Eye of Heaven
 |
|
| Author | Jim Mortimore |
|---|---|
| Series |
Doctor Who book: Past Doctor Adventures |
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Release number
|
8 |
| Subject | Featuring: Fourth Doctor Leela |
| Publisher | BBC Books |
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Publication date
|
2 February 1998 |
| Pages | 277 |
| ISBN | |
| Preceded by | The Face of the Enemy |
| Followed by | The Witch Hunters |
Eye of Heaven is a BBC Books original novel written by Jim Mortimore and based on the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It features the Fourth Doctor, and Leela.
October 1842 : archaeologists Horace Stockwood and Alexander Richards travel to Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island. There, they befriend the natives, and when the son of their friend Tortorro falls ill, Stockwood helps to cure him. He then takes advantage of this act to convince the reluctant Tortorro to take him to the sacred Cave of the Sun's Inclination. The villagers find them there, and Stockwood panics and flees, taking the sacred rongo-rongo stick and abandoning his friends to the villagers. He hides in the tunnels which the natives use to hide from slavers, and emerges at night, to see a ceremony in which Tortorro apparently dies from nothing more than ostracism from the community. As Richards cries to him for help, Stockwood takes to his heels and flees back to his ship, pursued by the villagers. Panic-stricken and half-dead, he returns to England without Richards, but with the conviction that at the end, the moai, the great stone heads, walked across the island in pursuit of him...
August 1872 : Stockwood's only friend now is Dr James Royston; for the past thirty years he has been the laughingstock of the scientific community, and he is now almost completely bankrupt. He places an advertisement in the Times, seeking funding for a return expedition to Rapa Nui, and this catches the Doctor's attention. After hearing Stockwood's story, the Doctor agrees to fund the expedition, and converts gemstones from distant planets to ready cash for his purposes. Before leaving, he catches Stockwood's underpaid butler, Fennell, trying to rob the house, and dismisses him. In Portsmouth, the Doctor purchases the Tweed, but while he is thus occupied the TARDIS is accidentally loaded aboard a ship bound for India. The Doctor is then attacked and taken prisoner by a dockworker.
Leela becomes suspicious of Royston and determines to keep an eye on him, but Royston is just as suspicious of her; he is worried about Stockwood's sanity, and doesn't believe that the Doctor and Leela truly have his best interests at heart. He offers to join the expedition as a medical officer, despite Leela's objections. That night, Fennell breaks into Stockwood's home, and when Royston is forced to shoot him, Leela is convinced that he did so to prevent Fennell from being questioned about his accomplices. Stockwood decides to hide the body in order to avoid involving the police, which would delay his expedition. Royston's suspicions about the Doctor seem justified when they arrive in Portsmouth and find no sign of him, but Leela, while searching for the Doctor, is also attacked and kidnapped by the dockworker.
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