Vampire Science (Dr. Who Series)
by Jonathan Blum, Kate Orman
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Book Summary Information
Author: Jonathan Blum, Kate OrmanEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1998-01
ISBN: 056340566X
Number of pages: 288
Publisher: BBC Books
Book Reviews of Vampire Science (Dr. Who Series)
Book Review: They'd like to suck your blood, allegedly
Summary: 5 Stars
The amount of actual science in Doctor Who has varied over the years, depending on the writer of the particular story and how much people are paying attention (watch the sixties serials to see how flexible the word "galaxy" can be) but there comes a point where you have to draw a line between science and fantasy. Vampires tend to be more on the "fantasy" side of said line, and yet the show has never really shied away from them, bringing them up late in Tom Baker's run (acutally the first episode I ever saw, and yes, it scared the heck out of me) and only occasionally pretending that science was at all involved. The Eighth Doctor runs into vampires in his second BBC adventure, but the authors take a different tactic than you might expect. After a rather bloody beginning where the Doctor and Sam hunt down a vampire in San Francisco, they come back twenty years later to find that vampires are still running around, an infestation that has caught UNIT's attention. Lines are drawn for a battle that could be quite messy indeed, but the Doctor has other ideas, perhaps a way that the vampires could still feed without killing everyone in sight. Orman was one of the better New Adventures authors and someone like her was needed to wash the bad taste that "The Eight Doctors" left in everyone's mouths, since people were looking for an actual story and not a string of anecdotes. I'm not sure what Blum adds to the mix but Orman's trademark attention to character detail and nicely crafted small scenes show up here in spades . . . the authors handle the cast deftly and keep things accessible, while making nods to continuity for the longtime fans (the UNIT representative keeps making references to the Seventh Doctor and his rather more manipulative ways, perhaps as a way to highlight how different this Doctor is). By focusing on characters they play more to the strengths of the current Doctor, who isn't as plot-happy as his previous incarnation and a little more adverse to blowing up planets to fulfill a grand scheme, his attempts to find a solution that doesn't involve people dying left and right seems proper for how the character is portrayed. The vampires themselves are depicted as more than bloodsucking killers, while some are only interested in being creatures of the night, others are taking a more active role in researching how they can stop hunting people down for food, a goal the Doctor is keen to help with. Indeed, the plot is fairly tense, as the two sides keep squaring off and come thisclose to wiping each other out, the authors play the internal vampire politics and the feuding views of the humans involved off each other well, and while this isn't the world's most densely plotted book, the conflicting motivations helps keep things moving. Sam, for one, comes across better in this story, her introduction in the last book was both boring and annoying at the same time, and while she isn't about to join the companion pantheon yet, she is both capable and a believable teenager, although sometimes the authors push the "she was raised by hippie parents!" too far at times. Meanwhile, the Doctor is finally given a story to stretch out in and he acts like you would think the Doctor should, straddling the line between "I have a brilliant plan" and "I'm making it up as I go along" as well as acting both more human and more moral than his previous incarnations, he's friendlier but you can still believe he's an alien. All in all, a decent and quick read, the BBC line was still finding itself at this point and it still feels like a really good TV episode as opposed to the envelope pushing and experimention of the New Adventures line, but it was early yet. You should skip "The Eight Doctors" and go right to this and not feel like you missed a thing.
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