Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Vampire Science by Jonathan Blum 3 Jonathan Blum Quotes on Doctor Who: Vampire Science - Quotes.pub. Here you will find all the famous Jonathan Blum quotes. There are more than 3+ quotes in our Jonathan Blum quotes collection. We have collected all of them and made stunning Jonathan Blum wallpapers & posters out of those quotes. You can use this wallpapers & posters on mobile, desktop, print and frame them or share them on the various social media platforms. You can download the quotes images in various different sizes for free. In the below list you can find quotes in various categories like Doctor Who: Vampire Science. Jacob Licklider: Reviews. Having six months pass since reviewing The Eight Doctors has given me quite a bit of perspective on the issue of writing for the . The Eighth Doctor is perhaps with the largest blank slate when it comes to character development. His line of novels began publishing in June 1997, one year after the airing of The TV Movie , and the as an effect on the character would only come when the series was revived in 2005. All we get is that he’s a hopeless romantic who gets amnesia when he regenerates and during The Eight Doctors picks up Samantha Jones for a series of travels. focused on a celebration of continuity for his novel, but this leaves Eight and Sam as a blank slate. We know that Sam Jones is a vegetarian and liberal activist living near enough to Coal Hill School while having an overactive sense of justice. Vampire Science is the follow up novel and actually gives us the start of the Doctor and Sam’s actual travels. The biggest problem of the novel is Sam Jones: as a character she doesn’t come across as likable, but is written in this style where she’s just all snark and no care. It seems that the people running BBC Books were attempting to follow the formula to make a companion like the smash hit , but she really doesn’t. Sam’s obsession is saving the planet from pollution and attempting to rebel against parents who would only dislike her if she became a drug addict or dared to join the Conservative Party. She’s a whiny teenager who thinks that everyone should be the ones treating her like an adult and going with the Doctor she can prove it. Sorry, but that’s not really a well-defined character overall and she’s really the only thing getting in the way of this being a great novel. with the Doctor can. Now this is more like it! After reading the frivolous and inconsequential Eight Doctors for the first time, I really thought that the glory days of Doctor Who literature were over. Thankfully though and Jonathan Blum, through their thrilling book Vampire Science , managed to restore my severely tested faith in Doctor Who novels. Indeed, the glory days were just beginning. Vampire Science is simply superb. Kate Orman, Doctor Who�s first female writer in print, quickly established herself as one of the elite writers for Virgin�s New Adventures range, and rightly so. Whilst I can�t say that I�ve been enamoured with each and every one of her books, they have each been written in her own inimitable style and they have all been very memorable. But this is not just an Orman novel - her husband, Jonathan Blum, is credited. as her co-author and his presence is really felt in earnest. Unlike almost all of Orman�s solo novels, Vampire Science has energy and pace; it�s a novel that�s fully loaded. As Orman�s exquisite prose is as recognisable as ever, I can only assume that Blum is responsible for this novel�s drive. What really made this book stand out for me though was the way in which it set up the tales that were yet to come. As a �pilot� for a range of books, The Eight Doctors was appalling in the extreme. Vampire Science , on the other hand, is mesmerisingly perfect. Orman and Blum don�t waste words introducing a new companion through superfluous subplot; oh no. Right from the word go, the Doctor and Sam are old friends. They�ve been travelling for a while. She knows the ropes. Sam didn�t need her introduction in the preceding novel; we glean all that we need to know about her character from the first few pages of this story. Now this would have worked well in itself � Orman and Blum write for the Doctor and Sam. so very well that we simply accept the fact that they have been knocking round the cosmos together for a while. But here is the really clever bit � Vampire Science marks a crucial stage in the Doctor / Sam relationship. This sort of story would normally be, perhaps, the penultimate or even the final story for many companions. Sam has an epiphany. Kramer�s remarks to her about how the treated Ace, together with the ordeal