Ghost Light

"Don't worry. I always leave things until the last minute."

Writer: Marc Platt

Format: Novel

Released: September 1990

Series: Target 149

Featuring: Seventh Doctor, Ace

Synopsis 

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 frighteningly familiar?

Verdict 

Ghost Light was a pretty decent read but in all honesty I was expecting a lot better than what I got today! I thought the TV story was excellent during my only viewing nearly three weeks ago so I had high expectations for the novelisation but they were reduced significantly as I pressed on with the novel. Why it was 160 pages I'm not sure at all. Around 125 is the standard number of pages for a Target television story novelisation and the extra 35 pages just seemed to drag things out completely unnecessarily. Had this been a normal standard length novel then I think it would have been a lot better as the pace would have quickened dramatically and that's something this novel was lacking. It did seem dull in parts and when you watch the TV story that this is based on you do wonder how that can be. This is the latest released Target novel I've done so maybe as the years went on the novels were requested to be longer, but it just seemed strange for it to be as long as it was. This was my first experience of both the Seventh Doctor and Ace in novelised format as I'm yet to read any of my other owned novels (Paradise Towers, Remembrance of the Daleks and Transit) with this incarnation but I must give credit where it's due and say that the characterisation of both the Doctor and Ace was absolutely spot on. Although I question the author's style and structure of the novel, he wrote the lead characters so well and it made up for a lot of the flaws in this book. The plot was good but I think with it being dragged out over the length it was it led me to thinking similarly with Ace - just what was going on? If you're thinking that in a novel then it's not a good sign. When it comes to my ratings, I consider anything under 8/10 to be pretty poor and after a streak of five blogged stories in a row to score 8/10, I was hoping for a break in the chain. I did get it but not in the way I was hoping! I'm just now waiting for that story to come out and wow me and get me back up to the high ratings. I won't switch my ways though and choose a story I know I'm going to score highly, like The Five Doctors for example. I've planned already what I'll be doing tomorrow and I will stick to it. But back to the story at hand. The Gabriel Chase setting was a good one and I felt that was transferred into print very well, though I'm still baffled why they decided to give a house a name. I loved the bickering between Darwinism and religion betwen Josiah and Ernest but there'd of course only be one winner. Spoiler alert - it's not bloody religion! I was so glad to see that evolution was confirmed in this story (it is of course widely accepted now) and religion was defeated. As you might be able to tell I'm an Atheist so any chance to put religion down in Doctor Who I love. Despite that, the story could have been better. I found certain aspects quite similar to The Last Dodo with Light wanting to catalogue every single species but where in the Tenth Doctor novel species kept becoming extinct, here they kept on evolving. Light's work would always need to be updated. Change was a constant on Earth and that led to Light despising the planet, once it was finally accepted that's where the ship had landed. Off course of course (try saying that three times when you're drunk!). Gwendoline was a nice character and the emotional reunion with her mother, who'd been hidden in plain sight, was a nice moment. The story behind Control was also quite emotional though I wasn't a fan of her inability to speak English fluently. That came across poorly in prose. Her relationship with Ace was magnificent throughout though. The Doctor bringing Ace to the house to test her was quite a surprise and I liked how Ace had a troubled history with the location, though that was 100 years in the future. It was good that the effects of this story had implications for Ace's past. It was quite paradoxical. The first half of this novel was actually pretty tough to get through but thankfully the latter 80 pages set the story back on a good motion with some very good action scenes. The climax was entertaining, though not as detailed as it could have been. Considering this was extended compared with normal Target novels, I felt we needed a bit more explanation as to what was going on. It was a nice moment with the Doctor and Ace to end on though. Overall, a decent novel but a perfect example of why the novels are not the same as their televised counterparts, because the TV story is so much better than this. 

Rating: 7/10