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Doctor Who: Virgin New Adventures #33
Doctor Who: Parasite
'Change, Benny. It's the most terrifying thing of all.'
'And that's what's happening to you, is it, Doctor?'
'It's what's happening to all of us.'
The TARDIS has arrived in the Elysium system, lost colony of distant Earth and site of the Artifact: a world turned inside out, a world of horrific secrets.
For more than a century scientists have studied the ecosystem flourishing within the Artifact. Now the system is in collapse and even the humans trapped inside are changing into something new and strange.
With the members of one expedition murdered, those of another fighting for their lives and a solar system on the brink of civil war, can the Doctor, Ace and Benny survive a journey to the heart of the Artifact in their search for the truth?
'And that's what's happening to you, is it, Doctor?'
'It's what's happening to all of us.'
The TARDIS has arrived in the Elysium system, lost colony of distant Earth and site of the Artifact: a world turned inside out, a world of horrific secrets.
For more than a century scientists have studied the ecosystem flourishing within the Artifact. Now the system is in collapse and even the humans trapped inside are changing into something new and strange.
With the members of one expedition murdered, those of another fighting for their lives and a solar system on the brink of civil war, can the Doctor, Ace and Benny survive a journey to the heart of the Artifact in their search for the truth?
306 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1994
3 people are currently reading
229 people want to read
About the author
Jim Mortimore
49 books19 followersJim Mortimore is a British science fiction writer, who has written several spin-off novels for popular television series, principally Doctor Who, but also Farscape and Babylon 5.
When BBC Books cancelled his Doctor Who novel Campaign, he had it published independently and gave the proceeds to a charity – the Bristol Area Down Syndrome Association. He is also the writer of the Big Finish Doctor Who audio play The Natural History of Fear and their Tomorrow People audio play Plague of Dreams. He has also done music for other Big Finish productions.
He released his first original novel in 2011, Skaldenland.
When BBC Books cancelled his Doctor Who novel Campaign, he had it published independently and gave the proceeds to a charity – the Bristol Area Down Syndrome Association. He is also the writer of the Big Finish Doctor Who audio play The Natural History of Fear and their Tomorrow People audio play Plague of Dreams. He has also done music for other Big Finish productions.
He released his first original novel in 2011, Skaldenland.
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
July 27, 2012
Parasite is one of my favorite stories within the novel ranges of Dr. Who. It is primarily a story about change. Unstoppable, vicious and violent change. The world drawn up in Mortimore's Artifact is a magnificent unreal place and the sheer alien quality at the onset of the story is wild enough before the entire place, and the unlucky few who have chosen to visit it, are engulfed by the birth of something new within it. If you are a die hard Whovian, I highly recommend this and Mortimore's few other stories for the series. If you are new to the Whoniverse, then its best to read the novels in their publish order, as you will face certain previously lain continuities.
December 13, 2021
Well, I wasn't expecting this book to pull me out of a long-term reading slump, but thank you Jim Mortimore for your crazy ideas.
This book is VERY different to Bloodheat, which is another of my favourites. This book is all about Change, good and bad and of course, parasites. The Doctor was mostly out for the count on this one, and we had some great Ace and Benny moments in this which was lovely.
Should mention there is hell lot of death, some really not needed/pointless? Or maybe it was just Jim Mortimore trying to get rid of all these characters as quickly as possible.
I enjoyed reading about Midnight and the Monkeys.
I can't believe Jim Mortimore pulled a Kill the Moon plot twist on me in this one.
Doctor, you need to give Ace and Benny free therapy for all the shit you put them through, and not scowl at Ace whilst she’s trying to save the life of her friends and other people around her whilst she’s been infected herself. With limited resources.
And really, he was absent most of the book and left his friends to die basically.
Take Benny and Ace somewhere nice for a change.
This book is VERY different to Bloodheat, which is another of my favourites. This book is all about Change, good and bad and of course, parasites. The Doctor was mostly out for the count on this one, and we had some great Ace and Benny moments in this which was lovely.