that she goes through in this novel, really make Sam take stock and consider what she is doing with her life. And, in the end, events here only reaffirm her desire to travel with the Doctor, making this story her perfect introduction. I firmly believe that the eighth Doctor adventures should have started with this novel. If you haven�t read The Eight Doctors, then my advice to you is to simply pick up here and chase the ride. Furthermore, much as the authors both hoped, the Doctor and his new companion �really sparkle together�. It is not because Sam is a particularly noteworthy companion or even because the eight Doctor is a particularly distinctive Doctor � in fact, the exact opposite could be argued. We have the young and headstrong female companion. She thinks she�s wise and strong, but of course she isn�t. Not underneath. And then we have the �mother hen� Doctor. A bit more debonair, perhaps even a little bit more romantic than his predecessors, but underneath he�s the same sweeping, moral force cloaked in zeal. �I�m a former President of the High Council of the Time Lords, Keeper of the. Legacy of Rassilon, Defender of the Laws of Time and Protector of . I�m called the Bringer of Darkness, the Oncoming Storm, and the Evergreen Man. .. � Orman and Blum do make a point though of contrasting this new Doctor to his much more unscrupulous predecessor. The UNIT General, Kramer, knew the seventh Doctor very well and frowned upon his manipulative ways. In Vampire Science though, Kramer really doesn�t know what to make of the new Doctor�s persona. Like almost every other female character. in the book, she often seems quite taken with his almost childlike exuberance. I also liked the San Francisco setting. It serves as a perfect backdrop for. the war between the young members. of the vampire coven and the elder. vampires. After Terrance Dicks� complete debasement of the TV. Movie, it was nice to see the setting. of the eighth Doctor�s birth to be. given a little nod here. I understand. that the nod was meant to be considerably more significant - was originally intended to reprise her role from the TV Movie, but had to be written out due to issues over the rights. Ironically though, her exclusion probably benefited the novel as her �replacement� - Carolyn McConnell - is a revelation. In Vampire Science we first meet Carolyn as a young woman before catching up with her twenty years later for the bulk of the story, and as a result the reader feels like he knows her very well. She has a very endearing normality about her, more so than ever when she is trying to be different. You can�t help but love her. Vampire Science is replete with yet more memorable characters, most notably the leader of the coven, Joanna Harris, who �bonds� with the Doctor; and the depressed Doctor, Shackle, who becomes so obsessed with the futility of mortality that he allows himself to be turned in- to a Vampire. There is so much inherent conflict between these fascinating characters that, once combined with a corker of a plot, make Vampire Science unputdownable. Finally, it should also be noted that unlike Dicks, Orman and Blum didn�t take it upon them-selves to try and wipe out all sixty-one of the New Adventures novels. In fact, they treat them with due reverence. Orman and Blum squeeze in a cheeky reference to Yemaya - the setting for Orman�s novel Sleepy � together with countless veiled endorsements of the Virgin range. They even make it clear that during the Doctor and Sam�s travels, one day the Doctor just dropped Sam off at a Rally for a few subjective hours whilst he went off travelling by himself for several years , allowing The Dying Days to be accommodated into the Doctor�s timeline, not to mention a flood of eighth Doctor comic strips and audio dramas released since. I also like the charming way in which the writers have the Doctor refer to himself as being �three years old� � a reference to the age of his eighth persona in this novel - before conceding. that the sum total of all his incarnations is something like 1,012 (if indeed he still has count; and � audio drama would later suggest that he doesn�t�) For me, Vampire Science could pass for the sixty-second New Adventure . It is true to the spirit of the old Virgin books to such an extent that, if you could wipe The Eight Doctors. from memory, then the transition from Virgin to BBC Books would appears seamless. If anything, BBC Books would be ahead on points thanks to their altogether more impressive cover design! Copyright � E.G. Wolverson 2 010. E.G. Wolverson has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work. This novel posits that the Doctor dropped Sam off at a