Timewyrm: Genesys is an original Doctor Who novel, published by Virgin Publishing in their New Adventures range of Doctor Who novels. It was the first book in that series (and the first book in the Timewyrm quartet),[1] and was thought of by some fans as a continuation of the television series; in effect, a Season 27 to follow the televised Season 26.[2]
The novel featured the Seventh Doctor and Ace; it also features a brief cameo of the Fourth Doctor – in the form of a holographic message to his future self – and the Seventh Doctor briefly uses the TARDIS to summon the personality of his third incarnation when he needs his past self's technical expertise.[3][4]
The book makes extensive use of characters and plot elements from the Mesopotamian myth of Gilgamesh.
In space above the planet Earth, two spaceships fight. One, commanded by a cybernetic woman, is shot down by the other. She survives and her escape pod crash lands somewhere in ancient Mesopotamia. Gilgamesh, King of Uruk, finds the escape pod while engaged on a spying mission against Kish. The woman, who claims to be the goddess Ishtar, tries to lure Gilgamesh into helping her. Gilgamesh refuses, and Ishtar becomes enraged, vowing that she will have her revenge.
On board the TARDIS, Ace awakens to discover that she has no memory of who or where she is. The Doctor informs her that he is accidentally responsible for the removal of her memories. Before he can correct this error, the Doctor triggers a message from his own past in the form of a holographic projection of the Fourth Doctor. Recorded during the events of The Invasion of Time, the Fourth Doctor's warning concerns a mythical creature known only as the Timewyrm. After the Doctor restores Ace's memories, the TARDIS lands in ancient Mesopotamia
Back in Uruk, two noblemen, Gudea and Ennatum, plot against Gilgamesh. They send a messenger to Kish warning that Gilgamesh will be returning on a spy mission. The message is received by High Priest Dumuzi in the Temple of Ishtar, a Temple graced by the presence of its divine namesake. Agga, King of Kish, is not pleased that Ishtar had chosen to visit his city. She has ordered the construction of strange, highly intricate metal designs throughout her Temple. Agga knows that Ishtar is immensely powerful and fears for the safety of his people and his daughter, Ninani.
When Gilgamesh and his trusted Neanderthal friend Enkidu are ambushed by the Kishite guards, the TARDIS appears. The Doctor and Ace become involved in the melee, and Ace uses her Nitro-9 explosives to frighten the attackers away. Gilgamesh mistakes the strangers for the Gods Ea and Aya. The Doctor leaves Ace in a pub with Gilgamesh and Enkidu while he investigates Kish. Gilgamesh attracts unwanted attention, and, to avoid a brawl, Ace sings "The Wild Rover" to entertain the crowd. She attracts the attention of Avram, a travelling songsmith, who tells her that Ishtar is present in Kish. Ace decides to set off for the Temple of Ishtar, along with Avram, Gilgamesh, and Enkidu, certain that the Doctor will be there and will need her help.
In Kish, Princess Ninani plans to oppose the Goddess in any way she could. She sends for a young Priestess of Ishtar, En-Gula, so that she might learn more about Ishtar and find a way to fight her. En-Gula is afraid of Ishtar and joins Ninani's conspiracy. As En-Gula returns to the Temple of Ishtar, she meets the Doctor. The Doctor is surprised that Ishtar is present within her temple. The Doctor allows himself to be taken to meet the Goddess. Dumuzi drugs the Doctor into unconsciousness so that his mind can be devoured by Ishtar. At that point, Ace and her party arrive. Thinking that the Doctor is in danger, Ace throws some Nitro-9 around, causing serious damage to the Temple.
An angry Doctor explains to Ace that he was feigning unconsciousness to gather information about Ishtar. The Doctor reveals that the patterns Ishtar is having worked into the walls of the Temple are a kind of massive electronic transmitter which will allow her to control thousands of human minds over vast distances. Ace's explosives have damaged the transmitter, but it will only be a matter of time before it is repaired. The party, which now includes En-Gula and Avram, return to Uruk to plan their next move. In Uruk, they all enjoy a feast prepared in honour of Gilgamesh. Avram entertains the court with a song about a mysterious god-like being known as Utnapishtim. The Doctor believes there is more to the legend of Utnapishtim. The group decides that Gilgamesh, Ace, and Avram will seek out Utnapishtim, while the Doctor, Enkidu, and En-Gula keep an eye on Kish.
