Unnatural History (novel)

Unnatural History was the twenty-third novel in the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures series. It was written by Jonathan Blum and Kate Orman, released 7 June 1999 and featured the Eighth Doctor, Sam Jones and Fitz Kreiner.

This novel explained several issues concerning Sam Jones that were introduced in Alien Bodies.

Publisher's summary
"They called it the Millennium Effect", said the Doctor. "But the millennium was only beginning."

San Francisco has changed since the start of 2000. The laws of physics keep having acid flashbacks. There are sightings of creatures from outside our dimensions, stranded aliens and surrealist street performers. The city has become a mecca for those who revel in impossible creatures — and those who want to see them pinned down and put away.

Sam's past is catching up with her — a past she didn't know she had. The Doctor is in danger of becoming the pièce de résistance in a twisted collection of creatures. And beneath the waters of the Bay, something huge is waiting.

With time running out, the Doctor must choose which to sacrifice — a city of wonders, or the life of an old and dear friend.

Chapter titles
Day Zero Minus Three Day Zero Minus Two Day Zero Minus One Day Zero Night Zero Free-Frame The i Doctors
 * 1) I Was a Teenage Paradox
 * 2) If You Can Remember the Future, You Weren't Really There
 * 1) Second String
 * 2) Bird of Paradox
 * 3) Licentious Moments
 * 1) The Unnaturalist
 * 2) Kraken Up
 * 3) The Memory Cheating Ain't What it Used to Be
 * 4) Abducted by Aliens
 * 5) Somewhere, Just Out of Sight, the Unicorn Are Being Gathered
 * 6) Kyra
 * 1) Stuffed and Mounted
 * 2) The Book of Lies
 * 3) Hero in Use
 * 1) Anything Not Nailed Down is Mine
 * 2) Anything I Can Pry Loose is Not Nailed Down
 * 3) What Lies, Behind Us
 * 4) Coming Unstrung
 * 1) Buying Time
 * 2) The City Killer
 * 1) Impossible Creatures

Day Zero Plus Seven

Epilogue: The Other Woman

Plot
to be added

Characters

 * Eighth Doctor
 * Sam Jones (Dark haired Sam)
 * Sam Jones (Blonde Sam)
 * Fitz Kreiner
 * Eldin Sanchez
 * Kyra Skye
 * Professor Daniel Joyce
 * Anne Joyce
 * Daniel Joyce’s daughter
 * Griffin the Unnaturalist
 * Griffin's brother
 * Griffin's father
 * Griffin's uncle
 * Boy of Faction Paradox
 * Mark
 * Marilyn
 * Rob
 * Dave
 * Walter Markowitz
 * Peter
 * Anya
 * Monster
 * Bob
 * Raven Moonstone
 * Venus O'Willendorf
 * Carl
 * Larna

Books

 * Introduction to Quantum Esotericism is by Watkinson.
 * Thripsted discusses the Book of Lies.

Biology

 * Griffin manipulates the Doctor's biodata, removing his awareness of violet and all the UV ranges.
 * Fitz states that there are several unconfirmed "cryptozoological sightings."

Culture

 * The Doctor can't remember etiquette and gets confused between "twenty-first century America and the planet Quinnis in the fourth universe."

The Doctor

 * The Doctor once again uses the alias "Doctor Bowman".
 * The Doctor tells Sam (upon seeing her light up) that he gave up smoking "six or seven lifetimes ago".
 * The Doctor might have got caught skinny-dipping with a pretty female cousin of his in one timeline.
 * The Doctor contacts UNIT through General Adrienne Kramer concerning what's going on in San Francisco.
 * The Doctor summons a boy of the Faction Paradox using a ritual and an extract of his biodata.
 * The Doctor and his father's names were banned in one potential origin when they left Gallifrey.

Drugs and medicines

 * Sam smokes Benson and Hedges cigarettes.

Fashion and clothing

 * Fitz wears a fedora and a long black coat while gathering information from his "contacts". He also wears small round sunglasses like John Lennon.
 * Fitz's hair is still growing back after his experiences with communist China.

