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.

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) Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION Rating: NR Age: 794051221827 UPC: 794051221827 Manufacturer No: 

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Possibly the most densely-plotted Dr Who story ever written, virtually every word has some deeper meaning or significiance. The Doctor/Ace double-act was one of the strongest Doctor/companion teams ever in the series - what other Doctor would take his companion back in time to make her face her worst nightmare? In this case it's a Victorian mansion which will one day become the haunted house Ace entered as a teenager. The sets are lavish and look like they were made for a high-budget period drama, the music is superbly brooding and the dialogue is powerful. With its themes on evolution, its gritty realism and its well-written characters, this is up there with the best of the '70s Tom Baker and Jon Pertwee stories.

5 of 6 found the following review helpful:

Not really as creepy as it should be but...May 28, 2007
By Douglas Ratcliff "The face that looks out at you from the depths of your mirror"
It seems odd to me that I never saw this story during the PBS run so it is a real treat to buy and watch a Doctor Who DVD from the later years that I haven't seen.

The biggest critique for me is the music overwhelms the dialog at several points, same as in Fenric. But getting past that the story does suffer from not enough exposition of the bad guys. Often times, one deosn't require much exposition but just enough to know what they are.

I had no real idea of who or what Josiah was, I kind of got he was evolving from the reference to his husks. And Control, I thought Control was the ship's computer. Still, even with the confusion over the narrative, all the performances are fun to watch. Esp. Michael Cochrane as a confused explorer sort (no wonder he's confused, considering the story he's been written into).

I think the big thing that makes the story suffer is in 1989 they didn't have the special effects to make the Angel of Light creepy enough. What's here is fairly creepy but never quite reaches chilling except for in the deleted scenes.

I never really enjoyed Sophie Aldred as the street smart companion, as people who are street smart tend to annoy me, but in this story she is much better and she doesn't wear that horrid bomber jacket, I believe it has one scene and it is draped over a chair.

Sylvester McCoy, I always enjoy his performance. I think he's probably the best Doctor since Tom Baker. But again, in spite of his performance, there seems to be something missing of his character from this story.

I still think it is worth it for the Doctor Who fan (especially one who missed the original airing) but the casual fan may be left with cold feeling and probably rightly so.

7 of 9 found the following review helpful:

"Never mind. I'll have him completely bewildered by the time I'm finished."Sep 10, 2007
By Crazy Fox
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.

2 of 2 found the following review helpful:

The Doctor at his best!Dec 04, 2009
By R. Sundquist
GHOST LIGHT is amazing. Watch it once and you'll be befuddled. Watch it twice and you'll be astounded. At the very least it's one of the more complex stories they ever did, simply because they don't stop very often to explain what's going on. Ace was always a bit smarter than the average companion, and here she proves that she can work the plot out on her own without needing to constantly ask the Doctor what's up. Why do all the older companions need to be certifiable idiots? One effect of making Ace brighter is that they needed to make the Doctor smarter to show her up, and Sylvester McCoy is definitely up to the task. He's quiet and cunning and utterly cool.

We get an excellent guest cast. Most memorable for me is Michael Cochrane as Redvers Fenn-Cooper (James Fennimore-Cooper?), a great white hunter gone insane and skulking about a Victorian mansion. The mansion is eerie, populated by weird creatures and weirder humans, and some who aren't quite human. The music is a huge step up from the early-Eighties muzak, and contributes to the gloomy, spooky atmosphere.

Three aliens are living on Earth, in Perivale of all places. One plots to assassinate Queen Victoria while he keeps the other two locked away. One of them, "Control", breaks free and wants to become more human. The third, "Light", gets loose and threatens to freeze all life on the Earth to stop it evolving -- it turns out that these three were a survey team, but their insane, obsessive leader could not deal with all lifeforms on Earth constantly changing and evolving, so they ended up staying much longer than they'd planned. They have a Neandertal butler as well.

The story makes good use of the theory of evolution as well as Victorian anti-evolutionists. The result is a creepy and suspenseful little chamber-drama, the like of which DOCTOR WHO had never quite managed before -- although some episodes of the new series have come close.

1 of 1 found the following review helpful:

"Wicked!"Jun 08, 2011
By Connor
Much like the Curse of Fenric, this story is maligned on Amazon, yet it is such a well-done episode in many aspects, these negative reviews are rather revolting and surprising. Ghost Light is one of McCoy's best adventures from his strong final season alongside The Curse of Fenric, Survival, and Battlefield. It is a wonder Who stopped here- it was getting good!

The story is very complicated but is brilliant once you get it and it will take some time to get! Luckily, the DVD is perfect for viewing the story over and over again, and the commentary really helps along with the making of feature and the deleted scenes. The story revolves around the weird happenings at a Victorian Manse in Perivale called Gabriel Chase where evolution seems to be going faster and faster and something clearly wants that to stop. With a mirage of weird and wild characters, great sets and costumes (typical BBC), and an eerie score by Mark Ayres evoking Dracula-esque feelings, Ghost Light may be baffling but it is visually beautiful and viscerally appealing, not to mention so rewarding for those who finally figure out this interesting and fantastic story.

McCoy is once again great as this new, darker Doctor, and Aldred continues to impress as Ace, who is really put up center stage this episode and we learn a load about her past. Ian Hogg is great as Josiah, and the other guest actors, for the most part, do fantastic. The actor who plays Light is hammy and the story is a bit too rushed with no throwaway lines making it hard to keep up. Overall though, my complaints are few. The story is actually creepy and very dark.

It's odd Doctor Who left after Season 26 when the ante was yanked up with good production, good stories, and a new darker, more adult tone. Ghost Light is a great example of a shining late of late Who. The DVD is packed with fun features and is a must buy for fans and for those naysayers who claimed to be confused. Watch it again!

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