Oh, How the Ghost of You Clings - "The Ghosts of N-Space"

Note: This is a hiatus episode from our Wilderness Years coverage. Love the podcast? Consider joining us on Patreon for early access, exclusive episodes, and the option to commission your own Doctor Who story.

For the next stop in the Wilderness Years, John and Jim take on The Ghosts of N-Space, the 1996 BBC Radio serial that stands as Jon Pertwee's final official, BBC-sanctioned turn as the Doctor before his passing that May. Reuniting Pertwee with Elisabeth Sladen and Nicholas Courtney, it's a follow-up (emphatically not a sequel) to The Paradise of Death—and this time, the hosts find themselves on strikingly opposite ends of the spectrum. One arrives braced for the worst and finds unexpected things to admire; the other has a genuine, visceral reaction unlike anything he's felt for any Doctor Who, good or bad. You'll want to stick around for where they each land.

A Sequel Born From a Scheduling Mistake

The hosts trace the odd path to production: adequate-but-unspectacular listenership for Paradise of Death, three years of foot-dragging, and the strange twist that a rerun aired with its episodes out of order—and the flood of complaints proved people were actually paying attention. Barry Letts and Phil Clark returned to write and direct, Letts himself novelized it (published a year before broadcast), and the story slots into the Pertwee TV era between Death to the Daleks and Monster of Peladon.

Pertwee, Courtney, and the Sarah Jane Problem

Where the hosts firmly agree: Pertwee is superb, with barely a trace of age in his voice, and Courtney's Brigadier is the heart of the thing—never more so than in a castle-defense sequence that showcases his decades of military strategy rather than played for laughs. Elisabeth Sladen gives it her all, but the hosts take real issue with how the script writes Sarah Jane—a savvy journalist who somehow doesn't know the word "synchronicity," reduced too often to a weeping, quaking Nervous Nellie rather than the headstrong reporter they love. The supporting cast is another matter entirely, and the hosts hold nothing back about a parade of broad accents and grating characters (the uncle, Maggie, and the eternally useless Jeremy chief among them).

Ideas Worth Loving in a Story That Tests the Patience

Both hosts find genuine merit in the concept: a ghost story handed a science-fiction backbone, with N-Space as a dimension where the earthbound dead accumulate into hostile fiends. There's out-of-body time travel the hosts wish the show had done more of, a heavy dose of Dark Shadows DNA (walled-up villains, essences sent back through time), and callbacks to the Doctor's criminal past, his mysterious teacher, and even a pinch of "mandragora." But it's also, by common agreement, a six-parter with the padding to match—tedious stretches, scenes that bleed together with no transitions, and page after page of characters narrating the action aloud because radio gave them no other choice.

Not Your Grandfather's Doctor Who

One thing genuinely startles both hosts: the language. This is a decidedly more permissive, adult-leaning production than the TV era it's set in, with some rough dialogue that lands especially oddly given the classic cast and 1970s setting. The hosts wrestle with who, exactly, this was aimed at.

A Final Bow for the Third Doctor

Underneath it all is the weight of finality. Plans for a third Pertwee radio series never came to be; he died on May 20, 1996, making this his last official performance as the Doctor. The hosts reflect on what it means that this is the send-off, how it stacks against The Five Doctors and even Dimensions in Time, and the feelings that surface when a beloved Doctor's final innings doesn't quite measure up to the actor who gave it everything.

Production Details:

• Broadcast: BBC Radio 2, January 20 – February 24, 1996 (six half-hour episodes)

• Writer: Barry Letts | Director/Producer: Phil Clark (both returning from The Paradise of Death)

• Starring: Jon Pertwee (the Doctor), Elisabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane Smith), Nicholas Courtney (the Brigadier)

• Also Featuring: Richard Pierce (Jeremy Fitzoliver), Stephen Thorne (Max Vilmio), Sandra Dickinson (Maggie), Harry Towb (Mario), Deborah Berlin (Louisa)

• Music: Peter Howell of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop

• Timeline: Set in the TV era between Death to the Daleks and The Monster of Peladon

• Novelization: By Barry Letts, published 1995 (a year before broadcast)

• Significance: Jon Pertwee's final official BBC-sanctioned performance as the Doctor; he passed away May 20, 1996

• Cast Connections: Stephen Thorne (Azal in The Dæmons, Omega in The Three Doctors, Eldrad in The Hand of Fear), Harry Towb (The Seeds of Death, Terror of the Autons), and Sandra Dickinson (Trillian in the BBC's Hitchhiker's Guide, and Peter Davison's first wife)

Key Discussion Points:

• Why this is a follow-up, not a sequel, to The Paradise of Death

• The scheduling-error rerun that greenlit the whole production

• Pertwee and Courtney at their best (and the Brigadier's tactical showcase)

• The mishandling of Sarah Jane Smith's character

• The parade of grating supporting characters

• The strong central concept: ghosts given a science-fiction explanation

• The heavy Dark Shadows influence

• The surprising rough language and who the production was for

• Six episodes of padding and the challenge of exposition-by-narration on radio

• The weight of this being Pertwee's final bow as the Doctor

Coming Up Next:

Saturday (Main Feed): The 1996 TV Movie—already available here on the Patreon feed.

Monday (Patreon Exclusive 187): Jim finally gets his Oompa theme, the Memory TARDIS, and the comics "Uninvited Guest," "Victims," and "The Lunar Stranger."

Friday (Patreon): Steven Moffat's very first Doctor Who script—the Comic Relief spoof The Curse of Fatal Death. A lighter, funnier one, for a change.

Hashtags:

#DoctorWho #ThirdDoctor #JonPertwee #SarahJaneSmith #Brigadier #BBCRadio #WildernessYears #TheGhostsOfNSpace #DoctorWhoPodcast