| GHOSTS OF INDIA by Mark Morris |
| Story 22 Synopsis: Donna wants some Indian food, so the Doctor takes her to the country, arriving in Calcutta, 1947. Talk of abductions by spooky men, and an violent infection lead the Doctor to identify leaking zytron energy. The spooky men are gelem warriors, creations here of a rogue Jal Karath warrior called Veec-9. The Doctor finds another Jal Karath, Gopal, has been trying to sort things out, with little success. By getting help from Mohandas Gandhi, the Doctor is able to prevent the abduction and extraction of thousands of locals to create more gelem warriors, he reverses the plague infection, and leaves Gopal to remain and carry on being a doctor. |
| Review:- Donna Noble steps off the screen and onto the page, and right into history... The big giggle here is pairing modern girl Donna with the legendary noble man, Gandhi. In fact, she's quite respectful, which is perhaps more than can be said for the Doctor, who genuflects to a ludicrous degree, and uses his name of "Mahatma" as if he were talking to Jack "The Hat" McVitie, or somesuch. The locals we meet are pretty one-dimensional, chiefly being the Campbell family, who vary according to social preference, but for whom the younger generation are adapting better to the changing world around them. The Jal Karath, on the other hand, are a strange lot. After spending more than half the book on intrigue, Morris introduces us to the bad guy, via the witty conceit of his pretending to be looking for the bad guy instead. And then his actual tracker believes the Doctor is an ally. With hilarious consequences! Or not. There is a lot of 'just accept it' going on, and for a book aimed at kids, perhaps that's not as bad as it sounds. The ghostly gelem warriors (a bit like golems, eh what?) are produced from human emotions, so they're clearly horrid anyway, and the Jal Karath harvest is a pretty straightforward thing to want to oppose. And that's pretty much it, apart from the zytron leakage, which allows for some ever-topical (and more interesting than the main plot) stuff about mutated animals (vaguely cribbing The Green Death, but not so as you'd notice). These are sadly dealt with too easily when the Doctor simply reverses the systems, and cures everyone! The other pitfall in the closing strait is the downfall of the Jal Karath, when Gandhi's position in history is threatened (or is the Doctor taking a chance?) for a page or so, and then his inherent goodness renders the whole operation non-effective. Well, anti-climax and cop-out at the same time. On balance, a fair little page-turner, with Donna coming off well, Gandhi seeming better for what he does and says than what the Doctor reports, and bog-standard villains getting the treatment they deserve. |
| Disclaimer: I've read the book. |