Plot
Bernice Summerfield is grieving since the death of Guy de Carnac (as seen in the previous novel, Sanctuary). The Doctor takes her to a market on a planet called Crex in the Augon system. He quickly sets off, telling her he'll be back in an hour, and Benny finds a pub where she orders a beer and finds a group of female human drinking partners. After Benny's had several drinks with them, the Doctor arrives and places a patch on her cheek — a pad that disperses the alcohol in her system. He tells her that they need to leave immediately, and leads her back to the TARDIS. He hands her a scroll, tells her he'll see her in three months, and collapses.
Meanwhile, the genesmith Laylock meets with his associates. They plan to follow the Doctor. In a long, dark room, a teenager named Tim awakens from a dream, having had a premonition that everyone will die.
Unable to understand Benny's grief on a human level, the Doctor has purchased a device which alters his biodata, transforming him into a human named Dr John Smith. Smith lives as a history teacher at a public school in 1914 England, and falls in love with a fellow teacher named Joan. However, when alien Aubertides, hoping to acquire Time Lord abilities, attack the school, Smith sacrifices himself and becomes the Doctor once more; as the Time Lord, he is unable to love Joan in the way the human John Smith did.
Read more about this topic: Human Nature (Doctor Who Novel)
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Ends in themselves, my letters plot no change;
They carry nothing dutiable; they won’t
Aspire, astound, establish or estrange.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“If you need a certain vitality you can only supply it yourself, or there comes a point, anyway, when no one’s actions but your own seem dramatically convincing and justifiable in the plot that the number of your days concocts.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)