| BELTEMPEST by Jim Mortimore |
| Story 17 Synopsis: Whilst relaxing on the beach, the Doctor and Sam are caught up in a calamity when the moon collapses. Separated, he finds himself on Belannia VI, trying to save the lives of all the crew and passengers of a rescue ship. She meets some religious people praying for salvation, who are surprised by a man called Saketh, offering them living immortality instead of death. She later helps out an abandoned child, before meeting the Doctor, who tries to organise the authorities to act quickly to prevent further cataclysm in the solar system. Sam pursues Saketh, sure something is up. She is overcome by sensory input from aliens called Hoth, and manages to crashland a craft of survivors on a moon. Desperate, she finally succumbs to Saketh's offer of apparently eternal life. The Doctor discerns that the Hoth left a child to incubate in the Belannian sun, and its birth will spell the death of all the people living on the planets. Sam has been taken over by the Hoth, and the Doctor uses her link to try and find a less drastic solution. That done, he and Sam return to the TARDIS and leave. |
| Review:- A complicated sci-fi narrative with a grand canvas combines with a humourous parody of Christianity, as the Doctor's love for life is put to the test... Mortimore tends to write big narratives with big scope, and take a long time to write them. That this was his 3rd DW-related book published in the same calendar year represented some kind of emphatic momentum, and like Eternity Weeps, this book tackles religion with a sceptical eye. That he had recently lost his father seemed to spur him on to explore themes of life and death with a great zeal, and certainly produced some decent books. Saketh's talk of granting eternal life to people who eat his flesh is so thinly parodic of Jesus Christ that it is to Mortimore's credit that nobody, even Sam, mentions it. The hands-off approach to the character means the reader can judge for themselves what Mortimore wants them to think, which is far more welcome than simply hectoring the point. Indeed, the other issue of the book, dumping nuclear waste, is even more subtly handled, and rather more pertinent to the plot. Sam's journey is a hard one. Stranded on a dying moon without the help and protection of the Doctor or the TARDIS, she makes her own way, choosing to reject the Doctor's help when he manages to offer her some. Her rescue of the injured 'Danny' is a moving section, especially her eventual rejection by the boy's mother. When she realises she has no option, she takes Saketh's coin, but uses it to try and push events along instead of waiting for oblivion. In this, she is echoed by the Doctor, who takes an opposite direction to trying to solve the situation. That the conclusion should be the two of them facing each other in conflict is fitting to the rest of the book, though I'll be blowed if I can tell exactly how the resolution happens. What could have been a confusing, bewildering and nauseating book finishes up as something rather sprightly and smart, even with that ending. Space opera can be a beautiful thing, then. |
| Disclaimer: I own a copy of the book. |