The God of Phantoms

Philip Hinchcliffe Presents #4

Released: 19 August 2021

Listened: 3/28/22

This one is huge, long even for a six-parter, and there’s a lot going on. There’s a planet with a bunch of Earth colonists, but instead of living as one civilization, there are multiple factions, some back-to-nature types, some more traditional, and some aggressive. One thing they all have in common is that they’ve regressed technologically, and while they’re aware of their ancestors’ tools, they can’t use them. So the battles are nasty, but not horrific. There’s also some rudiments of religion, with the villagers seeming to hold to a mild form of Christianity, and the commune-dwellers worshiping forest spirits and ghosts. And there’s a bunch of ghosts in this story, which are mostly treated as rather matter-of-fact. The Doctor is dismissive of ghosts as always, but he seems more on edge than usual in this story, and there’s a reason for that. Leela fits into the society better than she has in quite a few stories, although formal dancing eludes her. You’d think that would be enough to go on with, but as the story goes on, it gets more and more complex, getting involved in the Doctor’s personal history, and extending all the way to a war of the gods. Even though the story is quite long, seeming to have several different climaxes along with a lengthy coda, some parts of the backstory are still fuzzy, but Philip Hinchcliffe seems to like it that way. The secondary characters here are well-drawn, with differing agendas and motivations. Many of them have nuanced relationships to the Doctor and Leela, instead of the stubborn caricatures you often find in these stories. It’s a quality entry, although boy is it long.