brigadier. (Weren't they at the centre of the contagion, for starters? They should have been among the first to die when the Doctor went splat instead of coming up with a cure.)
There's an amazing lack of curiosity about the Doctor, Ace and Benny. I'm not sure who knows they come from a parallel universe and who doesn't, but no one seems to CARE either way.
Julia's practically foaming at the mouth for water and no one can work out what's the matter with her despite the fact she's just had a chunk bitten out of her leg by wild dogs. Hell, I'd be instantly thinking of rabies if that happened NOW, when there's ISN'T any rabies in this country.
Why waste rare medication on incurable Julia? These people would simply not have survived twenty years in the (literal AND metaphorical) jungle if they clung this desperately to the niceties of civilisation.
Ace has to be careful as she only has one smartbomb. Er...has she not noticed it's REUSABLE?
Why choose wounded-in-the-LEG Julia to scout? And how does she manage to quickly circle the building anyway?
Why doesn't Jan warn anyone but Benton that Julia has highly infectious mutated rabies?
'But how?' will they get through the front doors, they ask. Which bit of ACE IS BUILDING A BOMB have they somehow failed to grasp? (And why not enter though the easily-opened less-main door they find shortly afterwards, anyway?)
Whatever the shortcomings of the basic premise, there's no doubt this is an enjoyable book, but it would be a lot MORE enjoyable without all that pointless description - 'The foyer was long and narrow, running back into the building until swallowed by shadows. A line of widely spaced concrete columns running down the middle of the foyer supported a high ceiling. To their right, a large reception window was let into one wall beside a doorway' etc etc...my brains would be dribbling out of my ears with boredom even if all this later proved to be relevant, which actually it didn't.
It never occurs to Ace - a newcomer to this world - that Benton might have had a REASON for refusing to have anything to do with cars?? That he didn't spend half the book trekking round on foot for FUN? Of course, she had no reason to suspect hundreds of Silurians would instantly materialise at the sound of a car when explosions failed to alert them to the human presence. Especially as it later transpires the farm can regularly use a car without anyone noticing. And Ace can drive it around with similar lack of effect. But still, it was really thick of him not to just TELL her, having noticed that she wasn't really the obeying-orders type.
How exactly did Ace get that 20-years-unused car started so fast? Even given that, mysteriously, only its tyres had rotted (this on a planet where most CITIES have been swallowed up by jungle) where did she get petrol and stuff? Not from the hospital, as it ran its boilers on COAL, for heaven's sake. In the 1970s!
What's with the illustrations? Are they supposed to give us a nostalgic Targety glow?
'She wondered if, placed in a similar position, she would have the courage to take the action these people had taken' - I dunno why Julia's thinking so THEORETICALLY about suicide, has she not NOTICED she's got an incurable and highly unpleasant disease?
How strong IS Ace? Throwing Benton effortlessly over her shoulder, and running around while carrying Alan...
To be continued...
Alan didn't KNOW that cars bring the reps?
Surely UNIT would assume the Doctor would help them even if they DIDN'T risk so many lives getting Jo medical equipment?
Ace thinks the Silurians may be tracing the bodies by telepathy. To the extent that, although she n'Alan are being HUNTED, they take time out to incinerate said bodies. Which includes restarting the coal-fired boiler with a Molotov Cocktail, for heaven's sake. Yeah, cos THAT'S not gonna attract any attention. How about ABANDONING the bodies and SCARPERING if you're THAT scared they're giving out signals?
Ooh look! 'They must have heard the boiler start up. They're coming back' - you don't say! How TOTALLY UNFORSEEABLE!
'But we can't just -' OK, which bit of 'She's dying of rabies, she TOLD you to go, she's desperate to do the noble self-sacrifice thing, if you stay you'll ALL be killed, you've fought and survived a 20-year-war after watching almost all of humanity slaughtered' is Jan JUST NOT GETTING? How can these people have survived if they're still so •••• SENTIMENTAL?
'Have you and the other Silurians suddenly developed a passion for genocide?' - which bit of THE SILURIANS WIPED OUT HUMANITY 20 YEARS AGO is the Doctor just not getting...?
'May hell •••• you for a murderer, Brigadier' - look, Jo's dying ANYWAY, this is just, at best, acquiring information that'll save what's left of humanity and at worst, putting her out of her misery.
These people are putting date-labels on their dustbins? WHY, for heaven's sake??
Why are Jan and co so disgusted to discover they've actually got a PROPER mission, not just a suicidal and futile mission to save a stranger's life?
