Ghost Light by: Marc Platt

 

Ghost Light was written by: Marc Platt, based on his story of the same name.  It was the 156^th story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

The joke in Doctor Who fandom that isn’t entirely a joke is that Ghost Light is a story that’s too difficult to understand which is one of those little ideas that I don’t actually agree with.  As presented on television, Ghost Light is a serial Marc Platt is putting in full of subtext.  It’s a serial all about stagnation, Victorian society is presented as rigid and impossible to change as a parallel to the alien survey team inhabiting the house of Gabriel Chase insisting on cataloguing all life on Earth as a stationary definition of life.  Ace’s arc is also about change, letting go of her adolescent anger while holding onto that strong sense of justice which can be channeled into helping others (she is responsible for Control realizing her sense of self represented in the Victorian social order as an Eliza Doolittle type).  It’s there in the subtext of the television story, it just doesn’t come right out and explain what the plot is, realizing that the audience paying attention.  What is interesting is that because this is why Ghost Light works so well on television even if it is compressed into 75 minutes, novelizing the story should lessen that subtext because it makes it text.  That is not the case.  Marc Platt’s novelization of Ghost Light should also be hindered by taking the first episode and making it half the book, something that is not a problem because Platt knows exactly what he is doing when it comes to writing a book.  The prose itself does not feel like an adaptation of a script, but an original novel.

 

The key to making Ghost Light work is not reintegrating several of the deleted scenes, although that is something that is done, but it’s just how the character work happens.  If we take the script of everything that was filmed that still does not make up everything in the novelization.  The story is recontextualized from the opening: it opens with Ace burning down Gabriel Chase in the aftermath of the hate crime committed against her friend Manisha.  This in the original story is a twist, but placing it at the beginning creates an immediate sense of foreboding while the reader makes the connection between the opening and the setting of the story.  It adds this idea that the story itself is going to be cyclical, Ace at one point even being frightened that she may be in some sort of paradoxical time loop.  Ghost Light is about Ace at its core and it’s telling that she is the main focus of the novelization.  While Platt uses third person perspective and certainly does additions to different characters, it’s Ace that gets the most.  The Doctor is making this explicitly a test for her own development and she must face her own traumatic past so she can grow, evolve even.

 

The supporting characters are equally fleshed out, the most interesting addition is a brief flashback to the opera where the Reverend Matthews sees in their box Josiah Samuel Smith and Gwendoline, being startled by a phantasmal light and Smith’s insistence on staying in the shadows.  It’s this encounter that prompts Matthews to go to Gabriel Chase in the first place, he could have picked any follower of Darwin and Wallace after all.  Gwendoline is also a character presented in the novelization to somehow be further on the edge, Platt emphasizing how confused she is despite the performance under Smith’s influence.  It makes her initial spiral parallel the spirals of Mrs. Pritchard and Redvers Fenn-Cooper who are equally added.  The relationship between Gwendoline and her mother, like the television story is just in those final moments, but Platt deepens it so much by bringing parenthood as a theme to the forefront.  Light here is also presented as slightly more ethereal, Platt taking advantage of the fact that anything can be achieved in prose and not be limited by the special effects budget of a television show.

 

Overall, Ghost Light surprisingly deserves its title in novelization form.  It does feel like one light left on the stage after Gabriel Chase should have been abandoned long ago.  The satire of both the Victorian period and 1989 Britain (the stagnancy of government is a jab at the rule of Conservatism at the time) feels all the more pointed here while the characters just create the depth because Platt is more interested in writing a novel and not a novelization.  10/10.

Sins of the Father by: Ronald D. Moore and W. Reed Moran from a story by: Drew Deighan and directed by: Les Landau

 

“Sins of the Father” is written by: Ronald D. Moore and W. Reed Moran, from a story by: Drew Deighan and is directed by: Les Landau.  It was produced under production code 165, was the 17^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 3, the 65^th episode overall, and was broadcast on March 19, 1990.

 

It’s a miracle that Star Trek: The Next Generation is a series that can do several episodes focusing on the Klingons, their culture, and in the case of “Sins of the Father” their planet and get away with it without a hint of irony.  There is something almost magical about the ability of an episode of television to be able to put objectively silly images on screen, but bring together a cast and have them play it entirely straight.  The premise of “Sins of the Father” is Worf having to fight for the honor of himself, his deceased father who has been charged a traitor, and to his long lost brother Kurn, played by Tony Todd.  It’s also a direct sequel to “A Matter of Honor” directly having Kurn serve on the Enterprise as part of the cultural exchange between the Klingon Empire and the Federation, as Riker did in the previous episode.  The first act structurally of the episode is entirely devoted to that cultural exchange, this time with a lone Klingon not really integrating properly to human culture.  Klingon culture as presented by writers Ronald D. Moore and W. Reed Moran emphasizes that militaristic order and discipline over all else.  Sure there’s the objectively hilarious line about not killing someone at the supper table, but it is this obsessive discipline that causes conflict among the Enterprise crew.  It’s not enough conflict to fill an entire episode, but it is enough to get to the reveal that Kurn is Worf’s brother, done in private because Kurn isn’t implementing the discipline on his brother.  It’s essentially the B-plot of the episode that fully plays out before the rest of the episode making for a far more integrated story.

 

The A-plot is Worf and his own struggle to clear his father’s name, a man he never really knew, with evidence that he does not have nearly enough to actually do.  “Sins of the Father” is an episode that actually becomes a tragedy, mainly because Worf’s task in this episode is impossible.  There is exactly one piece of evidence in the example of a living witness who refuses to testify, revealing a far larger conspiracy that could have sparked a Klingon Civil War.  Moore and Moran leave the episode on this almost empty, dissatisfied note where Worf has made a choice that is best for himself and his brother, one of self-sacrifice and of humanity, one that is dishonorable but enough to save his brother.  This is explicitly framed as a human decision and not a Klingon one, but it is obviously the correct decision to make.  It expels Worf from Klingon society, a society that he never fully belonged to in the first place, and yet the episode ends with a sense that he is not the one turning his back in the slightest.  He still has his pride and his own personal honor, something that Michael Dorn does without saying a word.  Dorn also has impeccable chemistry with Tony Todd as Kurn, not so much of showing any brotherly love but this incredibly deep respect that only brothers can have.  The idea of love between the pair is something that would come had the episode not ended the way that it does, that is part of the tragedy of “Sins of the Father”.  These are brothers in a society that has left them inverse of one another.  Worf’s public face is one of dishonor but is internally is nothing but the peak of honor while Kurn is the inverse, his own conscience of denying his family is clearly a pain on his own honor though Klingon society sees him as a full member of society.  There is also this public power imbalance between Worf and Kurn, Kurn being a commander while Worf a lieutenant, that isn’t actually examined much by this episode.  This is an episode after all that swiftly gets against the chain of command, despite devoting time to having Picard serve in Worf’s defense after Kurn is wounded in a fight.  This is used more to further Picard and Worf’s dynamic of respect between commander and officer, Patrick Stewart and Dorn play it well of course, but it is one of those smaller elements of the episode.

 

The production design of “Sins of the Father” is of note at being the first on-screen appearance of the Klingon homeworld.  This is interpreted through the budget of a television episode, but the matte painting and model exteriors designed by Richard James are exquisite.  The architecture is particularly angular and the lighting design of the episode gives the episode these fascinating alien colors mixing red and green in a way that almost emulates certain uses of the two-strip Technicolor process.  The interior sets are also excellent, even if you can tell that they are a bit smaller in places than the script was expecting.  Les Landau directs the actors around them quite well, the final shots of the episode with Worf being cast out of society are particularly effective because of Landau’s direction.  The episode received an Emmy for Best Art Design which is a particularly notable contribution, but really it is the use of lighting that ties everything back together.  It really does mean the episode is going to stick in the mind of the viewer because the lighting despite a musical score that is just perfectly average.

 

Overall, “Sins of the Father” may be the strongest episode to focus on Worf yet, which is saying a lot because many of his episodes had been the stronger episodes of the first two seasons.  The layers it presents to Klingon culture drive the episode after a first act that tricks the audience that it is going to be a rather straightforward counterpart to “A Matter of Honor”, and the tone becomes far more serious than the relatively light first act.  Some of it cannot be adequately explored in a 45 minute television episode, but the script is tight with Ronald D. Moore once again bringing his stellar character writing while Tony Todd steals the show as Worf’s brother.  8/10.

The Awakening by: Eric Pringle

 

The Awakening was written by: Eric Pringle, based on his story of the same name.  It was the 95^th story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

The Awakening is one of those stories that I always forget exists.  Nestled in the first half of Season 21, it’s essentially a rewrite of The Daemons despite Eric Pringle denying he had even seen or read Doctor Who and the Daemons.  It’s also the last in the long line of televised stories that terrorizes a member of Tegan Jovanka’s family for dramatic effect.  Pringle pitched the story as a four part serial and even began scripting it as one before script editor Eric Saward asked him to tighten it down to two episodes before production.  The novelization brings me to the conclusion that this is one Eric Saward decision that was the right move because Pringle ends up writing a novelization coming to 144 pages.  Certainly not the longest novelization published by Target Books, but is definitely longer than many of the novelizations of the time.  Pringle is adapting his own script for print and is an example of barely parting with a single word of the original story.  It means that the two episodes of the story, roughly 50 minutes of material, are expanded out far beyond their breaking point while Pringle pads the word count with attempts to add inner life to the characters that sadly amounts to them mostly being basic emotional descriptors.  This is made further odd by Pringle’s prose sometimes describing the action not in the terms of a novelist but in the terms of a film director meaning that the descriptions try to have the reader in the action as if they are the camera.  It becomes incredibly clunky to read, for instance when the first crack in the church wall appears the description is at length and feels like it is missing the music sting to indicate the audience seeing something the characters are not.  These drag the story out across the ten chapters of the book that are also structured around several scenes which is just adding to the pacing problems.  Yes, multiple scenes in a chapter is normal, but the way Pringle presents it feels like each scene is trying to end its own chapter.  The characters say the same dialogue in the script but so much of The Awakening feels sanded down and somehow thinner than the already fairly thin televised story.

 

Overall, the only conclusion is that the Peter Davison two-part stories really don’t service novelizations particularly well.  The Awakening is actually the strongest of the three but that does not actually say much, something that is a surprise since novelizations like The Edge of Destruction, The Rescue, and Doctor Who and the Sontaran Experiment all work quite well.  4/10.

Heritage by: Dale Smith

 

The space western is something that is largely foreign to Doctor Who, the most obvious example being the mostly missing The Space Pirates as part of the genre, though there is also an argument of Colony in Space taking on ideas of the western genre.  This should not be surprising, because Doctor Who relies on time travel as part of the central premise it is far easier that if it is going to homage the western genre it would just do a western: from The Gunfighters to “A Town Called Mercy” and arguably certain sequences of “The Impossible Astronaut”.  You can add science fiction elements to the western genre, but that does not make it a space western.  Heritage is an outlier in that trend, Dale Smith committing his to date only Doctor Who novel to being a space western in every sense of the genre.  The biggest influence on the structure of Heritage is the 1952 film High Noon from its plot taking place in real time (translated into each chapter slowly progressing August 6, 6048) and having the Doctor and Ace returning to the town of Heritage after a long absence while the town slowly rallies against them.  That is the interesting trick, placing the Doctor and Ace as the villains of the story in the eyes of the townsfolk, flipping the High Noon formula on its head so our perspective is from the outsiders.  Smith excels at painting Heritage as a desolate wasteland: it is both the planet and one of two settlements on the planet, a planet full of dust, heat, and a population holding deep and dark secrets.  The technology is likely there to make it a better place to live, but most of that has gone into cleaner robots called Fussies that do nothing more than make it a nuisance.  The inhabitants of the town aren’t just human however, in addition to the classic western sheriff called Sheriff there is a dolphin called Bernard who feels like Smith is attempting a Douglas Adams style joke.  Matching this atmosphere, the Doctor is portrayed throughout Heritage as morose, only made worse by the events of the novel.  This is not a grand plan to set part of the universe to rights, he and Ace are essentially stuck here and stuck in what seems to be a divergent timeline where both his television companions have met terrible fates, or perhaps will meet terrible fate.

 

Heritage is structured as four episodes and this is one aspect where it feels as if Smith has not thought through the structure.  The big halfway point twist is not actually treated as a cliffhanger despite being what the novel actually hangs upon to work.  There is also the slight issue of the point of view, the narration occasionally feeling as if the novel was originally told entirely from Ace’s perspective with little narrated asides that feel out of place, especially in one scene in which Ace is absent.  While it would be a perfectly respectable way to present the novel there is a sense that it was abandoned because Smith wanted scenes without Ace and let certain instances of that previous version slip through the cracks.  The first twist of Heritage that does work is the reveal that Melanie Bush is dead, she married a farmer named Ben Heyworth and was murdered somehow.  This is only the first twist as there is a child called Sweetness, depicted oddly on the cover in front of a mouth in the sand that has absolutely nothing to do with the novel (there is a cave with jagged rocks that it might be trying to depict but the Black Sheep covers really do suffer).  Mel’s death breaks Ace down, making her believe that the Doctor is just going to forget her when it becomes convenient and leave her to a potentially similar fate while for the Doctor’s part he has to investigate exactly what is happening.  There are several other deaths and instances of insanity among the townsfolk of Heritage, some that seem far too nice to the Doctor and Ace as a front to strike when they least expect it, also killing their own loved ones.  Everybody on Heritage is out for blood and when you eventually get to the climax, revealing exactly who Sweetness’ parents are and her connection to the murder of Melanie Bush, there is this sense of sad exhaustion.  It’s a good feeling, this would very easily rank as one of the strongest novels in the range if it were edited ever so slightly tighter and was more consistent in its narrative voice.

 

Overall, Heritage is clearly only a continuing part of what Mike Tucker laid down in Prime Time and what the Seventh Doctor Past Doctor Adventures novels has really been doing.  The twists are incredibly effective and the novel sets out to test the relationship between the Doctor and Ace in a very interesting way.  The cover is deceptive in terms of the tone that Dale Smith is going for and he clearly needed one more rewrite to make it perfect, but we have a great space western that understands the type of story that westerns excel at.  8/10.

The Offspring by: René Echevarria and directed by: Jonathan Frakes

 

“The Offspring” is written by: René Echevarria and is directed by: Jonathan Frakes.  It was produced under production code 164, was the 16^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 3, the 64^th episode overall, and was broadcast on March 12, 1990.

 

Saying something aged poorly is often a negative descriptor, and rightly so, for something problematic in a piece of media that is otherwise popular and still somehow culturally relevant.  Star Trek is no stranger to having this label, despite it often being progressive.  “The Offspring” is an interesting example of this because it is progressive but the language it uses is not quite there.  This is an episode about parenthood and furthering Data’s status as a person, but also with undercurrents of existing outside of the typical bounds of a social construct.  The premise is that Data has a child and I say a child because this child is given more agency than our own children are given.  The first act of the episode presents the child, named Lal, as a blank slate and importantly an adult child for Data so René Echevarria can further explore social constructs from the adult perspective.  “The Offspring” posits that social constructs are intentionally conflicting and confusing, Lal is given the agency to choose the identity that fits with her sense of self.  I say her because her gender is her choice.  She is initially presented as gender neuter, a term that is not inaccurate but in modern linguistics could be described as agender, an agender female.  This is portrayed by through the first act having Lal played by Leonard Crofoot before the choice is made and she is played for the rest of the episode by Hallie Todd.  The episode is clear that both Data and Lal only experience gender to fit into society, the forms they take are ones that they like and have some connection to, however Echevarria makes it explicit that if they so wished they could just change their appearance and identity on a whim.  There is a segment of Star Trek fandom that especially likes to make Data’s sense of gender a rigid cisgender male identity when it is not cisgender, arguably it is at the same time male and not bound as male.  The same is true for Lal.