Foods and beverages

 * The Doctor pours out a bottle of beer in Kyra Skye's memory.
 * Sam takes her coffee black; Fitz, white with two sugars.
 * Daniel Joyce offers Sam some tea. She says she prefers coffee.

Gallifrey

 * The Doctor is not sure who is President of Gallifrey at this point, Romana II, Flavia or someone else.

Individuals

 * The Doctor tells Sam (dark haired) "about being President Elect of the High Council of Time Lords, keeper of the Legacy of Rassilon, Defender of the Laws of Time and Protector of Galloway. Or something."
 * Sam is originally dark-haired. This original version of her lives in a King's Cross bedsit.
 * Sam has sex with Fitz.
 * Sam's parents have postcards and letters that Sam Jones had/will been sending to them from:
 * San Franscico, 1 August, 1997
 * A letter from 1894, London
 * A postcard from Kursaal
 * A photobooth postcard with her and the Doctor from Paphos
 * They began arriving around the Mars, 1997 mission.


 * The Doctor tells Sam Jones (dark-haired Sam) that "his Sam" (blonde haired Sam):
 * Stopped the smugglers of Nephelokokkugian and the Dalek invasion of Tuvalu.
 * Battled the tyrant queen of Hyspero.
 * Returned a Triceratops infant to its mother.


 * The Doctor phones Dr Grace Holloway.
 * Blinovitch was a member of the Faction Paradox according to the boy.
 * The Doctor mentions Tubby Rowlands.
 * Professor Daniel Joyce has a tattoo on the cuff of his sleeve that he looks like he has tried to get rid of. He has a red-headed assistant called Larna.

Languages

 * Despite Fitz' months in Mao's communist people's collective in China, he never learnt how to read much Chinese.

Locations

 * The location of the temporal cicatrix is the alleyway where the Doctor was shot.
 * Fitz has meditated on top of Mount Tamalpais.
 * Griffin is from one of the higher dimensions. He's from somewhere near the Needle.

Media

 * Eldin Sanchez writes for the Interesting Times.

Occult

 * Kyra Skye says she is a witch.

Planets

 * The Doctor cleared up the after effects of Daniel Joyce's visit to Youkali.

Individuals by profession

 * Daniel Joyce does work for the Advanced Research Projects at Berkeley.

Psychic powers

 * Kyra Skye can see/read the "ley lines" of San Francisco. She discusses psychokinesis and Snoopy when she first meets Fitz.

Species

 * A Kraken comes from the higher dimensions and floats in the void, almost twisting itself through incomprehensible space. It grazes on exotic matter, plumes of raw cosmological power, fountains of energy in the upper reaches that is undetectable in N-Space. It's big enough to flatten San Francisco.
 * The unicorns can teleport, but the scar prevents them from escaping San Francisco.
 * Griffin takes apart an artificial chimera making her simpler, so she is once again a dragon, a lion and goat.

Technology

 * The Doctor uses a "Time Lord message pod", which appears to be intercepted by Faction Paradox.
 * He expected a reply "once the epistopic interfaces of the space-time continuum are properly aligned."
 * Datagel is compact "but if you rupture the cell your computing power oozes out through the cracks."
 * The Henches (the "men in grey") are from BioHazCorp and were supposed to be delivered to a warzone on Teso Peope.
 * Daniel Joyce got a spare beryllium chip for Wagg following the Doctor's theft of his first one.

Timeline

 * On 31 December 1999, a singularity opened in San Francisco and the Earth was forced through an opening the size of a bath plug.
 * The Faction Paradox agent takes an old memory of the Doctor's:
 * The fruity scent of karmine pudding.
 * When the Doctor was barely a Loomling.
 * When his father was present in a Great House.
 * He'd caught a cobblemouse.
 * Mr Saldaamir is present.


 * The boy comments on "the whole post-destination thing with the Vervoids," and the way the Doctor "tricked the Dalek Empire into tangling their timeline so bad that their history collapsed under the weight of the paradoxes."

Time travel

 * The boy uses a Blinovitch generator to create copies of himself and time travels using the energy built up from crossing his timestream.