Pretty stupid of Liz to save the kid (even if it IS, implausibly, brighter than she is) instead of saving the protection-against-Silurians machine. With those sort of instincts there's simply no way any of these people would have survived.
So one minute the Doctor's being killed by the third-eyes of several Silurians, and the next he's in a cell being rescued by Benny. Who was last seen being experimented on by Silurians a long way from this airship. At least we later get an explanation of what happened to HER.
'"Did you come in the airship?" she asked. Bernice winked. "Got it in one, toots"' - since when has Benny talked like THAT?
'"She is still alive?" The Brigadier was silent. Jan turned away, her face suffused with hatred and disgust' - how the hell did Jan KNOW the Brig had killed the at-death's-door-anyway Jo?
'"Where is Sergeant Benton?" Jan's mouth twisted in disgust [yes, AGAIN]. "How the hell should I know? Or care? He's off on some ••••-fool priority mission"' - at THIS point, were I the Brig, I'd've had her shot for disobeying orders during a time of war. Or just to stop her looking so disgusted all the time. Why hasn't he become the Brigade-Leader by now?
I got the strong impression Jo croaked without telling anyone anything. So how the hell did the Brig suddenly know where the half-a-book was?
BENTON TRIES TO START A CAR!! My god, are his used-car-salesman instincts overriding his survival ones?
A time ram destroys the UNIVERSE now, does it? Instead of a couple of TARDISes?
Why is everyone attacking the Brig over Jo's death when they SHOULD be attacking him for trusting the Doctor, given that the miserable traitor has brought the Silurians down on their heads?
Great, now Jan's comparing the Brig to Adolf Hitler. What the hell is these people's PROBLEM?
'"I closed my eyes. It's the first time I ever did that." "That's to do with trust." "Yes, I know."' - so Ace didn't trust HER FIANCE JAN (that's PROPER Jan from Love and War, not the permanently-disgusted Dr Jan of this book) enough to snog him with her eyes shut, but she DOES trust this bloke old enough to be her father who's in love with someone else?
'Even its placing was interesting, an echo of the human theory that sentient life had first developed on the African plains' - what, the Doctor doesn't KNOW whether this 'theory' is true?
Why do the Silurians put so much effort into building themselves a hundred-by-two-hundred-miles city instead of into, say, WAKING ALL THEIR SLEEPING RELATIVES?
The TARDIS key is isomorphic? Who d'you think you're kidding, Doc?
The Doctor's ONLY JUST REALISED his death was the point his history diverged from real history? How stupid IS he?
Manisha almost breaks Ace's wrist, points a gun at her, and screams 'That's the way all this begun!'...all to stop her killing a Silurian. I konw I'm repeating myself, but what makes her so ******* NICE? And anyway, the Nightmare DOES'T all start with humans killing Silurians, you cretin.
And oh look, once said Silurian ENTIRELY PREDICABLY tries to kill them, Manisha suddenly isn't such a pacifist.
Only a million humans left on the whole of Earth so it's kinda suspicious that we KNOW so many of 'em. Would the Meddling Monk really have micro-managed down to the 'Ace meets Manisha' level?
The Doctor has two extra ribs? Since when?
How stupid IS Morka? Actually needing to have it pointed out to him that revoking the humans' race-memory-phobia removes a big Silurian advantage?
Speaking of which, humans getting scared and itchy minds whenever Silurians are around isn't quite what we saw on-screen in The Silurians, and there was sadly no cave-painting, but as that was grossly inconsistent and seemed to disappear half-way through said story (and not reappear in subsequent ones) I can hardly complain. Well...actually I can complain that the mere sight of Silurian equipment sends Ace so mad she tries to murder her friend.
OK! Enough with the fight scenes! They're always so boring to read about.
'"Maybe I should let you kill yourselves." Bernice sighed. "Trouble with that is the Silurians would die as well."' - great, so it's fine for the Silurians to launch an unprovoked wipe-out of the human race, but if those pesky humans actually try to FIGHT BACK...
'The Silurians are civilised, intelligent people who want to make peace' - of course they are! Murdering the Doctor, unleashing a plague on humanity and then hunting down the survivors for twenty years was just, um, an accident!
(Sadly the relentless pro-Silurian propaganda isn't having the desired effect on me. I now want to KILL THEM ALL. Except Madame Vestra, of course.)
The Silurians are surprisingly rubbish at destroying an ancient submarine.
'Chtaachtl killed your friend' - so - the Doctor doesn't believe this, or just doesn't CARE?
Nice of the submarine crew to give Benny medical help and evacuate her, given that the greenie-loving scum had just tried to blow them up.