 

“The Offspring” is an episode that is surprising in how well it fits in with Gene Roddenberry’s vision of the future of humanity being past conflict, the central conflict of the episode is where Lal should go: if she should stay with Data on the Enterprise or she should be put on a Starfleet base.  This is actually the B-plot of the episode and Data has very little to do with this plot outside of advocating for his daughter to be treated in the same way as he is, as someone who deserves autonomy.  She is a person.  Picard, who has his own feelings to overcome since he has not quite examined that Data being a person means he can have children as any other crewmember can, is the one who advocates for Lal against Admiral Haftel, played by Nicolas Coster.  Haftel is the antagonistic force of the episode, but he is not a villain, he is just someone who has not yet encountered an android like Data and Lal and slowly overcomes his preconceptions of what they are.  The drama is still there, the concept of Data losing his daughter and Lal losing her father is great, especially surprising since this is Lal’s introduction and the episode ends in tragedy of Lal sadly dying of natural causes despite both Data and Admiral Haftel’s best efforts to save her.  Picard’s initial apprehension and then coming around almost immediately, the episode advocating a woman’s right to choose without writing an episode about a woman having a child.  It makes the issue a fascinating rhetorical trick, making it effective at getting around certain unconscious biases in the audience against the argument for women’s rights.  Putting it in the voice of men (or male presenting characters as Data is) means that the audience has to see the humanity in the argument and cannot let biases against women get in the way.

 

The rest of the episode is a more internal conflict.  Data has to be a good father and Lal has to discover who she is and what she wants to be.  Echevarria is intentional in looking at where Data has been and what Lal would need and could do to become more developed than her father.  She can use contractions, Data cannot (or at the very least does not in most episodes, the absolute continuity isn’t always so tight).  Data forms relationships but Lal is hinted at having a desire for romantic intimacy (and potentially sexual intimacy, however as this is a television episode from 1990 that is not explored being asexual and aromantic are conflated).  Brent Spiner while once again working with a script that on paper says Data does not show emotion, does nothing but show and experience those emotions.  It is a heartbreaking performance and Hallie Todd for her part is doing so much to keep that Data like cadence for Lal while making her sound more than just Data but a woman.  Lal is taken to Ten Forward, the Enterprise bar that was only named recently onscreen, and is put to work as a waitress so she can observe people.  Whoopi Goldberg as Guinan is this beautifully empathetic towards Lal, explaining human relationships though not wishing to overstep her bounds.  Lal kisses Riker unprompted because she is immediately smitten with him, something that is played off as a joke and not followed up on for Riker as Jonathan Frakes is directing the episode, but for Lal she has to learn the concepts of consent.  It’s nice to see a prototype of that conversation in an episode that does not entirely brush it off.  On the topic of direction, Frakes brings this fantastic energy to keep the camera moving throughout the episode.  There is a lot of very small touches that Frakes brings, having Riker not in the episode outside of that very brief cameo means he can focus on making the episode look particularly dynamic for a 1990 episode of television.  You can really see exactly why Frakes would continue to direct several episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, episodes of future series, and films, he shows such promise as a director.

 

Overall, “The Offspring” has aged poorly in its language in places but not with what René Echevarria is doing with the script.  This is an episode that acknowledges how much of human society is just a social construct that could very easily be changed while also acknowledging some of the beauty in those constructs (mainly the way romance is portrayed).  It’s an examination once again of what it means to be a human being from a non-human perspective and clearly has commentary on the social ostracization of certain groups without naming those groups.  There is definitely commentary that I am missing in this review: Data being representative of neurodivergence in certain ways is also a perfectly valid and interesting reading of “The Offspring” that there just isn’t the time to get into here.  Despite one joke that has aged quite poorly, this is the second perfect episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation in a row.  10/10.