Theories and concepts

 * The paradox agent takes the Doctor's Volkswagen Beetle as payment for information, intending to take it back in time and melt it down, ensuring that its own steel would be used in its construction: a paradox.
 * Kyra Skye is killed by Griffin by folding her through the higher dimensions.
 * The Wild Hunt is part of the scar's healing process, energy washing out in a reverse ripple. When it hits Sam she experiences alternate timelines and if the energy catches her up in it minutely alters her biodata (although it only transforms her if she in the same location as an alternate version of herself; as an example, while in her room she transforms into a drug addict in need of her next hit who has remained in the room since arriving in San Francisco, where other versions of her have left the room).
 * The Doctor initially speculates that blonde Sam could have been created when his unstable biodata after his last regeneration latched onto dark Sam and transformed her into his 'perfect' companion; Joyce dismisses this idea as the Doctor could never have had that kind of impact on someone he would never have met without that biodata manipulation taking place in the first place, but his words suggest that it could have happened if the Doctor was influencing the biodata of someone he was more familiar with.

Vehicles

 * The Doctor's Volkswagen Beetle has a customised Y2K number plate.

Continuity

 * PROSE: Alien Bodies first introduced the concept of an alternate version of Sam Jones who smoked Benson & Hedges cigarettes and had dark hair.
 * Sam's postcards are from San Francisco, (PROSE: Vampire Science) 1894, (PROSE: The Bodysnatchers) and Kursaal. (PROSE: Kursaal)
 * The Doctor mentions himself and Sam (blonde) defeating the tyrant queen on Hyspero and meeting Iris Wildthyme, both during PROSE: The Scarlet Empress.
 * The Doctor mentions that he used to smoke. The only televised occasion of this was TV: An Unearthly Child.
 * The events of the Mars 1997 mission were covered in PROSE: The Dying Days.
 * The events of PROSE: The Eight Doctors occurred, only without Sam or the Doctor's involvement (the first time around).
 * Fitz talks about his time in communist China with Sam (dark haired). His hair is still growing back following the events of PROSE: Revolution Man.
 * The planet Quinnis was mentioned (briefly) by the First Doctor and Susan in TV: The Edge of Destruction. Their experiences there were documented in AUDIO: Quinnis.
 * Youkali was mentioned in PROSE: Return of the Living Dad.
 * Joyce states/accuses the Doctor of toppling governments on his spare weekends, as seen in many stories including TV: The Happiness Patrol, AUDIO: LIVE 34, and TV: The Christmas Invasion.
 * The Doctor isn't sure if Romana (PROSE: Goth Opera) or Flavia (PROSE: The Eight Doctors) is Lord President of Gallifrey.
 * When the representative of the Faction tries to tell the Doctor of his future exploits he says, "No spoilers," a statement that would come back to him in TV: Silence in the Library, but also because he doesn't want to know about the future he first learned of in PROSE: Alien Bodies.
 * The Doctor last dropped acid in 1968 and nearly got transformed into an Aztec god in PROSE: The Left-Handed Hummingbird.
 * The events of TV: Doctor Who began the anomalies throughout San Francisco.
 * The Book of Lies explains the "small improvements" Rassilon guided the Eighth Doctor to make in PROSE: The Eight Doctors.
 * The Book of Lies predicts that a "greyness" will fall across the universe (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors).
 * The Doctor was last in San Francisco in PROSE: Vampire Science.
 * The Doctor briefly thinks about Carolyn McConnell and James Court. (PROSE: Vampire Science)
 * Blinovitch (of the Blinovitch Limitation Effect) was first mentioned in TV: Day of the Daleks.
 * The Doctor doesn't have a shadow after the events of this book. Reasons for this are revealed in PROSE: Interference.
 * The Doctor also contacted Grace Holloway in COMIC: The Fallen.
 * The Boy follows the legend that all agents of Faction Paradox have lost their shadows. Lolita would later tell Cousin Justine that the Faction had hundreds of agents without shadows, who "just don't mix" with the rest, in AUDIO: The Shadow Play.
 * Kyra played a Kathmandu album while Fitz was at her house. Fitz previously met the band in the 1960s, including Ed Hill. (PROSE: Revolution Man)