Ace's party reaches the extinct volcano where Utnapishtim is said to live. Avram, who has been there before, leads them to two "scorpion men", in reality robotic guards designed to repel intruders. Within the volcano, they reach a large lake, guarded by a single man. Gilgamesh, getting impatient, attacks the man. Ace is forced to disarm the guard of his laser gun, to avoid allowing Gilgamesh to be killed in contravention of known Earth history. The party uses a small boat to travel to the center of the lake to Utnapishtim, who resides in the remains of a vast spaceship. He explains how he had pursued Qataka, a ruthless criminal from the planet Anu, across space. He claims that Qataka had been destroyed, but that his ship had been badly damaged in the fight. He confides to Ace that his people will not be able to remain long within their wrecked ship, and that, when they venture out into the world, a destructive war with the humans will be inevitable. Ace tells Utnapishtim that Qataka was not destroyed, that she is calling herself Ishtar and is planning to take the Earth for herself. Utnapishtim agrees to help Ace destroy Qataka/Ishtar with a computer virus that will attack Ishtar's cybernetic body.
Meanwhile, the Doctor, Enkidu, and En-Gula return to Kish to consult with Ninani. The Doctor hopes Ninani can help him get into Ishtar's temple undetected. Ninani is willing to help, but they are discovered by Agga. Agga is so afraid of the punishment for his daughter's treachery against Ishtar that he confines all of them (except his daughter) to the dungeons. Agga explains to Ninani that Ishtar claims she has a device which can destroy the world. He tries to convince Ninani that they can not oppose such a powerful creature. Ninani waits for her father to leave and then sets about to rescue the others from the dungeons.
The Doctor, Enkidu, En-Gula, and Ninani return to the Temple of Ishtar, but are discovered by the Goddess, who was expecting this. As Ishtar prepares to consume the Doctor's mind, an explosion rocks the temple. Ace has returned, via a small flying craft piloted by Utnapishtim, along with Gilgamesh and Avram. The Doctor realises that Ishtar has rigged a cobalt bomb, powerful enough to destroy the planet, to explode in the event of her death. As Ace and the others attempt to destroy Ishtar, the Doctor is forced to try to save her. When Ishar attempts to consume Ace's mind, she instead downloads the computer virus that Utnapishtim had implanted within all of their minds. The Doctor explains the bomb to Utnapishtim and that they have to return to the TARDIS at once.
Back on the TARDIS, the Doctor tries to find a way to keep Ishtar's mental processes going after the virus destroys her body. Using the TARDIS telepathic circuits, the Doctor mentally summons the Third Doctor to assist with the technical aspects of the plan. The Doctor takes one of Ishtar's mental implants and wires it into the TARDIS telepathic circuits, in effect downloading Ishtar into the TARDIS, keeping her alive long enough to disarm the bomb. Unfortunately, when the Doctor tries to delete Ishtar's mind from the TARDIS circuitry, he discovers that she is no longer there. Adapting to the TARDIS, Ishtar uses its systems as a replacement body. The Doctor tricks her into moving her consciousness into the TARDIS's secondary control room, which he then jettisons into the Time Vortex, certain that the forces of the Vortex will destroy her.
The Doctor returns everyone to Mesopotamia and assists Utnapishtim in repairing his ship, making sure that the people of Anu can find an uninhabited planet to call their new home. Back in the TARDIS, the Doctor notices the Time Path Indicator is active, which means that they are being followed by another time machine. Ishtar, having assimilated TARDIS components into herself, has become the Timewyrm, and she now has the power to travel through time and space. The Doctor attempts to time ram the creature, but the Timewyrm evades his trap and escapes. Using the Time Path Indicator, the Doctor is able to track the Timewyrm to London in the 20th century, and the Doctor and Ace set out to destroy their new enemy.
