“Ghost Light” is an adventure of the twentysixth season of “Doctor Who” classic series which aired in 1989. It follows “Battlefield” and it’s a three parts adventure written by Marc Platt and directed by Alan Wareing.

The story

The Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) brings Ace (Sophie Aldred) to 1883, in a mansion in Perivale under the control of the mysterious Josiah Samuel Smith. The other residents have suffered various forms of brainwashing and include a Neanderthal butler.

Ace realizes that the residence is familiar to her, in fact in 1983 she visited it and felt a malevolent presence. While the Doctor comes into contact with the strange people who live in that isolated house, Ace goes to investigate in the basement, where she discovers the presence of even stranger creatures, one of which seems to be a prisoner.

Extras

This DVD contains a good amount of extras. There are typical contents such as production subtitles and a gallery of pictures from this adventure.

There are comments in the adventure alternative audio track by protagonist Sophie Aldred, writer Marc Platt, composer Mark Ayres and script editor Andrew Cartmel.

Light in Dark Places. A 38-minute documentary on the production of this adventure that focuses in particular on the complexity of the script.

Deleted and Extended Scenes. A selection of scenes partially or completely deleted from the final version retrieved from the initial editings recorded on videotape.

Shooting Ghosts. A look at the production of this adventure during a studio recording.

Writer’s Question Time. Writer Marc Platt answers questions from attendees at the Panopticon 1990 convention.

Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound mix. The option to listen to the soundtrack in the new Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround version created by Mark Ayres for the DVD.

Isolated Score. The option to listen to the music composed by Mark Ayres in an isolated audio track.

There are also two “Easter eggs”. One contains the full version of the song sung by Gwendoline in the course of the adventure, the other contains some BBC promos for the original broadcast.

Writer Marc Platt was a “Doctor Who” fan and starting from the ’70s had submitted some of his ideas to the program production. For various reasons, those ideas weren’t considered suitable at that time but they seemed promising. Finally, script editor Andrew Cartmel accepted one of Platt’s ideas, even though it had to be thoroughly revised in order to be accepted by producer John Nathan-Turner.

The idea developed in the script that became “Ghost Light” takes inspiration from various sources of the Victorian era or a little later so it’s almost inevitable that it reminds in some ways the adventures with elements of gothic horror typical of “Doctor Who” during the ’70s. The story takes place entirely within a house which is set in that era creating a really sinister atmosphere. In this way it becomes almost a stage play eliminating the problem of the low budget. The acting, high-level, also looks more like that of a stage play than a television production.

The screenplay written by Marc Platt is in some ways more sophisticated than those of the gothic horror period of the ’70s, so much that it created a reputation for being difficult to understand. In my opinion, the problem is that the first episode introduces a series of characters and story elements seemingly unrelated to each other and only in the second episode the audience start to see a common thread. In the third episode it’s finally explained who are the various inhabitants of the mansion and the reasons for their behavior.

Today we can watch “Ghost Light” all at once so we can quicky reach the third episode and understand the meaning of what we’ve seen half an hour earlier. The DVD also includes some extras that further clarify the various elements of the story. Watching this adventure in its original transmission, the audience spent a week wondering what they saw in the first episode and only after a further week they watched the third episode.

The reputation of the complexity of “Ghost Light” is therefore understandable. The basic theme of evolution and in particular the need to adapt or die in the end is clear, especially in contrast with ​​Victorian values. The story, however, doesn’t have a linea structure, with different elements developed in parallel around the basic theme, and perhaps there are too many characters.

In the classic “Doctor Who” show it often happened that an adventure was extended with various tricks because it didn’t have enough “substance”. “Ghost Light” is one of the few cases where maybe one more episode would’ve improved the story. Several minutes were cut during the editing so just some more scenes would’ve been needed to obtain another episode. Obviously this was impossible because the season was composed of a well-defined number of episodes so to add one to “Ghost Light” it would’ve been necessary to remove one from another adventure.

As if it wasn’t already complex enough, “Ghost Light” is also Ace’s story. In the classic “Doctor Who” series, companions generally were just assistants, instead, this adventure starts a trilogy that anticipates the new series because Ace’s role is much more important than in the past. Here you can see all the manipulator there is in the Seventh Doctor when he forces Ace to face her past in some way.

Despite its flaws, I think “Ghost Light” is overall a really good adventure. The DVD contains extras that are in general very interesting so I recommend buying it, if only to be able to make an opinion about one of the most unique and original “Doctor Who” adventures.