Greenpeace rally, only to return a few hours later and three years older. Given the tight continuity between the TV Movie and The Eight Doctors , we believe that the Doctor�s adventures with Izzy, Destrii, Stacey, Ssard, Mary Shelley, Samson, Gemma, Charley and C�rizz all take place within this gap, as well as a number of his lone adventures. Furthermore, as this book is very specific about three years having passed for the Doctor (as opposed to six centuries or so!) we do not think that the eighth Doctor�s travels with Lucie can feasibly take place within this gap. Whilst the Doctor is discernibly insincere when the topic of his age is broached, and he could simply be fibbing about his �three year� sojourn, the fact that he struggles to remember Lucie when they are eventually reunited in Orbis suggests that he�d hardly be likely to remember to collect Sam after the events of Death in Blackpool. Unless otherwise stated, all images on this site are copyrighted to the BBC and are used solely for promotional purposes. EDA 2: Vampire Science, by Jonathan Blum and Kate Orman (Eighth Doctor Novel) I am not the biggest fan of Terrance Dicks' The Eight Doctors —a novel that is about four-parts fan service, three-parts political quagmire, and only one-part character—but I am a huge fan of the Eighth Doctor (mainly through the Big Finish line of audioplays, mind you), so I pretty much had to continue the EDAs (Eighth Doctor Adventures)*. Another thing that I am. skeptical..of is the Doctor Who universe's ability to suffer prolonged exposure to more classical myths, like vampires. It most definitely can spin an old campfire tale into something new and fresh, and has done many times; but its strength tends to lie in its new creations. Vampires are public domain, so to speak. Well known. Well attributed. Every version has its own little perks, ups and downs. Can the Whoniverse take a fourth outing with them (following State of Decay , the Terrance Dicks penned serial that started the connection, its direct novel sequel (also by Dicks), Blood Harvest , and a slightly down the road novel called Goth Opera ). In each version, vampires toned down just a bit, became a little more common place, in every since of the word. I'll get to the end-result in just a moment. Joining the Doctor is Sam Jones, the Dicks created (I think this might be time I say his name) new companion from the previous book; a General Kramer from UNIT who was introduced in the Jonathan Blum fan-film Time Rift , and Carolyn. Interestingly, Carolyn is pretty much a Grace Halloway stand-in. Rather than the end of The Movie, where Grace stays behind, Caroyln stays behind after watching the Doctor fight off a vampire. Outside of that difference, there is little else. The book even takes place in San Francisco, though it would require a bit of Timey-Wimey since it actually happens a couple of years before the setting of The Movie. The other two companions work well enough. Sam Jones is still a bit in development, but the young near-rebel (a little bit like Ace tempered with a bit of, hmm, maybe Jamie) makes do as an impressionable companion wanting to impress and emulate the Doctor (and, of course, dealing with a crush on him. notice that Sam Jones was an alias taken on by Martha Jones in Torchwood , who could kind of be thought of a mash-up of Sam and Carolyn). Kramer is, well, a fan-creation. A brusque, large black woman, her main role is to act as substitute for the Brigadier with just a little bit of a different edge. For instance, she sees the Doctor's personal failings and comments on them, while the Brigadier was more interested in the practical uses of the Doctor. Ok, the rough story. Doctor is summoned by Carolyn because her boyfriend is missing. Vampires are involved. The Doctor and Sam investigate and find a small clan operating in San Fransisco. As they get more and more tangled up in this, they find the head vampire, who appears to be a middle aged medical scientists. She is on the brink of a no-more-humans-required blood solution, but her younger brood is caught up in the thrill of the hunt and the internal pressures are threatening to unbalance the clan. In order to prove that he does not want to merely wipe them out, the Doctor enters into a blood pact (linking him to the head vampire) and tries to help her to overcome her trouble-makers. Tensions build up, mistakes are made, and hey, that's Doctor Who . There are two big themes in this, outside of the vampire elements. One works, one doesn't. The one that doesn't work is the "huggy Doctor" theme. The Eighth Doctor is full of hugs. In this novel, he is trying to make the seems unloving by comparison. In one