A Ghost Story for Christmas (comic story)

A Ghost Story for Christmas

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A Ghost Story for Christmas was the two hundred and sixteenth comic strip published in Doctor Who Magazine by Panini Magazines and was written by Alan Barnes.

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It starred the Fifteenth Doctor, who is once again travelling alone, in another adventure evidently set before his travels with Belinda Chandra.

Plot

In a darkened room full of wired audio equipment, a ginger woman and a blond man listen closely to signals through a pair of headphones. They pick up a mysterious wheezing, groaning noise and wonder what it could be; in a dark corridor nearby, the Doctor's TARDIS lands and the Fifteenth Doctor emerges. He looks for the source of a distress signal and, using his sonic screwdriver to open a padlock, confirms his location immediately: BBC Television Centre. He meets the duo and quickly notices from the gaudy decorations that it is nearly Christmas in the late 1970s, and they are staging a lockout. He further notices, to his excitement, that they are ghost hunters from their complex bank of equipment.

The woman explains that for a week, the BBC studio crew have reported a dark and frightening presence that cannot be captured on camera, leading to unofficial strikes and walkouts which the management has tried to stop forcibly - they have now appeared to prove the ghost's existence. The Doctor nicknames them Fred and Daphne, but notes a third figure, nicknamed Shaggy, nearby. Suddenly, a large, fur-coated silhouette wearing skulls and wielding an axe appears and quickly smashes the few remaining lights and the ghost-hunting equipment. Lighting up the area with the sonic, the Doctor theorises that their devices caused great mental pain to the ghost, and that was the signal the TARDIS followed. The figure states that they must pay the price, and the Doctor tells them to run.

The trio escapes up some stairs into a studio set of a plush university study with a man sitting in an armchair, admiring a painting. He introduces himself as Eugene, a scriptwriter who has been working on the latest instalment of A Ghost Story for Christmas, unofficially titled The Woodcutter. His set is based on the author and scholar M. R. James's study at the University of Cambridge in 1912, where he used to read scary stories every Christmas Eve. Unlike other TV episodes, which were just based on James's stories, this one is also due to be based on his life. The Doctor remembers James from his eighth incarnation, but not the painting, noting that it includes two moons and a dying sun in the sky over a snowy woodland with mysteriously stopping footprints... as if something disappeared.

On cue, the giant figure of the hunter bursts onto the scene, but Eugene does not flinch. He explains that his great-great-uncle Ernest uncovered this painting for his collection, where it included the hunter figure in it alongside a warning: never display it in moonlight, lest the figure emerge. After spending his life savings on it, he tried to verify it with M. R. James, but he was laughed away, even though James stole the story for the plot of his work, The Mezzotint. Ernest died poor, but Eugene promises to use his show to correct the historical record, little realising that the studio lights would awaken the figure inside the painting. It claims that it wants food for its family, revealing glowing red eyes and sharp teeth. Eugene further explains that he promised to provide for the hunter and was spared his life, so he summoned the journalists, believing that nobody would miss them.

The Doctor realises that the frame does not include a painting but is an alien tourist's frozen snapshot of time. He admits that he does not know how it came to Earth but does not care, and reactivates the frame to capture the hunter once more. With the image now showing the figure menacing the set of James's study, the Doctor takes it with him, telling Eugene to actually read some M. R. James and heed his warnings. The two ghost hunters escape into the snowy night, and the Doctor dematerialises, with the BBC refusing to make another Christmas ghost story for decades to come.

Characters

• Fifteenth Doctor
• "Fred"
• "Daphne"
• "Shaggy"
• Eugene

Flashback

• Eighth Doctor
• Izzy Sinclair
• M. R. James
• Ernest

Worldbuilding

• The Doctor wears his brown checked coat and trousers with an orange jumper that he previously wore on Finetime.
• The ghost hunters utilise an ACR 99821 with toggle switches and attempt to record transmundane emanations. Their equipment was borrowed from Tomorrow's World.
• A Blankety Blank mug can be seen on a desk near some monitors in BBC Television Centre.
• Previous episodes of A Ghost Story for Christmas include The Stalls of Barchester, A Warning to the Curious, and Lost Hearts.

Notes

• The Doctor excitedly exclaims that "It's a lock-out!" to the ghost hunters, in reference to the BBC game show It's a Knockout, which was topical to the period.
• When the Doctor attempts to guess which set he is on, he mentions "TVC one-five", referencing the David Bowie song of the same name.

Original print details

(Publication with page count and closing captions)

• DWM 624: (6 pages): The End

Continuity

• The Third Doctor previously visited the BBC Television Centre in AUDIO: Terror of the Master ^[+]Loading...["Terror of the Master (audio story)"]. The Eighth Doctor also visited a parallel universe version of the facility in COMIC: TV Action! ^[+]Loading...["TV Action! (comic story)"].
• The only piece of ghost-hunting equipment that the Doctor can identify is an ACR 99821 with toggle switches; the Eleventh Doctor previously displayed a love of these in TV: Hide ^[+]Loading...["Hide (TV story)"].
• The Fifteenth Doctor also invoked the names of Scooby Doo characters in TV: Lux ^[+]Loading...["Lux (TV story)"], where he referred to himself as "Velma", and Belinda Chandra as "Fred".
• The Doctor briefly mistakes the studio set recreating M. R. James' study for Professor Chronotis' room, which he visited in PROSE: Shada ^[+]Loading...["Shada (short story)"], etc.