Should mention there is hell lot of death, some really not needed/pointless? Or maybe it was just Jim Mortimore trying to get rid of all these characters as quickly as possible.
I enjoyed reading about Midnight and the Monkeys.
I can't believe Jim Mortimore pulled a Kill the Moon plot twist on me in this one.
Doctor, you need to give Ace and Benny free therapy for all the shit you put them through, and not scowl at Ace whilst she’s trying to save the life of her friends and other people around her whilst she’s been infected herself. With limited resources.
And really, he was absent most of the book and left his friends to die basically.
Take Benny and Ace somewhere nice for a change.
May 16, 2011
It makes for compelling reading, but this is not a book for the timid. It plays in a world of nauseous ugliness, violence, and brutality in all its forms, and it CAN become exhausting at times. I'm beginning to think that, after reading all of Jim Mortimore's Doctor Who novels, the author simply isn't capable of telling a story that DOESN'T delve into the dark hearts of men's souls. That's good OR bad, depending on your mood...
January 2, 2015
More by accident than design, I’ve found myself reading a large number of Jim Mortimore’s books in 2014, so I’m in the unusual position of being able to comment on his work as a whole. In a funny sort of way, I think he’s a better science fiction writer than he is a Doctor Who writer – and nowhere is this displayed more clearly than in ‘Parasite’.
The central concept – a planet that isn’t a planet but a living organism – isn’t a new one, but it’s handled superbly here, especially when compared to the TV series’ attempt to do the same in the episode ‘Kill the Moon’ earlier this year. But then Mortimore is the grand master of big concepts, which usually fit into the tropes of a Doctor Who story. Whether they do so successfully here, I’m still not sure.
This is a book that’s not so much “too broad and too deep for the small screen” as worthier of a wider audience than its status as a spin-off of Doctor Who allowed. It’s incredibly earnest, apocalyptic – and, at times, a struggle to get through. Mortimore wrote this alongside a book in the ‘Cracker’ series, and commented that he found the process of writing the latter book to be similar to eating ice cream, and writing ‘Parasite’ to be the final biological result. This is a colourful mental image – although the book itself is full of many more – but apt.
It’s a case of so many ideas needing release, often at the expense of the range the book is set within. And here’s the issue. It’s a great piece of sci-fi which really stands up with the best of the genre. But as a Doctor Who book, it seems to lack that certain something – call it warmth or quirkiness if you will, it’s not here.
Still, fair play to Virgin Publishing for being willing to put out books like this, and refusing to pander to their readers’ inevitably conservative tastes. For all I’ve said about it being a slight misfire as a Doctor Who book, it’s representative of something of a golden age for Doctor Who fiction – even if the title character’s presence is a slight irrelevance!
The central concept – a planet that isn’t a planet but a living organism – isn’t a new one, but it’s handled superbly here, especially when compared to the TV series’ attempt to do the same in the episode ‘Kill the Moon’ earlier this year. But then Mortimore is the grand master of big concepts, which usually fit into the tropes of a Doctor Who story. Whether they do so successfully here, I’m still not sure.
This is a book that’s not so much “too broad and too deep for the small screen” as worthier of a wider audience than its status as a spin-off of Doctor Who allowed. It’s incredibly earnest, apocalyptic – and, at times, a struggle to get through. Mortimore wrote this alongside a book in the ‘Cracker’ series, and commented that he found the process of writing the latter book to be similar to eating ice cream, and writing ‘Parasite’ to be the final biological result. This is a colourful mental image – although the book itself is full of many more – but apt.
It’s a case of so many ideas needing release, often at the expense of the range the book is set within. And here’s the issue. It’s a great piece of sci-fi which really stands up with the best of the genre. But as a Doctor Who book, it seems to lack that certain something – call it warmth or quirkiness if you will, it’s not here.
