Doctor Who worth remembering: Parasite by Jim Mortimore

The latest Seventh Doctor novel that Robert reviews is Parasite. Is it as bad as its reputation suggests?

Image Courtesy BBC Studios, BritBox

The Wilderness Years gave us so many great Doctor Who novels. So is Parasite by Jim Mortimore one of them? Eh, yeah sure.

To start, let me say that the reputation of Parasite is underserved. While finishing Falls the Shadow was an effort of sheer herculean will on my part based on the story alone, the shadow of Parasite hanging over my head didn’t help. I knew these Doctor Who books were the black sheep between St Anthony’s Fire (the Mark Gatiss book about getting Ace nude and brainwashed) and Warlock (the 359-page Andrew Cartmel novel I haven’t read yet) and I knew what people had to say about them both wasn’t great.

In fact, I had heard worse things about Parasite then it’s predecessor! It’s certainly ranked lower in certain circles, far below Falls the Shadow on the “important only to nerds” Sullivan’s rankings even. (Of course I don’t agree with a lot of these placements on this ranking so whatever, but still.)

So, imagine my surprise when I found myself not hating this book at all! In fact, even though the start interested me far more than the ending, I can give this a resounding “it’s fine”. Yes, like a reverse of how I had heard nothing but good things about Tomb of Valdemar, and it ending up below The Pit as far as I’m concerned, my expectations of Parasite were completely unwarranted.

I mean yeah, some people might be turned off as the plot doesn’t really do anything new outside the setting (which is VASTLY complex), but at its start, it’s violent, often funny, and most of all interesting. And even as it goes on, while it becomes less humorous and instead becomes more serious, more grotesque, but still overall, remains interesting.

For instance, Parasite is again a high concept novel trying to do a scenario impossible for a television show to do, even now (heck, even for a movie this would be annoying to film). Almost the entirety of the novel takes place inside a hollow low gravity “world” known as The Artifact, where the slightest shift can send you miles if you’re not careful.

It means almost every time we shift from one character’s point of view to another it’s followed by what direction they are floating in, or a description of whatever type of landmass they are heading towards. It never forgets the world it has placed you in and the pressure of the situation is vivid and all-encompassing. You might even get nauseous.

The Doctor and Ace – along with their good friend Benny – go through hell in this one.

Image Courtesy BBC Studios, BritBox

Horrific treatment

As for the plot, as I said earlier, the Seventh Doctor, Ace, and Bernice find themselves in The Artifact, where they are all neatly and quickly separated from one another and the TARDIS. Meanwhile, there is also an expedition of University Students (sometimes written as children and referred to as such) who are trapped inside The Artifact with our TARDIS team, and their paths frequently cross. They don’t really survive all that well, becoming quickly apparent that since we’re inside a massive hollow planetoid, maybe we should have a massive body count too.

Featuring heavily in the book is a constant stream of abuse aimed at our regulars in a way that only the Wilderness Years truly indulged in. To name a few examples, Bernice gets menaced by vampiric octopuses that inject her with a nasty goo that gives her an infection.

This along with the low gravity of the world is another constant theme. This world is filled with things that will get into wounds, causing infections, fevers, swelling – this place is highly unsanitary. Something will be crawling into a cut to make it fester or lay eggs in seconds and you will bet there will be a description of it.

Later Bernice gets microwaved by super strong seven-armed metal monkeys. As in, the metal monkeys shoot microwaves and also start choking her while microwaving her, causing descriptions of smoke coming out of Bernice’s throat and eyes and how is she alive again? Well, it’s so she can get a hole drilled into her head later, and unlucky for her, she’s not the fainting type.

The Doctor, not letting Benny be the only one to get eye and throat abuse, has both been stuffed with sentient pollen and spends a fair amount of this novel doing the Third Doctor temporary coma. While Ace, as if to justify the name of the book early on before the word “parasite” starts being used once every seven pages towards the end, gets little bugs that burrow into her skin, leading to her attempting to dig them out with a piece of glass while fondly remembering her time on Space Fleet where three men were driven mad by a similar situation.

So despite the abuse the main characters suffer, is Parasite worth your time? Well, surprisingly, yes.

Image Courtesy BBC Studios, BritBox

The fun part

Oh, actually to go back to the monkeys for a second, after Bernice gets them to stop microwaving her alive with the help of Midnight, a human from earlier in the story who has mutated into a mass of leathery flesh who talks through vibrating crystals (you had to be there), she eventually befriends them and can even understand them, having to deal with their monkey culture and lack of understanding of her sassy vocabulary.

Which leads us to the fun monkey plot of the book. After introducing herself to one of the named monkeys by letting him punch her in the face and then punching him back between giving names, she then gets to eat the microwaved flesh of a monkey she had killed earlier when they were, you know, trying to cook her alive (mistakes were made).

She witnesses a whole bunch of the monkeys jumping into a swirling vortex to commit mass suicide, where she is then brought before the chief monkey where he asks her to find their planet of origin to find out why they keep killing themselves.

A species living in a hollow world with no visible stars or even any way to look outside, who Bernice previously confirmed had no concept of things like religion or anything else she would associate with a high-level civilization, is asking for her to find a planet. Something that is not lost on Bernice. It’s fun stuff, even if the focus shifts elsewhere to such an extent that this ceases to really matter.

More from Winter is Coming

Eventually, towards the end the true nature of The Artifact is revealed, and it’s worse and more confusing then anyone could have hoped. Worse in how it will threaten the universe in ways it was never meant to all because of the Doctor and Ace (Benny was busy getting horribly mangled again) and confusing in that you will probably go “HUH” a lot. Also, the Eighth Doctor makes a cameo.

A unique setting

But is it worth your time? Well, yes, despite how complicated it gets (and let’s face it, stories being complicated is part of why we like Doctor Who) and comparisons to Underworld, this type of setting has not been attempted before or after in Doctor Who. It also advances Ace in a direction I don’t really care for but makes sense after everything she’s been through at this point.

Like the best of what the Wilderness Years gave us this was weird, it was new, and it was unfilmable. It doesn’t deserve the association with Falls the Shadow, but it’s bonkers enough to deserve to be read.

I don’t believe for a second the Seventh Doctor would hate prawn salad though.

What did you think of Parasite or the other works of Jim Mortimore? How much abuse towards our main characters do you think is appropriate for any given story? Should I next look at Supremacy of the Cybermen, where, because this plotline was left alone for two seconds, the comics decided to have an event where the Rassilon from Hell Bent teams up with the Cybermen to cause mischief (Time Lords and Cybermen? Chibnall, I see what you did there you little scamp)? Let us know in the comments below.