Clockwise from top: Administrator Sehetu, Investigator Linhares, Dr Stig Lydecker, Dr Lilla Ferro, Dr Leo Kintry, Dr Landra Lorius, and ambulance driver Tor Cyan.
Mercy Heights is a comic series that ran in 2000 AD from 1997 to 1999. It was written by John Tomlinson, with illustration variously done by Kevin Walker, Lee Sullivan, Andrew Currie, Neil Googe and Trevor Hairsine.
The comic is a Medical Drama set aboard the titular Mercy Heights, a hospital Space Station located at a galactic crossroads in orbit around the mysterious Death World of Gehenna. The station's colorful procession of patients is matched only by its colorful cast of characters, including the station's medical, administrative and security personnel. While ostensibly neutral ground, the station quickly becomes embroiled in intergalactic politics following the untimely death of an important patient.
Mercy Heights is also notable in being a Spinoff of Rogue Trooper, the main connecting thread being former Genetic Infantryman Tor Cyan. He would ultimately go on to receive his own series, further tying the settings of Mercy Heights and Rogue Trooper together.
Tropes associated with this work:
- Amazing Technicolor Population: Tor Cyan has blue skin, a key indication that he is a Genetic Infantryman.
- Anyone Can Die: Several major characters are killed off by a murderer onboard the station. They were variously blackmailed or otherwise being used by Thalassa to fake his death and subsequently spark a war between his fellow Dendrellians and his hated enemies, the Plennari. Linhares was simply murdered for almost uncovering him.
- As You Know: Comes up from time to time, in the tradition of medical dramas.
- Auto-Doc: Medical robots supplement Mercy Height's living staff.
- Bizarre Alien Biology: Being set on a hospital station that treats a vast range of alien patients, this is to be expected.
- Body Horror: Commonly faced by the staff of Mercy Heights, especially when treatments go sideways. Those exposed to the atmosphere of Gehenna also suffer from this, becoming infected with a cocktail of fast-acting diseases upon contact.
- Busman's Holiday: At one point, Leo and Lilla visit an onboard cinema to watch a medical drama movie.
- The Casanova: Mercy Heights' star surgeon Stig Lydecker has shades of this. His Establishing Character Moment is him making a phone call in bed with an alien partner. He's seen with numerous other women throughout the series, at one point being confronted by three jilted lovers at once.
- Casual Interstellar Travel: To the point of having ambulance shuttles that can travel between star systems.
- Chekhov's Gun: Mercy Heights utilizes a specialized type of symbiote that can replicate failing organs, such as when Thalassa goes into cardiac arrest. Those same symbiotes are remotely recalled Chest Burster style when Thalassa's true nature is revealed.
- Clothing Damage: A very minor but nearly fatal variation occurs during a rescue mission to the plagued world of Gehenna. A rip in Lilla's suit exposes her to the miasma of diseases in the planet's atmosphere, and her companions barely manage to save her life afterwards.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Quite common. Administrator M'Loto Sehetu especially has quite a history, which comes back to haunt him and those under him.
- Death World: Memory Orange IX, more commonly known as Gehenna. Its indigenous population was wiped out by a series of massive plagues, leaving the surface so infected that the planet is uninhabitable. Mercy Heights orbits around Gehenna specifically so that the planet might be studied. It turns out the plagues were part of an Organic Technology terraforming project gone horribly wrong. In the comic's climax, Tor Cyan narrowly prevents it from being unleashed in full.
- Distant Finale: To Rogue Trooper. Tor Cyan visits Nu Earth and watches a reconstruction of the Quartz Zone Massacre before placing Rogue's battered biochip on a memorial. Nu Earth is also shown to have been successfully terraformed so that it is no longer the Death World it was originally.
- Dr. Jerk: Lilla Ferro, albeit as a Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
- Due to the Dead: Sehetu gives a euology to Linhares, even though he wasn't particularly well-liked by the rest of the staff.
- Explosive Decompression: Happens to several people, with particularly graphic results. Actually utilized in the climax to restabilize Mercy Height's failing orbit. Casualties are sustained in the process, but the station is saved from crashing into Gehenna.
- Intrepid Reporter: Merl Twiddy, though his annoying nature borders on Immoral Journalist at times.
- Medical Drama: In space!
- Naïve Newcomer: Downplayed by Leo Kintry. He's an experienced physician from Mercy Heights' sister station Missouri Hope, and is a well-adjusted and easygoing Nice Guy. However, he is still quite naive, and is especially out of his depth dealing with some of the alien patients Mercy Heights treats.
- The Neutral Zone: Mercy Heights operates as this, though not all agree with the stance. The Plennari attack and occupy the station for treating their enemies, the Dendrellians.
- Plot-Triggering Death: At the very beginning of the comic, Dendrellian ambassador Thalassa is admitted to Mercy Heights following cardiac arrest at a peace summit between the Dendrellians and the Plennari. He dies shortly after, not only causing the peace talks to break down without him but for the attending personnel (i.e. the main cast) to fall under investigation for alleged foul play. It turns out Thalassa was Faking the Dead, and never wanted peace to begin with.
- Psychic Powers: Some of the treatments Mercy Heights offers are along these lines. Vandra Lorius is a specialist in the field.
- Swallowed Whole: A prince from an alien world does this to his court astrologer. Only it turns out she was pregnant at the time, leaving the Mercy Heights crew having to remove the babies floating in the prince's digestive system. The babies survive, but the prince does not.
- The Symbiote: Used in certain treatments. Chameloids are noted as mimicking the function and genetic structure of the host's organs, used as a stopgap until cloned replacements can be prepared.
- Teleporter Accident: Two patients are accidentally fused together in this manner, requiring psychic intervention to separate them.