Still, fair play to Virgin Publishing for being willing to put out books like this, and refusing to pander to their readers’ inevitably conservative tastes. For all I’ve said about it being a slight misfire as a Doctor Who book, it’s representative of something of a golden age for Doctor Who fiction – even if the title character’s presence is a slight irrelevance!
August 27, 2013
Where did he go, this Jim Mortimore, I wonder? After he wrote the last truly great Big Finish audio "The Natural History of Fear" he just... vanished. (The same could be said about many other great Doctor Who writers from that period. Seriously, [i]where are they?[/i])
Anyway, this is one of his earlier efforts... and the first one in which he went all weird and mind-boggling. And yeah, this is a good thing - at least with Mortimore. "Parasite" surely wasn't the first "weird" book in the New Adventures, but most of them overreached themselves and were, frankly, rather stilted bores. "Time's Crucible", anyone? This one however feels strangely [i]adequate[/i] and [i]not really[/i] pretentious. Perhaps because the story and its scenes are so far out there that you have no other choice but to take it all in, no matter baffling everything is. A planet hatching out of an egg... or something? Huh? A monkey diving into a sea of intestines? What? And this is just the tip of the iceberg. And most certainly not everybody's cup of tea, hence the rather diversive ratings here. Nevertheless, for me it was a rather welcome diversion from the norm. Even though I can't say that I always understood it, hah.
Anyway, this is one of his earlier efforts... and the first one in which he went all weird and mind-boggling. And yeah, this is a good thing - at least with Mortimore. "Parasite" surely wasn't the first "weird" book in the New Adventures, but most of them overreached themselves and were, frankly, rather stilted bores. "Time's Crucible", anyone? This one however feels strangely [i]adequate[/i] and [i]not really[/i] pretentious. Perhaps because the story and its scenes are so far out there that you have no other choice but to take it all in, no matter baffling everything is. A planet hatching out of an egg... or something? Huh? A monkey diving into a sea of intestines? What? And this is just the tip of the iceberg. And most certainly not everybody's cup of tea, hence the rather diversive ratings here. Nevertheless, for me it was a rather welcome diversion from the norm. Even though I can't say that I always understood it, hah.
February 26, 2024
Finding themselves in a world where gravity is complex and unique, The Doctor and his companions must fight for survival in a world where parasites breed. One man knows all the answers, but he will kill if anyone else finds out.
This story started so well, good characters, intriguing ideas, and bleakness. But in the second half of this novel, it becomes so dark it is unforgiving, the Tardis crew apart from The Doctor become extremely out of character, committing questionable things and the story becomes a horrific and tiring bloodbath. I get the story was all about change but honestly, I felt how it was handled was poor. The ending also made the story for me so pointless as well, since The Doctor and his companions leave without changing things for the better.
I love my dark and edgy stories but this is too much. Disgusting and vile, definitely not Jim Mortimore’s best story. If you like overly violent stories this may be for you but those of the squeamish stay as far away from this novel as possible! 2/10
This story started so well, good characters, intriguing ideas, and bleakness. But in the second half of this novel, it becomes so dark it is unforgiving, the Tardis crew apart from The Doctor become extremely out of character, committing questionable things and the story becomes a horrific and tiring bloodbath. I get the story was all about change but honestly, I felt how it was handled was poor. The ending also made the story for me so pointless as well, since The Doctor and his companions leave without changing things for the better.
I love my dark and edgy stories but this is too much. Disgusting and vile, definitely not Jim Mortimore’s best story. If you like overly violent stories this may be for you but those of the squeamish stay as far away from this novel as possible! 2/10
July 20, 2020
I love it when the Doctor Who books go really big and use concepts that the TV show could never have done. Parasite is that! I'd almost like to read a spin off about what happens in the millions of years in the future described at the end.
