Doctor Who: Ghost Ship (Doctor Who Novellas) [Hardcover]

By far, the most ubiquitous criticism is that it's told in first-person narration from the point of view of the Fourth Doctor. And yet, at first glance, the character appears to be totally unlike any performance we'd ever seen Tom Baker give. He's nervous, unsure of himself, panicky, and awkward. At one point, he even runs off back to the TARDIS hell-bent on making a quick getaway. For the first ten or twenty pages, I didn't believe it in the slightest.

But further on from that, I began thinking. The book is set in the void between THE DEADLY ASSASSIN and THE FACE OF EVIL, where the Doctor spent some unknown amount of time wandering through space and time alone. Is it possible that his already dark character could have dipped deeper? I began pondering some other moments that we had already seen of the Fourth Doctor's life. The graying, brooding figure we saw in his final season (particularly in LOGOPOLIS). The almost callous man who Sarah admonishes in PYRAMIDS OF DEATH for not seeming human. Yes, I decided. Yes, I could buy this as a continuation of the character, pushed a tad bit farther than we'd seen before, and without the usual humor that balanced out this part of him. It made me think and reflect on a character whose main source of development ended decades ago, which isn't a simple trick.

Though to be fair to critics of this characterization, what I couldn't buy was the actual language that he used. First of all, it's difficult to imagine the Fourth Doctor actually sitting down to write something like his memoirs without getting fed up and wanting to save the universe or pop in on Da Vinci or something. But going further, I just can't see his prose being this flowery or this filled with clever similes and metaphors. Don't get me wrong; it's good, it just doesn't seem like the sort of thing that he would say.

As for the rest of the novella, well, it's basically a ghost story (no big shocker, given the title), and as a ghost story it relies almost exclusively on the author's ability to evoke an appropriately creepy tone. Of other reviews, I've noticed that those who loathed the book didn't see any plausible atmosphere created, while those that liked the book did see that. Place me in the second column then. I found the book quite chilling.

The plot is secondary to establishing the mood. We meet characters and see their conversations, more for the sake of developing them and their role in the ambiance than for any particular plot reasons. This can appear either as necessary scene setting or mindless padding, depending on your point of view. By the time we meet the bulk of the secondary characters, I was already absorbed in the flow of the story and accepted this in the manner in which I assume it was intended.

GHOST SHIP has too much going against it to be really popular. If you don't like the characterization of the Fourth Doctor, you'll hate the book. If you don't like the atmosphere Topping attempts to create, you'll hate the book. Personally, I thought it was very good indeed, but I realize I'm never going to be in the majority on this. I'd recommend giving it a try though, even if you do end up detesting it. It's short and it's well paced, so you won't be wasting too much time; I read it in one quick sitting and enjoyed it enormously.