Ghost Light

Target novelisation Ghost Light

Author	Mark Platt
Published	1990
ISBN	0 426 20351 8
First Edition Cover	Alistair Pearson

Back cover blurb: Perivale, 1983 A column of smoke rises from the blazing ruins of a forgotten, decaying mansion. Perivale, 1883 In the sleepy, rural parish of Greenford Parva, Gabriel Chase is by far the most imposing edifice. The villagers shun the grim house, but the owner, the reclusive and controversial naturalist Josiah Samuel Smith, receives occasional visitors. The Reverend Ernest Matthews, for instance, dean of Mortarhouse College, has travelled from Oxford to refute Smith's blasphemous theories of evolution. And in a deserted upstairs room, the Doctor and Ace venture from the TARDIS to explore the Victorian mansion... Who - or what - is Josiah Smith? What terrible secrets does his house conceal? And why does Ace find everything so frightening familiar?

• A Review by Finn Clark

A Review by Finn Clark 28/4/02

Marc Platt's novelisation style differs from Ben Aaronovitch's. He doesn't go in for the detailed backstories we saw in Remembrance of the Daleks, concentrating more on extra scenes and atmosphere. I've just flicked through the deleted scenes at the back of the Titan script book (snippets which reached the rehearsal stage but didn't survive through to the final programme through time pressures) and most of them were familiar from the novelisation in some form. Again, this is a lot like a Director's Cut.

This is a spooky book. Gabriel Chase on television was pretty, a credit to the set designers, but it didn't particularly evoke a haunted house. This is genuinely eerie, with Josiah being positively vampiric. It's disquieting, even subtly disgusting.

As a story it works very well, with events moving surprisingly fast. I like the brisk pace of these novelisations, though the complexity of the TV story has been retained. You'll have to concentrate if you want to follow everything that's going on. The characters are lively and actually develop and do stuff, which is also an advance on Lungbarrow and Time's Crucible. Admittedly the theme of evolution is a big help, with no one ending up the same as they began. There's less ambiguity though, with the Doctor's agenda for Ace being presented directly through point-of-view scenes right at the beginning.

The dialogue is great. The Doctor and Ace have a life and sparkle to them; novelists can sometimes drone a bit, but this has been filtered through a performance. There are some wonderful lines here, while the character interactions often sparkle. The culture shocks with Ace's anachronistic apparel are funnier than on TV (though I missed the Reverend Ernest Matthews' facial expression after being called "bogbrain").

Page 110 has Turn of the Screw in-jokes, with reference to Mrs Grose. Grrr, snarl... but actually, as in-jokes go, they're quite good ones.

Judging by page 122, I'd say it's possibly more important to read the Target novelisations than to watch the TV stories if researching a McCoy and Ace story. This was where the writers laid out the backstory that was only referenced obliquely on television, in this case "families and mums and mum's fancy man".

Marc spends more time building up the beginning of the story. Episode one takes us almost to the novelisation's halfway point. However that doesn't mean the story's conclusion is hurried or skimmed, with McKenzie's demise being disgusting (all the more so for being understated) and the fate of Gwendoline and Mrs Pritchard is possibly one of the most horrible things in Doctor Who prose fiction. That bit really got to me, possibly because I'd been drawn into sympathising with the characters almost despite myself. Gwendoline's poor confused mind gets a particularly good airing.

This is a luscious book that compares favourably with many NAs in every department, though it's shorter by a third. I reckon it's Marc Platt's best book to date, blending rich complexity with a enthralling story and rattling pace into something that's damn near perfect if you can just forget it's a novelisation.