October 25, 2024
With Parasite, Jim Mortimore decided to take Doctor Who into the giant, mysterious world genre of science fiction, like Larry Niven's Ringworld, Tony Rothman's The World Is Round, and Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous With Rama. The idea is that humans have discovered a mysterious planet or giant manufactured object, and some kind of investigative unit has been sent to explore it. In Parasite, that world is The Artifact, a planet seemingly turned inside out. The TARDIS crew have arrived here by accident, but of course just after some shenanigans have gone on with the investigative team. However, against the usual course of events, the TARDIS crew are not blamed for these shenanigans, but instead gradually get pulled into the attempts to discover what The Artifact is, and to discover what political double-dealing led to the deaths of the investigative team. However, all that gets sidelined to a large extent as the novel becomes a survival story, with The Doctor, Ace, and Benny separated and reunited several times. The Artifact is changing, going into a kind of self-destruct mode. On top of that, inside The Artifact, all species of flora and fauna go through impossibly rapid mutations into new species. This process of rapid speciation presents a threat as the life systems contaminate the people inside The Artifact. This is the ambitious part. Mortimore has made the strongest attempt in the New Adventures series of writing a hard science story for Doctor Who. There is no mysterious figure who is the "soul" of the world, no quasi-supernatural nonsense. Mortimore has tried to make it all work on scientific grounds. Part of the problem, though, is that his scientific knowledge, especially in biology, is not quite up to the task. That is not the worst problem, though. Another problem is that, as he conceives it, the inside-out world means that there are two surfaces, two locations that are "the ground," and so in between is a zero-gravity center where all the air is. The ground itself has only light gravity. That means that most of the action takes place floating, or more often flying, in zero-gravity. Mortimore repeatedly forgets this, and so has characters move and act as if they are on the ground. He will throw in little reminders that they are not, but mostly these do not compensate for the long stretches in which people floating or flying are having ordinary conversations, turning toward or away from each other in the normal sense, and so on. Plus, when characters are on the ground, Mortimore forgets that the gravity is low, so that they should be bouncing and bounding along. He has the characters walking through landscapes as if they were ordinary places on Earth. Also, Mortimore makes a quite pointless tie to one of his previous New Adventures novels. The Doctor is out of the action for three fourths of the novel. Mortimore returns to the earlier relations between the TARDIS characters where Ace openly despises The Doctor and distrusts Benny, and Benny has a lot of nothing to do. For me, the biggest problem is that Mortimore wants to batter these characters into oblivion, and still have them act and talk as if they have only little cuts and bruises. Benny is knocked unconscious at least four times. Ace has critters living inside her skin that burst out, she has her eyes gouged out, and suffers several more physical indignities. Benny undergoes impromptu surgery twice, both by people with no medical training. One time, it involves drilling a hole in her head, and another it involves injecting her with poison, and then surgically removing a parasitical creature. How she survives either of these tortures (the second by Ace), and revives to quip away with ironic witticisms like the Benny of old is beyond my understanding. Given what Mortimore puts them through, the entire TARDIS crew should have been dead halfway into the book. It seems to me that all my complaints about the first two years of New Adventures books really come down to failures of editing. These are all problems that the editors could and should have fixed.
June 28, 2020
I feel like I shouldn't like this... but I kind of do? It's a complicated book and I've got some conflicting feelings. But, um, yes, I think I like it. I kind of generally dislike it when Who prose takes a dive into everything being really unpleasant and violent and whatever, but there's something about the way Mortimore does it that... kind of makes it work. Not sure what that means, but hey ho! Maybe I just like it because my brain still hasn't properly processed everything in it yet, ahah!
In all the books I've read, I think this may be the one that puts the entire TARDIS team through the wringer the most, to the point that it's practically miraculous that Benny and Ace would ever even consider stepping back in the TARDIS ever again once they've been in and recovered.
Besides that, I have to praise this book for its setting alone - the Artifact is easily one of the most well-realised alien environments ever to appear in Doctor Who across any medium - equal parts beautiful, weird, and fecking terrifying!
But yeah, overall, I have complicated feelings about Parasite - it's one I can definitely see myself revisiting at some point in future though.
