21 - The Left-Handed Hummingbird

The Left-Handed Hummingbird is a story about sacrifice, and a damn good one. The Aztecs practiced human sacrifice as part of their culture, of course, and their cultural practices were the subject of Doctor Who’s very first dilemma about changing history.  When the First Doctor arrived in Tenochtitlan all those years ago, Barbara wanted to put a stop to the horrific practices of the Aztecs, but the Doctor made a sacrifice of his own, stopping her to preserve history and prevent unintended consequences.  Since then, the Doctor has evolved from a man who doesn't believe he should decide who lives and dies ("have I the right?") to a man who seems to seek out that responsibility as much as possible.  He sacrifices all the people he could save from atrocities, but doesn't or can't because he believes it would cause much greater harm in the future.  He sacrifices the people around him, often betraying them for the sake of the games he plays with his enemies.  He sacrifices whole worlds full of people if even more lives are on the line, and Ace and Benny have both seen him do it at this point. Seven is an especially flawed version of the character, and Orman clearly understands that.  In a stroke of genius, she uses The Left-Handed Hummingbird to not only compare the Doctor to the Aztecs themselves, but to harken back to the first time he started down this path ("not one line").

I realize I’ve gotten this far while barely talking about the plot of the book at all, but there’s a lot to like on that front as well.  The central character of the narrative is a man named Cristian Alvarez, who encounters the Doctor in the wrong order as he is tormented by an Aztec spirit named Huiztilin.  Cristian is a very compelling but tragic character, and Bernice (finally!) gets to put her archaeology and history skills to use as she and the Doctor try to piece together what went wrong in the past.  Orman also excels at showing the effects of a psychedelic trip when the Doctor takes drugs to access the psychic forces plaguing him.  Within just 300 pages, the Doctor, Ace and Benny travel to the 15th century Aztec empire, 1968, 1978, 1980, 1994, and 1912, but it somehow doesn’t feel scattered or messy, fitting together like a time-bending jigsaw puzzle.

This book is one of the best VNAs so far!  I absolutely recommend it, if only for the complex themes, but if you’re a fan of Moffat you’re also likely to adore the time-hopping antics of this one.  Onward to whatever alternate timeline shenanigans await us in Conundrum!