There's NO WAY to direct the missiles? And yet they GET THERE ANYWAY?? And how lucky that Benny's boat just happens to wash up safely.
Morka had 'worked all his life to bring peace' - why does this book keep trying to LIE to me?
'Once Morka killed me I would just have regenerated...No. Someone ensured that Morka could kill me.' - OK, yet another person who just doesn't realise that killing-a-Time-Lord-QUICKLY is the simple answer to the regeneration problem.
'Psionosauropodomorpha' - great, just what the universe needs, ANOTHER word for Silurians/Eocenes/Homo Reptilia/Earth Reptiles...
DWM's 'Everything you ever needed to know about Bloodheat [sic]' mentions the appearance of the Meddling Monk and the Chronovore. When and where? I didn't notice 'em.
Jim Mortimore, when asked by DWM if there were many changes to his original Blood Heat: 'The whole point of the original story was a simple morality tale about the choices we all make. The Doctor discovered that he really did die in Doctor Who and the Silurians, but used his position and powers as a Time Lord to extend his life - in effect, he wriggled out of his own death. The problem was, he'd created an alternate Universe, a parallel one to our own. His choice was simple: to save one Universe, he had to destroy the other' - well, THAT makes sense. I never understood how - after an endless number of alt-unis was posited in Inferno - Blood Heat insisted that this particular one HAD to be destroyed. It's such a shame the entire raison d'etre of this book was removed, albeit not nearly as much of a shame as with Mortimore's godawful pile of •••• Parasite, whose original purpose was apparently to regenerate the Doctor...
I thought the whole point of this book was that the Doc didn't change history to ensure his survival as he said in the book he'd already seen future Earth's in his own past.
Surely a war between the humans and Silurians would have gone nuclear long before this point. The plague would have reduced our numbers certainly but as we obviously found a cure for the disease at some point the reminder should have been able to take the Silurians. Third eye's are all very well but they don't beat tanks and jets. Maybe that's why there don't seem to be all that many Silurians on earth in this story.
I thought the whole point of this book was that the Doc didn't change history to ensure his survival as he said in the book he'd already seen future Earth's in his own past.
I'm rapidly approaching the conclusion that there IS no whole point of this book. Ah well.
Surely a war between the humans and Silurians would have gone nuclear long before this point.
Would the humans have had enough nukes to aim them at EVERY Silurian/Sea Devil base, even if they'd known where they were? Without making the planet uninhabitable for PEOPLE too? And aren't underground bases, well, UNDERGROUND, therefore pretty safe from nukes?
I'm not sure how deep underground a nuclear blast would reach but your struggle to exit cause of the radiation, and the explosion would probs oh cause cave ins.
Presumably a nuclear blast wouldn't reach THAT deep or governments wouldn't have bothered building nuclear shelters not-that-far underground. And some of those Silurian cities are 20 km beneath the surface. And they don't mind radiation, wasn't that what they were destroying the Van Allan Belt FOR? And they could always dig their way out of a cave-in, surely?
Plus, this IS the Whoniverse. Where standing behind a jeep with your fingers in your ears should suffice when the nuclear-power-station-next-door is being blown to smithereens...
They have some issues with radiation as they went into hibernation when the Cyclone was going to contaminate the area, government buildings had reinforced basements, they weren't millions of years old either.
And it's only some of the new ones that are 20km deep. Old who's Silurians and Sea Devils are only a few meters down. Vastra for example was dug up when they built the underground.
They have some issues with radiation as they went into hibernation when the Cyclone was going to contaminate the area,
That's true, and, let's face it, I was bluffing about remembering exactly WHY they wanted to destroy the Van Allan Belt in the first place...
government buildings had reinforced basements, they weren't millions of years old either.
I'd trust a millions-of-years-old Silurian basement over a modern British-government-built one any day.
And it's only some of the new ones that are 20km deep. Old who's Silurians and Sea Devils are only a few meters down. Vastra for example was dug up when they built the underground.
Oh, I dunno. That cave system was underneath a nuclear power station that went pretty deep underground. The bottom of oceans can also be pretty deep. (Um, assuming those wannabe-Sea-Devils-with-no-string-vests WERE revived from a bottom-of-the-ocean base, admittedly I'm slightly hazy on this issue.) How far down did the sub go in Sea Devils? How far down can Underground stations be?
How far down can Underground stations be?
Only a few hundreds of meters at most. However, the Silurians built their bonkers tens of millions of years ago. A lot of geology can happen during that time and what was built deep underground can find itself quite close to the surface after all this time.
