Beltempest by: Jim Mortimore

Perhaps over my reviews I have not done proper justice to the Doctor Who works of Jim Mortimore.  Mortimore contributed four Virgin New Adventures, one Past Doctor Adventure, and one Eighth Doctor Adventure, before a single Big Finish story with the Eighth Doctor and falling off the face of the Earth.  There has been a constant theme through Mortimore’s work; a theme of religious belief from the perspective of an atheist without actually demonizing religious belief.  From Lucifer Rising, to Eternity Weeps, and finally Beltempest, there is this trilogy of novels where the characters have to come to terms with their place in the universe as some large disaster happens.  Beltempest is the final of the trilogy and perhaps the novel with the biggest stakes, an entire solar system is going to die.  The system’s sun undergoes a triple eclipse, eternal night, and the beginning of the end for the system is marked.  The tone of Beltempest is perhaps closest to the tone of Eternity Weeps, with this sense of existential dread as the Doctor is trying to avert a disaster which he really cannot avert.  The religion in this novel is a sect which is spreading quickly as the solar system is closer to dying.  The religious theme of Beltempest is people grasping at something to save them when all hope is lost, a function that hope and religion attempts to provide.  Beltempest is perhaps the most critical Mortimore is of religion, as no matter how much religion tries to provide hope, when pushed against the wall the inevitability and uncertainty can still take hold again.  While Eternity Weeps is a story about losing hope and still finding a way to be saved in the eleventh hour, Beltempest is about how fickle hope is and how easy it is to let go.  It reads like someone falling into a sort of depression about the universe and Mortimore’s place in it.



The Doctor and Sam as a pair are the best characters in the novel, as Mortimore’s usual flair for supporting characters seems to have dried up.  The supporting characters feel hollow throughout the novel as they haven’t really been given a chance to be fleshed out.  There are some characters who imprint Sam with an idea of being part of a family, but nothing really comes of that thread.  Outside of that there just isn’t much in Beltempest’s characters to latch on to.  Mortimore does use the Eighth Doctor effectively, taking the romantic innocent that the TV Movie and some of the best novels have established, and put him in a hopeless situation.  It’s a characterization which isn’t explored in many other novels, with only Vampire Science going anywhere close to putting the Doctor in some sort of hopeless state.  Mortimore’s Eighth Doctor is somehow childlike having to go through some sort of revelation about what his place is in the universe and having to come to terms with the fact that he cannot solve everything with a smile and some spirit.  A characterization like this could easily have become a flaw in the book, but Mortimore writes from a positive place and a sense of love for the character.  Mortimore is bringing some sense of the Virgin New Adventures’ experimentation to both the Doctor and Sam throughout the novel.  Sam Jones is characterized as incredibly reflective throughout the novel as she is attempting to take on rescuing this system on her own, building on the work of Orman and Blum from Seeing I.  She has become a more caring companion and perhaps if this characterization had been more present throughout the books she would have been better received as a companion.  Overall, Beltempest may be one of Mortimore’s most deeply themed novels, but it is a novel that is a theme without the skeleton and connecting tissue to hold the theme together.  It’s a good read, but not one of Mortimore’s best.  7/10.