In all the books I've read, I think this may be the one that puts the entire TARDIS team through the wringer the most, to the point that it's practically miraculous that Benny and Ace would ever even consider stepping back in the TARDIS ever again once they've been in and recovered.
Besides that, I have to praise this book for its setting alone - the Artifact is easily one of the most well-realised alien environments ever to appear in Doctor Who across any medium - equal parts beautiful, weird, and fecking terrifying!
But yeah, overall, I have complicated feelings about Parasite - it's one I can definitely see myself revisiting at some point in future though.
June 29, 2019
This seems to really divide people in Doctor Who community. Some people consider it unreadable trash, others the raddest book of the new adventures. As such I went in expecting a hot mess long the lines of The Pit or Legacy. What I found was neither opinion was true, actually a pretty middling VNA (in my current ongoing rankings of stories I am reading in order, it is 23 out of 46).
What we have instead is very much a Big Dumb Object story, like Greg Bear's 1985 novel Eon, combined with a gritty biopunk story, like Greg Bear's other 1985 novel Blood Music (there is just a chance Mortimore was a fan). So as such it is a lot of our characters wondering around an alien environment that is weird and mysterious whilst also dealing with a parasitic organism killing people off.
There are big leaps of logic and at times I did feel my patience wearing thin with the over use of description or people being out of character. However, it was never actually boring. And after was has been a rather uninspired set of books for the latter half of 1994 (two vampire stories, two haunted house mysteries, a gothic horror historical celebrity, religious aliens at war, a continuity mess and the interesting but dull Venusian Lullaby) it is nice to see them pushing the boat out a bit and do it well.
Now on to 1995, where everything changes...
What we have instead is very much a Big Dumb Object story, like Greg Bear's 1985 novel Eon, combined with a gritty biopunk story, like Greg Bear's other 1985 novel Blood Music (there is just a chance Mortimore was a fan). So as such it is a lot of our characters wondering around an alien environment that is weird and mysterious whilst also dealing with a parasitic organism killing people off.
There are big leaps of logic and at times I did feel my patience wearing thin with the over use of description or people being out of character. However, it was never actually boring. And after was has been a rather uninspired set of books for the latter half of 1994 (two vampire stories, two haunted house mysteries, a gothic horror historical celebrity, religious aliens at war, a continuity mess and the interesting but dull Venusian Lullaby) it is nice to see them pushing the boat out a bit and do it well.
Now on to 1995, where everything changes...
October 30, 2020
3.5/5
Honestly I mostly quite enjoyed this, despite the fact that I'm not usually one for gore. It's just that at the end they've pretty much achieved nothing, since the entire system's still going to be destroyed. Even in Warriors of the Deep they managed to stop the nuclear war! It's not a complete dealbreaker for the book, and I sort of get why the choice was made, but I did have a slight feeling of 'is that it?' when I finished.
Honestly I mostly quite enjoyed this, despite the fact that I'm not usually one for gore. It's just that at the end they've pretty much achieved nothing, since the entire system's still going to be destroyed. Even in Warriors of the Deep they managed to stop the nuclear war! It's not a complete dealbreaker for the book, and I sort of get why the choice was made, but I did have a slight feeling of 'is that it?' when I finished.
December 11, 2024
Jim Mortimore is clearly fond of stories where the Doctor doesn't really win. At best, he only manages to avoid losing (see his previous book Blood Heat), but that kind of conclusion just doesn't work here and robs the plot of intention.
January 9, 2025
An overly nasty and grimdark New Adventure novel, from a run of New Adventures taking a similarly bleak approach. In other words, it's just not quite what I look for from Doctor Who. Full review: https://fakegeekboy.wordpress.com/202...
October 14, 2023
One of my all time favourites from this series.
November 27, 2024
This was an absolute slog. I understand there are other VNAs that should maybe have been my first.
