| VAMPIRE SCIENCE by Jonathan Blum & Kate Orman |
| Story 2 Synopsis: San Francisco, 1997, and the Doctor finds that vampires are on the loose. To prevent further bloodshed, he meets with their leader, Joanna, to try and find a peaceful solution, despite UNIT wanting to come in and kill them all. He and Joanna become tied by blood, as a mark of his trust in her efforts to make peace. She has tried to create a chemical replacement, but centuries of trying has not got her far. The Doctor helps, but only creates a formula that will kill vampires on close contact. Joanna's leadership of her coven is challenged by the younger Slake, who leads the young half of the coven into slaughtering the older half. He also manages to kidnap Sam. The Doctor devises a trap at a theatre, but is only partly successful. When the vampires try to suck his blood, they die - he having drunk his own vampire-killing formula. When Joanna tries to save him, she instead finds that he has turned her into a human. |
| Review:- After the colourful and chaotic opening novel, this range put down a marker with a book set in modern San Francisco, concerning vampires. Of course, to plunge a new reader into an old conflict might well be construed as asking a lot, but as this is just a bog-standard vampire story, then it's not too bad a problem. Much might be made of the Doctor and Sam on American soil, but it neither adds to, nor detracts from, the story. Dr Shackle might be working in any downtown area in any major city. The vampires are a mixed bunch, conveniently divided between the old guard, who want a quiet life, and the young turks who want to raise a little hell. Their respective leaders, Joanna Harris and Edwin Slake are fairly well depicted, as is Abner, the oldie who hangs with the young crowd to keep a friendly eye on them. The conflict between the two sides is mirrored by the Doctor pursuing his own feud against all of them, treating both sides the same. In a sense, that's all there is to the story. Joanna's bloodfasting gives the Doctor a personal stake in helping her plans, whilst Sam's attack puts her in the camp of wanting them all dead. Conversely, despite his blood feud, the Doctor wants to find a way for them to live, but without attacking humans. Ultimately, of course, it comes down to stopping Slake, who wipes out all the elders, save Joanna, and turns Shackle, to his disappointment. The Doctor blithely stages a plan to stop them, and despite the cost in his own blood, he succeeds. He even manages to turn Joanna human. Having spent much of the book being admonished by Kramer, representing UNIT and comparing him to his old self, the Doctor's claims of happy accidents seem a little false. He may profess his innocence, but his ends are the same as his previous super-planner self, and the means don't differ much, either. So, the Doctor and Sam move on, unaware of Shackle's survival (a twist later re-enacted in Kursaal, with which this book shares a few traits). The way that Kramer co-opts Carolyn into the UNIT set-up smacks of trite happy endings, but is perhaps symptomatic of the book as a whole. It slightly entertains, but it doesn't really educate. |
| Disclaimer: I own a copy of the book. |