The Ghost Trap

"The walls were breathing."

Writer: Nick Wallace

Format: Audio

Released: April 2015

Series: Short Trips 5.04

Featuring: Fourth Doctor, Leela

Synopsis

Responding to a salvage team's distress call, the Doctor and Leela arrive on a crippled space ship. Its owners, the Hihmakk, are a secretive race of space mariners whose navigation skills make them the envy of the galaxy. The salvage team are long dead, but their last log entires speak of a spectre stalking the ship's halls, picking them off one by one. When the pair become separated, Leela must fight for survival whilst the Doctor seeks to understand the nature of the ghost...

Verdict

The Ghost Trap was a very decent little Short Trips adventure! I enjoyed the eery feel of this story that was set right from the off with the opening line that I immediately loved and took as my quote for the blog. That really set the pace and I was intrigued to hear that this was still very early on for Leela in her travels with the Doctor following her arrival in The Face of Evil. She was fascinated by the slow rhythm of the moving walls and that was also the case for this very listener. Leela catching the scent of death was good and I liked how the Doctor retorted about not every smell being decomposition. The Hihmakk spaceship worked well and I liked how it was an organic makeup, seemingly sharing similarities with the Axos which is a concept I really enjoy and I’m sure would have been expanded upon had there been the time to allow. I did like that we got some background about the Hihmakk and how they were ghostly space mariners. That was a terrific description. The Doctor’s pointing out of the silence at the monument revealing that something was wrong worked nicely and just added to that eery feel. And then we had some bodies found which just furthered that! I liked the idea of the ship’s control point being contained within stringy flesh and that just felt a bit gross which was well in line with the story’s feel. It worked well though to give the Doctor the aim of finding the still active computer and putting things right. The Doctor explaining how an organic computer could be was a nice touch too. Leela being submerged in water injected some action into things and her description of her lungs burning in the water was pretty horrific. I liked how the Doctor assuming there were no more Hihmakk around was a mistake and that led him to feeling that Leela was in serious trouble and that just didn’t sit well. The emergence of the Hihmakk in the form of screaming in extreme pain really shifted gears and they sounded very much in a bad way. This was the sole Hihmakk left behind as the pilot and the pain enduring was gruesome. Louise Jameson did a stellar job with the narration as always, but I can’t help but be slightly disappointed by the lack of a Tom Baker impression for the Fourth Doctor. I felt that would have helped with establishing a genuine feel. The Hihmakk conglomeration equalling an understanding of hyperspace was fun to explore and it provided a decent explanation as to how the pilot survived through the channeling of the interface linked with the ship. Whilst the rest of the crew were destroyed, that link was vital in saving the pilot. Leela toying with a spirit and having it push through the doors was good and I was intrigued that it didn’t actually seem to be following Leela. The prospect of the ship actually growing the Hihmakk rather than the other way around was terrific and I’d have liked if that was expanded upon a little more, but again it fell foul of the short format. The Doctor having pride in the promise Leela was showing was the highlight of the audio for me. That was a really nice touch. The warp shunt leaving the Hihmakk cut in two but leaving a collective consciousness behind must have been torment and it all linked back to it being the spirit or rather a splinter of it. It was essentially a species caught in death. The Doctor guiding Leela through the innards to free the conscience was nicely done and the idea of it representing the last thoughts of the crew was a powerful conclusion. Overall, a good audio!

Rating: 7/10