November 5, 2020
Jim Mortimore's best quality as a Doctor Who writer is world-building, and like Lucifer Rising and Blood Heat, Parasite creates an intense and involved world, this one a giant cosmic "artifact" of null-grav atmosphere, strange creatures, and ball-like oceans. I'm not sure it has quite as good a story as those two first books though. Everything is really in service of the high-concept world and it has THE character arc, more so than any human or humanish character. And while I like a scientific mystery as much as the next guy, and Mortimore does as good a job as he can in describing this totally alien environment, that's still a weakness. And the whole anti-grav thing means there's an awful lot of collision action, and characters very often drift away, drift into one another in different combinations, and it's to the point where I was always going "oh ok, I guess that person is there/not there". Given how big the "Artifact" is, this seems even stranger. I liked Parasite well enough, but it's a little bit like a long encyclopedia entry.
July 15, 2025
Well if I thought Falls the Shadow was high-concept, mean spirited and had body horror, it had nothing on this book. Parasite does all those things ten-times to the extreme.
Again loved the ideas presented in this book, but not sure the final execution really helped sell it. Loved the microwave monkeys, love the fact that Mark Bannen was related to a previous VNA character, loved the idea of what the planet is and how it’s described. I enjoyed the moral ambiguity that the Doctor is prepared to stop the artefact, before it extracts its egg in order to save the Elysium system, but after it happens he won’t because it now supports it’s on ecosystem. It’s almost a pro-choice dilemma.
Where this story suffers is the high-concept to the point where you cannot under what’s going on. Once again I had to read a synopsis to understand it, but even then I got confused.
Also the scene of Ace accidently murdering Rhiannon just felt wrong. Plus she still berates Drew, even when he calls her out for the murder. Even Gail, Rhiannon’s best friend, does seem to mind the fact Ace killed her. It was also really disappointing to read that Gail and Drew did not survive at the end. Seemed kind of unnecessary to kill them.
Starting to realise that Jim Mortimer really likes writing mean-spirited and gritty novels. (You see that Andy Lane subdued that in Lucifer Rising) It’s a shame that no one managed to tie the Founding Families to the Chapter of Saint Anthony together. Seems funny that two books so close to each other had a powerful religious group in them.
Again loved the ideas presented in this book, but not sure the final execution really helped sell it. Loved the microwave monkeys, love the fact that Mark Bannen was related to a previous VNA character, loved the idea of what the planet is and how it’s described. I enjoyed the moral ambiguity that the Doctor is prepared to stop the artefact, before it extracts its egg in order to save the Elysium system, but after it happens he won’t because it now supports it’s on ecosystem. It’s almost a pro-choice dilemma.
Where this story suffers is the high-concept to the point where you cannot under what’s going on. Once again I had to read a synopsis to understand it, but even then I got confused.
Also the scene of Ace accidently murdering Rhiannon just felt wrong. Plus she still berates Drew, even when he calls her out for the murder. Even Gail, Rhiannon’s best friend, does seem to mind the fact Ace killed her. It was also really disappointing to read that Gail and Drew did not survive at the end. Seemed kind of unnecessary to kill them.
Starting to realise that Jim Mortimer really likes writing mean-spirited and gritty novels. (You see that Andy Lane subdued that in Lucifer Rising) It’s a shame that no one managed to tie the Founding Families to the Chapter of Saint Anthony together. Seems funny that two books so close to each other had a powerful religious group in them.
December 23, 2009
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1973973.html[return][return]A New Adventure with an impressively imagined setting, a possibly living cylindrical structure containing madly mutating mosses, monkeys, and massive trees, into which the Doctor, Benny and Ace arrive and get tangled up with terminal mayhem. I found it a bit of a slow read but have a feeling that may be my fault rather than the author's. The science of the setting may not be completely sound but I was able to suspend my disbelief.
August 23, 2023
From a 2022 vantage point, it's hard to talk about any of the New Adventures solely as novels; they instead become stand-ins for philosophising on the series as a whole. So allow me to kowtow to this tradition.
July 31, 2012
Great ideas, but an erratic plot where some things get lost.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews