We’ll All Die of Sunburn on a Cloudy Day (Blood Heat)
I’ll Explain Later
We skipped Iceberg, but I talked about it Friday, so Blood Heat. The first book of the “Alternate History Cycle,” a five book series in which the Doctor faces a (for the first four books) unknown enemy who is altering history and causing all sorts of troubles. Or, as the Doctor puts it, “meddling.” So that’s subtle about who it is. In this first book, the Doctor ends up in an alternate universe in which he died during The Silurians, leading the eponymous Silurians to win. The book ends with what is almost certainly the New Adventures’ highest death toll as the Doctor is forced to destroy the entire alternate universe. It’s quite well-regarded, although Craig Hinton is relatively restrained, accusing Mortimore of being “a little more heavy-handed than Johnny Byrne, and considerably more so than Hulke,” though still basically liking the book. Lars Pearson is more unequivocal, calling it “magnificent” and saying that “fans still stand up and cheer about it.” Shannon Sullivan’s rankings put it at 24th, with a rating of 72.2%, nestling it snugly between The Highest Science and Birthright. DWRG entry. Whoniverse Discontinuity Guide entry.
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It’s October of 1993. DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince are at number one with “Boom! Shake The Room.” That lasts a week, and then Take That unseat them with “Relight my Fire.” That lasts two whole weeks, at which point Meat Loaf take over number one with “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That).” Pet Shop Boys, Roxette, Iron Maiden, The Prodigy, and Phil Collins also chart, while top ten albums include Nirvana’s In Utero, Pet Shop Boys’s Very, Pearl Jam’s Vs, and Meat Loaf’s Bat Out Of Hell II.
In news, since last entry Israel and the PLO signed a peace accord in Washington DC, with Yasir Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin shaking hands afterwards. Giuseppe Puglisi was killed in Italy due to his strong stance against the Mafia. While during this month the US badly botches Operation Gothic Serpent in Mogadishu, leading to the events depicted in the film Black Hawk Down. China performs a nuclear test, unnerving everybody a bit. Benazir Bhutto becomes the first elected female leader of a Muslim state in Pakistan. John Major attempts to revive the blatantly sagging fortunes of the Conservative Party, launches the Back to Basics campaign, which mostly becomes emblematic of failed attempts to relaunch political parties. And members of the Ulster Defence Association attack a bar in Greysteel, Northern Ireland, killing eight.
While in books, we have Jim Mortimore’s Blood Heat, which provides something of an interesting test case for a broader aesthetic and critical issue that has at times lurked in the background of this blog, and that is, in many ways, in play again now. In any given era of Doctor Who there is a critical gravity towards the idea of figuring out the era’s default mode, if you will. In the Troughton era, for instance, the default was bases under siege.…