3.26: The Ghosts of N-Space

In which the sequel is not as good as the original. Or, come to that, as good as dysentery.

Broadcast: February-March 1996

Listened: April 2021

What the f*ck was all that all about?

I can sort of see what they were going for – Paradise was scifi you couldn’t do on the telly, this is historical/fantasy you couldn’t do on the telly, with a crumbling castle and multiple time zones and armies of demons and so on.

But... there’s not much forward momentum to it. The plot is quite difficult to follow, the cliffhangers mostly dull. There’s an insane amount of people-describing-what-they-can-see. A minor character is Elvis, for no adequately explained reason. [Is this a Douglas Adams reference?] 

And there’s a scene in which the Doctor tries to convince Sarah that it’s not sad someone has died because they’re now a ghost, in the same way that, according to the cosmology/theology of this story, everyone else will become – thus undermining in one fell swoop the entire concept of death in Doctor Who.

It is interesting, considering it’s Pertwee and Letts’ last hurrah, that it’s about mortality and the fear of death? I’m not sure it fits with the rest of the show very well.

I’m being very negative – mostly because it’s very bad, but still. Again, I think the ambition is laudable – it embraces the medium, even if it does it badly – and it’s quite authored, in that it feels like a Barry Letts sort of thing. That’s good. It’s nice that Sandra Dickinson got to be in Doctor Who because she’s one of those actors that it feels weird hadn’t been already. 

But... the comedy accents. The incomprehensible plot. The fact that people in the past talk like cod Shakespeare. The weird theological bent! 

[Name of grumpy friend redacted] is going to pop up and say it’s the best Doctor Who story broadcast in 1996, and the TV Movie is next so maybe I’ll find he’s right, but my instinct is, no, this is just bad. Such a disappointment after Paradise.

Also weird how there are two stories around this time that bang on about N-bodies/N-forms but they mean totally different things. In the same way there are now two N-spaces. Weird.