awkward to read, to picture, and to act out scene, he is cooking breakfast and hugging Sam. Trite. Unnecessary. And it comes across as someone not quite sure what to make of the scene between the Eighth Doctor and Grace Holloway from The Movie. By the end of the book, it is addressed openly and toned down, but I don't like it. Especially since this takes place three years into the Doctor's regeneration. That weird "early days" syndrome he gets would have warn off completely. The theme that does work, and is contrasted to The Eighth Doctors is the question of trusting the . For all of his "down with the people" ways, Theta Sigma is still quite a bit Gallifrey. Since the Hartnell era, and maybe more so in Troughton, one strong character trait of the Doctor is that he doesn't share the whole picture. Nearly ever. He almost always holds something back. This is stated most bluntly in "The Big Bang" with 's "Rule number one: The Doctor lies." And he does. He'll act outnumbered, at the end of his rope, and then suddenly flip off all the defenses in the enemy space ship and, you know, turn one of them into a scarecrow or something. This element was explored back in the UNIT story arcs, and rumbles of it were brought out briefly during the / years, but this novel addresses it widely, in a number of ways (emotional trust, practical trust) and it ends up with the same basic answer that the entire series and all of its spin-offs have put forth: they may not want to, but nearly everyone who meets him ends up going along with his plans. and even when they get hurt by it he tends to make it mostly alright. As for the vampires, they barely had enough steam to make it to the end of the novel. There is are two key build ups towards the end, one at a club and one at a theater, and the tension nearly holds to the first one and has bottomed out by the second. The story still flows enough to get by without requiring an obvious hook, but once you have established that the Doctor can more than handle them (he and the other Time Lords are something of a dark legend to the vampire kind), and the previous novel had a turned-companion and the prior two stories had bigger vampires and more; what can you do? Just drive the point home by having them beaten again? The attempt at empathy, including the direct contradiction to the tenets of Rassilon, were a nice touch, and about the last card left playable unless something else happens (faux-vampire tales like "Venice" not counting). Which leaves just the final scores for the novel. It felt like it should have ended about fifty pages before it did, so that's a minus one, and it had little new to say for either vampires or San Fransisco, so that's another deduction. However, the roguish Doctor negates one of those minuses and both the mystery of his three missing years and the development of Sam Jones negates the other. The hugging counteracts the pace and character of the novel, both of which fit very much in the "new- Who " style. I'll let it come down to personal tilt, and say this one is better than The Eight Doctors but is flawed by the fandom-ness of it coupled with a need to be tightened (Russel T. Davies, who is excellent at getting the point of scenes, could have made this into an interesting two-parter). The final score will have to be a straddled Fair-Good (+0.5) with bonus marks for Weird Harold and minus marks for Carolyn's sycophant boyfriend. PS: No, by the way, I don't remember there being a reason for the president's seal to be on the cover. unless that's a tongue-in-cheek nod towards Rassilon's seal and the novel being set in the US. * For right now, I'm skipping Dying Days but will come back to it. Doctor Who: Vampire Science by Jonathan Blum. Some want to coexist with humans, using genetic engineering in a macabre experiment to find a new source of blood. But some would rather go out in a blaze of glory - and UNIT�s attempts to contain them could provoke another devastating war. This novel is another in the series of adventures featuring the Eighth Doctor and Sam. Released: July 1997 ISBN: 0 563 40566 X. San Francisco, 1976. Carolyn McConnell, a pre-med student who dreams of finding a cure for cancer, stumbles across a vampire attack when she follows an interesting British girl out of a bar. Carolyn, not knowing whether to be excited or terrified, is swept along with the flow and follows the girl, Sam Jones, and her friend the Doctor. They track down the vampire Eva to her home, where the Doctor threatens to stake her unless she reveals where the other vampires are hiding. Eva struggles, and in the end Carolyn is uncertain whether the Doctor staked Eva or Eva staked herself. The