Ghost light (1989)

Review
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Review

This is a three-part serial, first broadcast between 4th - 18th October 1989. A brief and somewhat spoiler-ish summary of the plot: the Doctor and Ace travel back in time to a haunted house where an alien learns about evolution and Ace meets some ghosts from her past.

It's impossible to discuss this story without spoilers, I'll start with the bits that I can discuss without spoilers.

The good bits:

it's an intriguing story that gets better with repeated viewing
Ace is good in this, and the Doctor is outstanding. There's a very strong supporting cast
it's a Victorian period piece, and the BBC is even doing a better job than usual
the visuals are fantastic. The direction and the lighting are terrific
there's a great deal of excellent dialogue
the incidental score is great

The potentially less good bits:

you may have to watch this serial more than once to get a grip on what's going on
you may not be rewarded for your efforts, since I'm not convinced that the plot entirely makes sense

When watching this story, there's one piece of advice I can give you:

keep your eyes on Ace. She's as much of an audience stand-in as you're going to get in this story
you'll need to pay attention, though. She figures things out for herself rather than have the Doctor spoon-feed her information

Right. On to the spoilers.

What's going on - as far as I understand it: there's a spaceship in the mansion's basement. Apparently it has got there by the power of thought, and it can enter and leave without tearing down the entire building. The spaceship has three passengers: Light, a surveyor who's cataloguing the earth's life-forms, and two of his agents. Light sends one of these out into the world to evolve into the planet's dominant life-form, while the other, called Control, is kept inside the spaceship for comparison purposes. In the serial we meet one of the agents as Josiah, the master of the house - as it turns out he's killed the house's owner or, as it's called in this story, 'sent him to Java', and he's brainwashed the real owner's wife and daughter. We first see the other agent, Control, as a madwoman who's being kept locked-up in the basement.

One problem that I have with this story, is that Light's experiment seems to make no sense. The puzzling bits:

we're told that Light can't deal with the concept of change. And yet, his experimental set-up with Control and whatever-the-other-one's-called is designed to monitor change, sending one agent out into the world to evolve, while Control remains isolated for comparison purposes. Huh?
Control is never really isolated. She is in the same house as the other agent, breathes the same air, is subjected to the same gravitational forces, is being fed the same food and even gets the local newspaper delivered to her door. (How she ever learned to read or developed an interest in current events is anyone's guess.) Why does Light assume that none of this would cause any change in her? In fact we do see her change, as being locked-up is driving her as mad as a hatter and she decides she wants out
why does Control evolve into a normal-looking human in only a few hours, and why does she already look fairly human right after her escape from the spaceship, while the other agent apparently spent years going through a sequence of non-humanoid evolutionary stages before turning into a passable human?
why do these non-humanoid evolutionary stages include insects and other creatures that aren't part of man's actual ancestry?
what's the point, anyway? What does Light expect to learn from the experiment?

And, while I'm at it, I might as well get another puzzling bit out of the way:

during the daytime, the house is staffed by servants who seem friendly and fairly sane, and who all take care to leave the house before nightfall. Just who are these people, what is their relationship to the entities that have taken over the house, and why do they keep coming back in the mornings in spite of their fears?

My other problem with the serial is that Light and Control work as ideas, but not as characters. I'm not sure whether it's the script, the acting, the costume and make-up or a combination of these that's to blame. Maybe it's just that these characters are impossible to do believably even if you do get everything right. Then again, there's a Neanderthal butler who actually works as an interesting character with several poignant moments, which goes pretty much against all odds.

My verdict:

Brilliant!

Another tough call. On the one hand, I'm not quite sure that this serial succeeds at what it's trying to do. On the other hand it has a great deal going for it, and it does show how different and off-the-beaten-track Doctor Who can be. Even though I didn't love this serial right from the start, it's been growing on me.

More about Doctor Who

An introduction:
Doctor Who reviews: introduction

More "brilliant!" Doctor Who:
Doctor Who reviews: brilliant!

More from the Sylvester McCoy years:
Doctor Who reviews: 1987 - 1989

Similar stories:
Doctor Who reviews: genre benders

Original version of this review:
06/10/02

More about this serial

Episode guides:
BBC Cult

Serial reviews:
Behind the sofa
Outpost Gallifrey

DVD reviews:
Outpost Gallifrey

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