The story involves Sarah
Jane being on holiday in Italy with her friend Jeremy Fitzoliver. Coincidentally the Brigadier is on holiday as
well spending time with his Italian uncle Mario who is being threatened by Max
Vilmio who is a mobster who is also an immortal emperor from the time of the
Holy Roman Empire. There are also
phantoms on Mario’s estate which are from Null Space which is kind of like an
afterlife but not everyone there is dead as the Doctor and Sarah Jane make it
into Null Space at several points.
Basically it’s an excuse for Barry Letts to create a story about ghosts
and to have a way for the Doctor to kill the villain of the story which again
doesn’t make much sense. The novel is a
pretty long one and it really shows as the thing is so cluttered that it makes
it difficult to get through. This isn’t
a complaint however on Barry Letts’ writing style which I found most enjoyable
as he knows how to write. The prose
feels kind of like an adventure story in the same vein of The Keys of Marinus and The
Chase with some great settings with some great supporting characters, it’s
just the main cast and the villain who really suffer from the already cluttered
plot.
The Doctor here is
supposed to be the Third Doctor who was always a bit arrogant and was famous
for never really listening to his companions with the exception of Liz Shaw. Here he does ignore Sarah Jane for most of
the novel, but he doesn’t really feel like these lines are meant for the Third
Doctor with the exception of the large amount of technobabble. It feels almost as if the story was meant for
the Fourth Doctor, but the radio play changed halfway through writing that it
would be for Jon Pertwee instead so Letts did some rewrites and didn’t bother
with changing things for the novelization.
Yes this was originally a radio play and the novel is the first version
available before the play was even broadcast which you can really tell as there
is just a ton of dialogue but I digress.
Sarah Jane doesn’t fare
much better as here she is trying to write a romantic thriller novel on her
holiday which is introduced in Chapter Two and quickly dropped thereafter as
Letts has no idea on where to go with the plot thread. She also has some of the weirdest dialogue and
thoughts as she goes into what I assume is cockney, but that doesn’t make any
sense as it often flip flops to regular English. The Brigadier is in this novel and even
though he is on the cover I barely remember what he contributed to the plot
except put up with Jeremy. He’s there
just to have an uncle who is already a racist caricature of an Italian which
doesn’t really fit with the story and to look after Jeremy. Jeremy is what really ruins this novel for me
as he is just an awful character. He is
the completely whiny momma’s boy who is apparently Sarah Jane’s friend who she
uses as a way to go on vacation. He
contributes nothing but being there to be annoying. I haven’t read or listened to The Paradise of Death, but now I have
even less desire to do so as Jeremy features even more in that story which I
dread. Jeremy is Season 19 Adric mixed
with the worst of Turlough and Clara intensified to the extreme. I just hate his character and wanted him to
die horribly every time he appeared.
To summarize, The Ghosts of N-Space is an example of
great ideas put in a lot of wasted potential from an author who should have
known better. The ideas are there to make
the story one of the greats, but sadly the characters are all over the
place. They range from tolerable to the
complete despicable. The villain is clichéd,
the Doctor doesn’t really make any sort of sense in his incarnation and the companions
are out of character. Really this isn’t
one for people and if you want a Barry Letts story just watch The Daemons. 25/100
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