Did I just write "bunker" with an "O"?
There are worse crimes...
So how come the Third Doctor's Season 7-TARDIS WORKS, anyway?
Because there was never anything much wrong with it. The Time Lords didn't sabotage the Tardis; they tampered with the Doctor's mind so he couldn't remember how to operate her.
Yes they did tamper with it - Claws of Axos reveals that it's programmed by the Time Lords to always return to Earth, whatever the Doctor does to the console.
Plus the Doctor spent three months rejigging the dematerialisation circuit before Jo Grant burst into his life with a fire extinguisher...
Claws of Axos also talks about the Doctor having memory blocks, and there are some suggestions that he can't remember the Tardis's dematerialisation codes.
It's possible that there wasn't anything wrong with the dematerialisation circuit until the Doctor started fiddling with it. He may have found it easier to blame problems on a technical fault rather than admit there was a problem with his memory, just as One and Two repeatedly refused to admit they didn't know how to steer the Tardis properly.
Similarly, the Time Lords could have conditioned the Doctor into unconsciously sabotaging his own repair efforts, making him program the Tardis to keep return to Earth without realising what he was doing.
Claws of Axos also talks about the Doctor having memory blocks, and there are some suggestions that he can't remember the Tardis's dematerialisation codes.
Oh, he's definitely got memory blocks as well, but in an unusually sensible case of the Time Lords realising they're all a bit rubbish, they did a real belt-and-braces job - wiped Our Hero's mind AND screwed with Sexy's dematerialisation circuit.
He may have found it easier to blame problems on a technical fault rather than admit there was a problem with his memory, just as One and Two repeatedly refused to admit they didn't know how to steer the Tardis properly.
That was DIFFERENT. That was a sweet little foible. THIS is the Doctor fighting for his freedom - and being open about the gaps in his memories (well, half the time anyway).
Oh, he's definitely got memory blocks as well, but in an unusually sensible case of the Time Lords realising they're all a bit rubbish, they did a real belt-and-braces job.
Makes sense, though they probably told themselves they were just being thorough.
Maybe, since Seven didn't have those memory blocks, he was able to figure out a fix for Three's Tardis, and get her flying again.
But it definitely needed a new dematerialisation circuit AS WELL (whether or not this is due to the Doctor's mucking around with it or the Time Lords' sabotage). Cos the Gallifreyan Gits GAVE him one at the end of Three Docs.
It did, but perhaps Seven knew how to make a new dematerialisation circuit, either that or Sevem routinely carries a spare dematerialisation circuit in his pocket, in case the Master tries stranding the Doctor by stealing the Tardis's own dematerialisation circuit.
Seven is supposed to be the great manipulator but, let's face it, he's not THAT good at it. He certainly didn't see the alt-uni, alt-history, Land of Fiction Monk-created trap coming, and I strongly doubt that ANY Doctor is so well-organised as to have a spare dematerialisation circuit about their person.
Blood Heat remains one of my favourite NAs but would have loved to have read a sequel to the Silurians by Malcolm Hulke freed from the constraints of a BBC budget
Well, at least we've been blessed with Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters.
Long Live Fur Under Nose.
quote:
Doctor Who Group
Mike Atkinson: Alongside David Whitaker, Hulke is Who's best writer. Yes, even better than Holmes.
Bookwyrm:
It's a sequel to Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters not Doctor Who and the Silurians?
'No one on the editorial staff even noticed that the TARDIS had been destroyed, despite the front cover of this book showing it...so the next few books had to be hurriedly rejigged to accommodate this' - well, judging by (as you later point out) the fact that in the very next book Benny has a collection of something and the Doctor has the (post-Silurians) Worshipful and Ancient Law of Gallifrey...they weren't rejigged very well.
'An alternate universe makes a copy of everything imaginable... except, for some bizarre reason, energy. Why wouldn't energy be duplicated along with everything else? Gravity isn't suddenly half as strong...In Mortimore's defence, the energy crisis wasn't his original plan but was forced upon him by Darvill-Evans' - don't mess with alt-unis. Just...don't. (Unless you're Inferno where they're totally worth it.) Even when you're sensibly saying you CAN'T have alt-unis instead of *shudders* every decision we make creating one...you're STILL gonna mess up.
But since when can you only have one universe in existence?
Algebra of Ice:
'Naturally there are other universes.' 'Yes.' 'Loads and loads, I'll bet.' 'A great many.'
Just sayin'.
There's a director's cut of Blood Heat nearly twice as long. And...it's been published. (Self-published, but still...)