Doctor and Sam depart, and the Doctor leaves Carolyn an n-dimensional hypercube with which she can contact him if she ever has more vampire trouble. By 1997, Carolyn has become a medical researcher, and her boyfriend James Court, a theatrical lighting designer, has learned to tolerate her interest in vampires. When a prominent senator is found near a Goth bar named The Other Place with all of the blood drained from his body, Carolyn takes her collection of news clippings to the police, and is put in touch with General Kramer of UNIT. One of Kramer�s best officers was recently killed while investigating the senator�s death, and Kramer, needing help, asks Carolyn to act as her unofficial scientific advisor. James, unable to take their talk of vampires seriously, offers to speak with the owner of the Other Place, who happens to be a friend of his. He doesn�t return, and the terrified Carolyn assembles her hypercube and calls in the Doctor. While the Doctor, Carolyn and Kramer plan their next move, Sam researches the statistics on unexpected deaths by blood loss, and meets a young doctor from an inner-city hospital. David Shackle, who seems to affect a world-weary tone to counter the hopelessness of his situation, informs her that two hundred homeless people have died over the last six months, and that nobody has noticed. He accompanies the Doctor, Sam, Carolyn and Kramer to the Other Place, where the Doctor tries to question its owner. He fails to learn anything, Shackle is mugged when he gets bored and starts questioning people, and Sam is attacked by an emaciated vampire on the club dancefloor. As Sam recovers in hospital, Kramer advises her to stop travelling with the Doctor, telling her she�s too young to throw herself into the front lines. Sam starts to wonder whether the Doctor deliberately let her get attacked to show her how dangerous travelling with him could be. Shackle goes to his friend Joanna Harris for advice, but her brutally honest responses reinforce his growing conviction that life is meaningless. He is unaware that she is in fact the leader of the local vampire coven. The Doctor and Carolyn return to the Other Place and wait for a vampire to show up; the young and arrogant Slake eventually confronts them, but the Doctor informs Slake that he is a Time Lord and demands that he arrange a meeting with his leader. Cowed, Slake reports to Harris, who agrees to meet the Doctor at the disused Orpheum Theatre which the vampires have made their home. The Doctor agrees to her terms, but Kramer, against his wishes, calls in her UNIT troops and has them stand by for action. As an act of good faith, Harris agrees to release James, who has been kept alive as a hostage. It is the Doctor�s duty as a Time Lord to wipe out the vampire, but he would prefer to find a peaceful solution; perhaps he can help Harris to develop an artificial food source so they don�t have to kill to survive. Harris admits that she�s been working along similar lines for some time, but she isn�t sure whether she can trust the Doctor. To ensure mutual co-operation they undergo a bloodfasting, establishing a psychic link which will cause each to suffer any injuries inflicted upon the other, up to and including death. Kramer is furious when she learns what the Doctor has done, but it�s too late now; in any case, the Doctor wants to avoid a major battle, as the Time Lords may decide to sterilise the entire city if they discover a vampire coven is present. James flees, unable to deal with the existence of vampires, alien Time Lords and the fact that Carolyn doesn�t want to leave with him. Carolyn, feeling betrayed that he�s left her behind, decides to leave with the Doctor once the vampires are dealt with. In the meantime, she uses the resources of the TARDIS to study the �vampire factor� in their blood and try to design an artificial food source. Shackle, meanwhile, spends the night working on a 15-year-old gang member who dies of his gunshot wounds anyway, and when he goes to Harris for solace she has none to provide. Realizing that he is now exactly where she wants him, she reveals her true identity and offers to turn him into a vampire; she�s been working on him for some time, hoping to enlist his help in her project. Shackle goes to the Doctor for help, but even the Doctor�s love of life can�t shake him out of his depression. The Doctor orders Harris not to turn Shackle, but this just leaves Shackle alone and suicidally depressed, with nowhere to go. Slake, who first agreed to become a vampire for the dark romance of it, is furious with Harris for trying to end the Hunt. He has been stirring up the young vampires with visions of a life beyond