Doctor Who and the Pyramids of Mars by: Terrance Dicks

 

Doctor Who and the Pyramids of Mars was written by: Terrence Dicks, based on Pyramids of Mars by: Robert Holmes and Lewis Greifer writing under the name Stephen Harris.  It was the 27^th story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

Whenever I find myself reading a Terrance Dicks novel there’s an immediate sense of comfort.  Several of my own reviews have discussed just how easy going his style is.  It has been said Dicks is responsible for the literacy rates of generations of British schoolchildren.  Doctor Who and the Pyramids of Mars is an interesting example of his style leaning particularly hard into the pulp fiction roots of both his style and Philip Hinchcliffe’s time as producer on Doctor Who.  Pyramids of Mars is a story exemplifying this, it’s a take on reanimating Egyptian mummies with diversions, because this is science fiction, into taking inspiration from Chariot of the Gods.  It's the latter point that the fandom does have a tendency to ignore or simply write off as part of the pulp fiction roots of the show and the serial in general.  The idea of the Osirans, or as they are in Doctor Who and the Pyramids of Mars the Osirians, as a near all-powerful alien race that influenced human culture is at best a dodgy decision despite being in an excellent serial.  At worst it is playing into a very long history of conspiracies aimed at denigrating “non-Western” cultures, mainly non-white cultures.  These stereotypes feel more present in the novelization with Dicks leaning heavily into those specific origins.  There is an added prologue recounting the Egyptian myth of Set killing Osiris which is a particularly fun little addition, but it does add in the context of the gods as aliens and making it explicit science fiction.  It does at least introduce little kids to Egyptian mythology since that is clearly the target audience of the novelizations in general.

 

The real step down for Doctor Who and the Pyramids of Mars is that despite some additions, there’s also an epilogue of Sarah Jane discovering through newspaper clippings that the entire story was written off as just a tragic fire and mix-up, and being a fairly quick read, this is a story that just loses a little bit of its luster when it isn’t being performed.  It’s perfectly fine to read about Sutekh, but without Gabriel Woolf’s delivery Dicks doesn’t do nearly as much to communicate the character’s presence to the reader which is a shame.  He just relies on the dialogue from Holmes’ original script which of course is good dialogue, but this is clearly entering the period where Dicks is writing so many of these novelizations he cannot quite keep up with the demands.  It’s still fairly early in the run of novels sure but it’s also his sixth novel of the year and because it’s one that was only about a year old, there isn’t enough time to really allow for a lot of that creative license that Dicks would write in novelizations like Doctor Who and the Web of Fear or his first Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion.

 

Overall, Doctor Who and the Pyramids of Mars, while translating the story well enough to the page, it does exacerbate some of the underlying problems with the nature of the story and a lack of creative license does mean that it is just the TV story a second time.  The lack of performances does mean the final episode being similar to Death to the Daleks is just more apparent, though the additions are nice.  8/10.

Fury from the Deep by: Victor Pemberton

 

Fury from the Deep was written by Victor Pemberton, based on his story of the same name.  It was the 111^th story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

Writing reviews for any of the Target novelizations are always just that little bit difficult because they aren’t original stories.  Fury from the Deep is a bit of an odd one because it breaks largely with the Target format by being about 60 pages longer than what was the standard length.  This would be done in the future as a trial run for the New Adventures, but Victor Pemberton simply found himself unable to adapt his story in the standard length.  Pemberton avoids making any major cuts to the story but also having six episodes to work with of mounting dread and horror means that you really do want that extra space just to translate it well.  The horror does work in prose, Pemberton translating a lot of the underlying pulse as more of the foam and weed breaking through the pipes more often.  The scenes which do exist in clips are ramped up in terms of violence, rarely is it just the gas attacking.

 

The working title of the story was The Colony of Devils and Pemberton restores some of those implications in the novelization.  The weed is more explicit in its sentience and quest for world domination here from the start.  There are subtle additions to make it feel there from the very beginning and its invasion is contrasted with a harshness of the refinery.  The Doctor, Jamie, and Victoria are shot early in the story with tranquilizers but in the novelization there is a direct mention of the people with the guns, something that on television feels somehow less harsh than it does here.  There is also a sense of a human touch Pemberton adds to the supporting characters.  Several are given first names but also expanded backstories from implying the Harris family are having a strained marriage from the refinery and Robson having a deceased wife which motivates his overwork.  Robson and Megan Jones are also treated harsher here, more often being referred to not by name but by title which adds to the atmosphere.

 

Overall, Fury from the Deep is one of the very best of the Target novelizations.  The pace reads more like an actual novel than a novelization which is always a plus and Pemberton’s additions are to make the book have better characters and a sense of mounting dread.  10/10.