Doctor Who Ghost Ship by Keith Topping

This text is an excerpt from the Doctor Who novella Ghost Ship, written by Keith Topping and featuring the Fourth Doctor. The narrative finds the Doctor alone on the Queen Mary in October 1963, where he investigates a series of supernatural apparitions and a tragic death. He eventually discovers that a mad scientist named Peter Osbourne has created a device to trap and study psychic energy, effectively imprisoning the "souls" of the ship's past and future. Despite the Doctor's attempt to liberate these spirits by destroying the containment jar, he realizes that the distortions in time remain unresolved. The story concludes with a sense of melancholy failure as the Doctor witnesses the inevitable, gruesome death of a crewman he had befriended. Ultimately, the source explores themes of fate, the moral responsibilities of science, and the heavy burden of timelessness.