morality, and he�s the one who killed the senator and the UNIT agent, just for the excitement. Determined to provoke a war he�s certain he will win, he leads the younger vampires to the Other Place to kill everyone in the club. Harris and the Doctor get wind of the attack, and the Doctor shows up with undercover UNIT agents who evacuate the club while he distracts and upstages Slake. When Harris and the elder vampires arrive, Slake reluctantly backs down, but plans to ambush Harris at her medical centre and kill her for the humiliation. Instead, he finds the despairing Shackle, and, amused by his story, he turns him. He then learns that Harris and the Doctor are bloodfasted, and realizes that he only need kill one of them to be rid of both. Galvanised, he goes to the young vampires with another plan; take out the elder vampires one by one, and then go for either Harris or the Doctor. Sam, still traumatised by the assault in the club, can�t understand why the Doctor is protecting the lives of multiple murderers, and is convinced that Harris has somehow brainwashed him. She follows Harris to a secret cellar laboratory elsewhere in the city, where she finds that Harris is keeping childlike, naked humans in cages, but before she can do anything about it, Harris finds and attacks her. The Doctor, meanwhile, has tracked down James and is trying to convince him that Carolyn�s acceptance of vampires is not a rejection of James. When Harris attacks Sam, however, the Doctor senses it through their bloodfasting and threatens to throw himself out of the window of James� hotel room, eight stories up, to stop her. Harris, terrified and furious with the Doctor, throws Sam into a cage and then goes out to kill a homeless man just so the Doctor will experience it. Even though the Doctor now understands just how betrayed she felt by his turning the bloodfasting against her, he doesn�t regret doing it; when Sam hears him insisting he would do anything to save her, she realizes she was wrong about him. The caged humans turn out to be clones Harris has grown as an artificial food source, but the Doctor refuses to countenance the development of a race of �battery humans�; Harris must look elsewhere for a solution. A dying elder vampire contacts Harris and warn her that the youngsters have killed them all, and the Doctor and Harris now have no choice; Slake has declared war, and they must fight back. Carolyn, using Harris� notes and the resources of the TARDIS medical laboratory, has found a way to kill the vampires using a solution of silver nitrate and taxol, and the Doctor puts Sam and Harris to work mixing more of the solution. He, Carolyn and Kramer return to Carolyn�s home to plan their next move, but they are attacked by the vampires and must seek shelter with James. The Doctor, realizing that the vampires will have fled the theatre as it is now known to be their home, convinces James to help him set a trap for them there. Upon arriving at the theatre they are attacked by the vampire squirrels Slake has left behind as guards, and James saves the sleep- deprived Carolyn�s life when she reacts too slowly to the attack. While forced to work alongside Harris, Sam admits that she�s never really had to fight to prove her beliefs; this is why she ran away with the Doctor and insists upon fighting alongside him. Slake and his cronies then attack the laboratory, along with the emaciated vampire who attacked Sam; Harris identifies him as �Weird Harold�, a vampire who went mad with hunger when he awoke from a healing coma to find that a building had been built over top of him in the intervening years. Sam, knowing the Doctor will die if Harris does, holds Weird Harold off while Harris escapes, and kills him with an injection of the vampire repellent. She is, however, captured by Slake, who contacts the Doctor and informs him that they have a hostage. The Doctor agrees to meet him at the Orpheum Theatre for a final confrontation. With James� help, the UNIT troops have set up a lighting grid to simulate the effect of sunlight, and when the vampires arrive they switch on -- but the sunlight effect isn�t exact enough, and doesn�t kill them. The Doctor gives himself up to the vampires to distract them from Sam, and they feed on him -- and die. The Doctor, apparently dying, asks Harris to turn him, but when she starts to drink his blood she realizes too late that he�d drunk a vial of the vampire repellent as a precaution before the other vampires even arrived. Harris dies, but the Doctor administers CPR and restores her to life; although the vampire factor in her cells has been destroyed, their bloodfasting has enabled her to survive as a human.