Reception
Due to the presence of a topless teenage prostitute in the novel, Timewyrm: Genesys was the subject of some coverage in UK tabloids.[6]
In Bookwyrm, Anthony Wilson writes that when reading Timewyrm: Genesys, "you realise that the whole thing, setting aside, is an exercise in Doctor Who cliché. It keeps a feeling of continuity, I suppose, but it also manages not to rise above the worst of its source material."[7]
Elizabeth Sandifer wrote in TARDIS Eruditorum that Timewyrm: Genesys is "a book whose sole claim to being for adults amounts to the fact that Gilgamesh sexually assaults everything in sight and everybody is obsessed with breasts. I'm certainly not about to suggest that the idea of a good Doctor Who story about sex is impossible, but I'm pretty willing to suggest that this isn't it."[8]
Related Research Articles
Gilgamesh was a hero in ancient Mesopotamian mythology and the protagonist of the Epic of Gilgamesh, an epic poem written in Akkadian during the late 2nd millennium BC. He was possibly a historical king of the Sumerian city-state of Uruk, who was posthumously deified. His rule probably would have taken place sometime in the beginning of the Early Dynastic Period, c. 2900–2350 BC, though he became a major figure in Sumerian legend during the Third Dynasty of Ur.
Inanna is the ancient Mesopotamian goddess of love, war, and fertility. She is also associated with sensuality, procreation, divine law, and political power. Originally worshipped in Sumer, she was known by the Akkadian Empire, Babylonians, and Assyrians as Ishtar. Her primary title is "the Queen of Heaven".
The history of Sumer spans the 5th to 3rd millennia BCE in southern Mesopotamia, and is taken to include the prehistoric Ubaid and Uruk periods. Sumer was the region's earliest known civilization and ended with the downfall of the Third Dynasty of Ur around 2004 BCE. It was followed by a transitional period of Amorite states before the rise of Babylonia in the 18th century BCE.
The Epic of Gilgamesh is an epic from ancient Mesopotamia. The literary history of Gilgamesh begins with five Sumerian poems about Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, some of which may date back to the Third Dynasty of Ur. These independent stories were later used as source material for a combined epic in Akkadian. The first surviving version of this combined epic, known as the "Old Babylonian" version, dates back to the 18th century BC and is titled after its incipit, Shūtur eli sharrī. Only a few tablets of it have survived. The later Standard Babylonian version compiled by Sîn-lēqi-unninni dates to somewhere between the 13th to the 10th centuries BC and bears the incipit Sha naqba īmuru. Approximately two-thirds of this longer, twelve-tablet version have been recovered. Some of the best copies were discovered in the library ruins of the 7th-century BC Assyrian king Ashurbanipal.
The Virgin New Adventures are a series of novels from Virgin Publishing based on the British science-fiction television series Doctor Who. They continued the story of the Doctor from the point at which the television programme went into hiatus from television in 1989.
Enkidu (Sumerian: 𒂗𒆠𒄭EN.KI.DU10) was a legendary figure in ancient Mesopotamian mythology, wartime comrade and friend of Gilgamesh, king of Uruk. Their exploits were composed in Sumerian poems and in the Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh, written during the 2nd millennium BC. He is the oldest literary representation of the wild man, a recurrent motif in artistic representations in Mesopotamia and in Ancient Near East literature. The apparition of Enkidu as a primitive man seems to be a potential parallel of the Old Babylonian version (1300–1000 BC), in which he was depicted as a servant-warrior in the Sumerian poems.
Ninsun was a Mesopotamian goddess. She is best known as the mother of the hero Gilgamesh and wife of deified legendary king Lugalbanda, and appears in this role in most versions of the Epic of Gilgamesh. She was associated with Uruk, where she lives in this composition, but she was also worshiped in other cities of ancient Mesopotamia, such as Nippur and Ur, and her main cult center was the settlement KI.KALki.
Siduri, or more accurately Šiduri, is a character in the Epic of Gilgamesh. She is described as an alewife. The oldest preserved version of the composition to contain the episode involving her leaves her nameless, and in the later standard edition compiled by Sîn-lēqi-unninni her name only appears in a single line. She is named Naḫmazulel or Naḫmizulen in the preserved fragments of Hurrian and Hittite translations. It has been proposed that her name in the standard edition is derived from an epithet applied to her by the Hurrian translator, šiduri, "young woman." An alternate proposal instead connects it with the Akkadian personal name Šī-dūrī, "she is my protection." In all versions of the myth in which she appears, she offers advice to the hero, but the exact contents of the passage vary. Possible existence of Biblical and Greek reflections of the Šiduri passage is a subject of scholarly debate.
