Doctor Who - Ghost Light (Episode 157) | Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred

Doctor Who - Ghost Light (Episode 157) | Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred | McCoy's best is still Who's Worst

DVDs:

Doctor Who - Ghost...

	Doctor Who - Ghost Light (Episode 157) Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred BBC Warner, 2005 average customer review:based on 32 reviews view larger image
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London, 1983. An old house mysteriously burns to the ground. One hundred years earlier, the Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) and Ace arrive at a sinister mansion, where they discover that Ace's past and the house's future are inextricably linked. (Episodes 1-3, 71 mins)

DVD Features:
Audio Commentary
Deleted Scenes
Extended takes
Featurette
Interviews
Music Only Track
Other
Production Notes

"Never mind. I'll have him completely bewildered by the time I'm finished."

One of the fun things about "Doctor Who" is you never know where or when you'll end up next. Right from the start, the show's basic premise delightfully freed writers from the constraining laws of time and space, and that's as true of "Ghost Light" as it was before and (thankfully now) since. The laws of basic storytelling are another matter entirely, however. Adaptable as they are in style and fashion, they remain ironclad and immutable in substance no matter whether it's 1969 or 1989, regardless of whether the Doctor finds himself gallivanting about right here on Earth or on a distant planet, in the forgotten past or the unforeseen future--or, as the case may be, rural England in 1883. The writer and (more importantly) the script editor of "Ghost Light" blithely ignore all this, I'm afraid, whether from sheer laziness or a misplaced sense of what constitutes cutting-edge creativity I'm not quite certain, though I suspect the latter. In any case, the storyline (if I may call it that) suffers as a result, and what might potentially have been a great Doctor Who adventure winds up instead an unsatisfying muddled mess, a rough draft masquerading as a finished product.

What makes this story so confusing? Lots of things, probably, but the key fault seems to be that the many different characters and their interrelationships are never clarified properly and so the overall significance of their words and actions remains almost utterly opaque to the viewer even as the final credits start rolling. Some mystery is good at the beginning, even preferable of course, but gradually the Doctor should unravel that mystery for himself (which he does, apparently) AND for the viewer, if by no other means then by the tried-and-true method of having him explain matters to the viewer's proxy, the Doctor's human traveling companion. Yes, borderline sexist or not, "Ghost Light" cries out like a banshee for one of those paternalistic moments when the companion looks confused and the Doctor kindly starts in "well, you see, Jo..." (or Ace, as the case may be)--these can be done quite well, too, actually, as we've already seen in another storyline from the McCoy era, "Remembrance of the Daleks", and that was for classic arch-enemies whom only the newest viewer would be unfamiliar with while all of the characters in our storyline here (quite a few at that, oh dear) are prior unknowns requiring some level of exposition at least. An attentive script editor would've made sure such exposition was forthcoming as well as probably advising against a dull defused climax in which the Doctor stops the obsessive-compulsive Light from wiping out all life on earth by basically just talking him out of it. Our hypothetical attentive script editor might also have taken our fledgling writer aside and kindly clued him in that assassinating Queen Victoria (as per Josiah's evil scheme) would not have ipso facto overthrown the British government: the royals have this whole bloodline succession thing so that when one dies another promptly fills the role, y'know, and anyway there's still the Prime Minister and Parliament and all.

So is "Ghost Light" a total flop? Not entirely. Perhaps its most redeeming feature is the set design and costuming. Leave it to the BBC to get this down to a tee, but everything is wonderfully authentic and historically accurate so that you do really feel like all this sound and fury signifying whatever is sure enough transpiring in the Victorian era. The controversy surrounding Darwin's theories of evolution and natural selection are part and parcel of this Victorian ambiance and yet are thoroughly integrated into the excuse for a plot in sophisticated and clever ways, most especially linking up with the inorganically alien Light's job stress and accompanying motivation to bring some stability and order to Earth's ever burgeoning profusion of lifeforms by wiping them all out (this by the way is probably one of the most uniquely weirdest and morbidly comical motivations for a "villain" in television history). Sylvester McCoy takes a befuddled script and makes the most of it, doing a fine job as the Doctor and still showing an immense talent for convincingly shifting from goofy to serious in a double-heartbeat in ways that almost send a chill down your spine. A perfect showcase for this occurs when Ace realizes the Doctor has kindly surprised her by taking her back to the past of a house that was her worst nightmare (kind of unsettling behavior on his part), and she asks him bitterly if there aren't things he hates: watch as he replies first with such silly offhand things as burnt toast and bus stations and then adds unrequited love, tyranny, and cruelty to the list with such utter conviction that it's like he's feeling these awful things deep down in his bones even as he utters them. A dramatically brilliant moment almost buried in the very undramatic and unbrilliant clutter around it.

Finally, "Ghost Light" is somewhat important in terms of the show's historical development as a whole, focusing much as it does on the character and the past of the Doctor's human traveling companion, Ace. This was quite rather unusual and unprecedented at the time and was remarked as such, whereas with "Doctor Who" today it's a definite and prominent aspect of the show's format, especially with Rose and her circle of family and friends. In hindsight we can see this storyline as a transitional one in that regard. That said, any attempt to therefore use it to get young fans of only the new series interested in classic Who would be sorely misguided and would doubtlessly backfire. No, this one's mainly for "Doctor Who" DVD collectors every bit as obsessively completist as the Light and of course for diehard fans (such as myself, admittedly) who love this show even when it totally drops the ball.

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McCoy's best is still Who's Worst

I am an unabashed Who lover and as big a McCoy hater. I just never appreciated him in the role, as his portrayal of the Doctor seemed to be talking down to the viwer and his quirky pronunciation and innunciation drove me nuts. THIS episode however is one of his better ones, and is highly watchable. He seems much more restrained. This may likely be due to the director of the episode who it seems kept him on a tighter leash. It is actually a pretty fun episode, though I can't help but wonder how much better this one would have been with another of the Doctors

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

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