7.10: Ghost Light

In which I am baffled but intrigued.

Broadcast: October 1989

Watched: February 2021

I have therapy first thing every Tuesday. Might spend the whole thing talking about Ghost Light just to mess with him.

Anyway.

Ghost Light, Part One

“My roots are in this house, I’m as human as you are.” “Yes...”

I’ve never really got on with it. I know it’s great, people I trust say it is, and it looks amazing, but I feel slightly like I’m coming to it fresh.

Ace being annoyed at Doctor’s parking is brilliant. The way he’s obviously testing her from the start, and later turns out to have brought her to the site of a massive trauma, is creepy as hell.

Possibly even more creepy than the start, with dinner and a newspaper pulled under a door by an unseen creature. The coldness of Mrs Pritchard may be the creepiest thing in it, though. Also, no one questions the regulars’ presence, which is weird.

The explorer is fun, though it’s pretty obvious who he’s looking for. Nimrod is brilliant. The vicar is the most punchable person in the show in ages.

The cliffhanger, with Ace attacked by a fish and a lizard in dinner jackets, is about the most Doctor Who thing ever.

Ghost Light, Part Two

“This madhouse needs one more good going over.”

Is this hard to follow, all there but only sketched in, so you have to really concentrate, because it was cut heavily? Is it a stylistic choice? Is it the former leading to the latter? It’s sort of fascinating, hugely compelling, but at risk of heresy... I can see why it didn’t click with me in the past. It’s not something the show can or should do too often, I think, the audience maybe needs a bit more help?

Nonetheless, lots of brilliant stuff. The policeman in the drawer, and the scale of his appetite because he’s been in suspended animation for two years. The people under dust sheets. Gwendoline’s sudden sadness. The vicar turning into a monkey, the way the zoo song from part one is suddenly massively sinister. The house almost literally coming to life at the end.

The cliffhanger, the last to be recorded, is brilliant. “Light!” in every sense.

Ghost Light, Part Three

“Even I can’t play this many games at once.” 

Okay, to be fair the Doctor explains a lot more of the plot than I thought he did at the start of this. It still feels kind of sketched in – I’m not sure it’s a good idea to have a Doctor Who story you need to concentrate on this much, and think about this hard, to understand; even the really high concept bits of the new show haven’t gone near this sort of thing again (Heaven Sent is much, much more easily comprehensible to the causal viewer). But I can see why people love it, and it’s something I might actually return to to rewatch sooner rather than later because it feels like it deserves it.

The thought occurs that the NA version of the 7th Doctor, who is always plotting and always two moves ahead, is actually based on very few bits of the original text. Remembrance, obviously. Leaving himself clues in Battlefield (although you can debate whether this actually counts as him). The bit where he lies to Ace at the end of Fenric... and the way so much of what he’s been up to here has happened off stage. I think there’s a lot to work with – but also I don’t think the manipulative slightly shitty Doctor of the NAs, who pushes Ace away in Love War and gets his arse handed to him by Mel of all people in Head Games, was inevitable. The books could easily have gone another way. 

Anyway. It’s grown on me. I think I’ll rewatch it quite soon to see what I missed. I love that the Doctor and the villain sit down to a dinner party in the last episode, with literal primordial soup on the table. I love that the Doctor quotes Hitchhiker’s. Control is brilliant, the ending is brilliant, and Gwendoline and Mrs Pritchard remembering themselves and being turned to stone for their trouble is heartbreaking.

I’m not sure it completely works, it makes the audience try too hard. But blimey, anyone who thought Doctor Who had run out of steam in 1989, when the final story made was this, needs their head examined.

Bonus fact: A “ghost light” is one left on in a theatre to stop people falling over when they have to turn the proper lights on. Did not know that until just now.