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Shamhat is a female character who appears in Tablets I and II of the Epic of Gilgamesh and is mentioned in Tablet VII. She is often characterized as a sacred prostitute, though this identification has been contested, and she plays a significant role in bringing the wild man Enkidu into contact with civilization.
Enmebaragesi (Sumerian: 𒂗𒈨𒁈𒄄𒋛Enmebárgisi [EN-ME-BARA2-GI4-SE]) originally Mebarasi (𒈨𒁈𒋛) was the penultimate king of the first dynasty of Kish and is recorded as having reigned 900 years in the Sumerian King List. Like his son and successor Aga he reigned during a period when Kish had hegemony over Sumer.a Enmebaragesi signals a momentous documentary leap from mytho-history to history, since he is the earliest ruler on the king list whose name is attested directly from archaeology.
Zarpanitu was a Mesopotamian goddess regarded as the spouse of Marduk. Not much is known about her character, though late sources indicate that she was associated with pregnancy and that she could be assigned similar roles as her husband, including that of queen of the gods. She was originally worshiped in Zarpan, a village near Babylon, though the latter city itself also served as her cult center.
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Aga commonly known as Aga of Kish, was the twenty-third and last king in the first dynasty of Kish during the Early Dynastic I period. He is listed in the Sumerian King List and many sources as the son of Enmebaragesi. The Kishite king ruled the city at its peak, probably reaching beyond the territory of Kish, including Umma and Zabala.
Anu or Anum, originally An, was the divine personification of the sky, king of the gods, and ancestor of many of the deities in ancient Mesopotamian religion. He was regarded as a source of both divine and human kingship, and opens the enumerations of deities in many Mesopotamian texts. At the same time, his role was largely passive, and he was not commonly worshipped. It is sometimes proposed that the Eanna temple located in Uruk originally belonged to him, rather than Inanna, but while he is well attested as one of its divine inhabitants, there is no evidence that the main deity of the temple ever changed, and Inanna was already associated with it in the earliest sources. After it declined, a new theological system developed in the same city under Seleucid rule, resulting in Anu being redefined as an active deity. As a result he was actively worshipped by inhabitants of the city in the final centuries of the history of ancient Mesopotamia.
In ancient Mesopotamian mythology, the Bull of Heaven is a mythical beast fought by the hero Gilgamesh. The story of the Bull of Heaven is known from two different versions: one recorded in an earlier Sumerian poem and a later episode in the Standard Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh. In the Sumerian poem, the Bull is sent to attack Gilgamesh by the goddess Inanna for reasons that are unclear.
Gilgamesh and Aga, sometimes referred to as incipit The envoys of Aga, is an Old Babylonian poem written in Sumerian. The only one of the five poems of Gilgamesh that has no mythological aspects, it has been the subject of discussion since its publication in 1935 and later translation in 1949.
Kanisurra was a Mesopotamian goddess who belonged to the entourage of Nanaya. Much about her character remains poorly understood, though it is known she was associated with love. Her name might be derived from the word ganzer, referring to the underworld or to its entrance. In addition to Nanaya, she could be associated with deities such as Gazbaba, Išḫara and Uṣur-amāssu. She is first attested in sources from Uruk from the Ur III period, and continued to be worshiped in this city as late as in the Seleucid period.
Ningizibara, also known as Igizibara and Ningizippara, was a Mesopotamian goddess associated with the balaĝ instrument, usually assumed to be a type of lyre. She could be regarded both as a physical instrument and as a minor deity. In both cases, she was associated with the goddess Inanna. A connection between her and the medicine goddess Gula is also attested, and it is possible she could serve as a minor healing deity herself.
References
↑ "Writing the New Adventures", Gary Russell, Doctor Who Monthly No. 178
↑ Wilson, Anthony; Smith, Robert (2019). Bookwyrm: An Unauthorised & Unconventional Guide to the Doctor Who Novels. ATB Publishing. p.22. ISBN978-0-9882210-6-2.
↑ Sandifer, Elizabeth (2020). "Then Suddenly, One Year, There Was No Spring (Timewyrm: Genesys, Timewyrm: Exodus, and Timewyrm: Apocalypse)". TARDIS Eruditorum, volume 7: The Sylvester McCoy Years. Eruditorum Press.
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