The Ghost in the Machine

Jo Grant finds herself alone in the TARDIS, having spent a bit too long rooting through the cavernous wardrobe for something new to wear. Not finding the Doctor, she leaves the ship and wanders through what she takes for a darkened scientific installation, eventually finding the Doctor immobile and unresponsive. But there is horror lurking out there with her; there are skeletons heaped up on the stairs as if they all died trying to get out, to get away from something. And that could well mean that whatever killed those people is still inside. Inside with Jo.

Brilliantly creepy stuff is this: wandering around in the dark with the odd bit of sudden sound at a distance is a great formula for tension, with the unseen being a lot scarier than what is out in the open. I’m reminded of some moments in The Blair Witch Project where unidentifiable sounds crackle in the distant forest, although this time it gets one creepier when it’s a voice reciting “Mary had a little lamb”.

Ghost in the Machine borrows a bit from other episodes where there has been an enemy that is contained in a recorded medium, including the televised episode The Idiot’s Lantern but more obviously Big Finish’s own Whispers of Terror which was made so many years ago maybe they themselves forgot about it. But the real terror is in the idea of the intangible enemy that can still harm you even if it has no physical presence itself. And it’s not like we’ve never gone there before with an enemy either – the Great Intelligence itself is at the top of the non-corporeal enemies list but there are no robots to do anyone’s bidding here, just voices on tape recorders.

Ghost is another one where the story is told in “real time” and not in some kind of past perspective, so this is definitely Jo while she was with the Doctor and not afterwards, putting the continuity back to somewhere before The Green Death. There’s a danger in doing audio where the protagonist serves as the narrator as well; I don’t know anyone who constantly chatters away about what they are doing and what they are seeing even if they’re not recording themselves of tape as they go, so it can feel staged and forced and naff unless handled properly. There’s an advantage to taking this approach here, though, because that’s not too far off how Jo really would operate, especially when nervous and frightened. And we have seen her do it before in Planet of the Daleks.

Jo’s time on the televised series has already ended, and next up comes her final (so far) audio…

NEXT EPISODE: THE ELIXIR OF DOOM