White Ghosts

"There is only dark."

Writer: Alan Barnes

Format: Audio

Released: February 2014

Series: FDA 3.02

Featuring: Fourth Doctor, Leela

Synopsis

A close encounter with a stray missile leads the Doctor to materialise his TARDIS on a planet that hangs in the dark at the edge of the known universe. A planet so dark that it exists in near-permanent night. A planet that enjoys just a single day's light once every thousand years...

Exactly what happens on the planet in its rare daylight hours – that's what a geographical survey headed by Senior Tutor Bengel is stationed here to establish. They, the Doctor and Leela are about to discover that when daylight comes, the White Ghosts rise...

So don't be afraid of the dark. The cover of night is a mercy.

Verdict

White Ghosts was a great little Fourth Doctor Adventure! For the most part with this range from Seasons 2-6 I have jumped around and not done much at all in any kind of order, but I loved the follow on this one had from The King of Sontar with the Doctor having not spoken to Leela for days following her actions in essentially killing a great number of the clones during that adventure. The Time Lords had got what they wanted through Leela, and now the Doctor found her reading some fairytales she mistook as factual information which was just lovely. Leela can be so innocent at times and it's striking for me to hear the differences in her character development in this range when compared to the Gallifrey spinoff. The Doctor believing the TARDIS had been infiltrated by a clawed creature was amusing when the revelation came that it was Leela carving with her knife to remember her route. That was tremendous. I liked the idea of taking the TARDIS to the very edge of the universe and representing that with coordinates predominantly containing zeros was excellent. The prospect of a missile aim at this dark and remote location was intriguing and I liked the concept of the planet essentially being in a perpetual eclipse. The atmosphere was thin so we had the Doctor and Leela in spacesuits which provided some extra comic value, and they were soon found as the impossible light source by the survey team. I wasn't expecting the titular White Ghosts to be vegetation that was flame retardant but I was all for it and I loved that Leela referred to them as snake plants. That was more than enough of a description! Having her warrior instincts utilised in the dark was a nice touch as well. The impending missile actually exploding some 31 seconds before impact was due in the atmosphere was good and I liked that the ramifications were Candeli dying. It was all very mysterious. That soon deepened as we learned of the previous survey team not making it back with them falling victim to the White Ghosts, which were horrifically also known as corpse plants. This didn't leave a huge amount to the imagination! The cliffhanger was brilliant with the idea of the plants' roots attacking just fantastic. It was nice to hear how Leela had faith in the Doctor and even though he didn't have a plan at the moment, she knew he'd conjure one up before long. The missile turning out to be a flare that was accelerating the growth of the Ghosts was very good, although I think things got a little unnecessarily complicated when it came to them containing bulbs of natural phosphorescence deep in their code. Morandi changing and mutating after being scratched was a vivid moment and I was surprised Leela wasn't impacted by her own scratch. Having Bengel with no reaction to these events didn't exactly shock me, as she had her own plan to add to the gene pool. The whole crop rotation theory of Candell and Morandi being proved right was weird, and whilst I liked the idea of a harvest it seemed a bit too long at 1,040 years for the Harvesters to be feasting. Their grim reaper appearance was good and they had come to eat the plants. The mutation being irreversible was a fun twist with it turning out the treatment was just placebos, and Aranda had been conducting her own experiment. She just wanted to be taken home which was understandable, but this was quite the way to go about it! The Doctor's use of the accelerator and going quicker than the speed of light to retrieve the TARDIS felt like cheating, but it was certainly amusing and you could hear the fun in Tom Baker's voice. It turned out that the Time Lords had sent the Doctor all along because they didn't like blood drinkers which was fun, but the Doctor wasn't having the Harvesters and shoved them out back into the darkness for another millennium where they'd go hungry. It was a brutal end to what was a very good adventure! Overall, a strong audio.

Rating: 8/10