Doctor Who (TV Series) Ghost Light: Part One (1989) User Reviews

Intriguing opening episode.

[poolandrews · 7/10 · 11 May 2008]

Doctor Who: Ghost Light: Part One starts as the TARDIS materialises in a laboratory in a mysterious Victorian house called Gabriel Chase in 1883, the Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) & his companion Ace (Sophie Aldred) begin to explore their surroundings. Meanwhile the housekeeper Mrs. Grose (Brenda Kempner) lets in Reverend Ernest Matthews (John Nettleton) who is there to see the man & owner of the house Josiah Smith (Ian Hogg), he is told to wait as Mrs. Grose & the rest of the day servants hurriedly leave house & lock the door behind themselves. The Doctor & Ace find a snuff box with the initials R.F.C. engraved on it on the floor in the hallway which turns out to be highly radioactive, then a big game hunter appears & claim to be looking for fellow hunter Redvers Fenn-Cooper (Michael Cochrane) but when he sees a reflection of himself in a window he recognises himself as Cooper. The owner Josiah & his Neanderthal butler Nimrod (Carl Forgione) show up, the mystery deepens by the minute as the Doctor is convinced something alien & very evil is going on...

Episode 5 from season 26 this Doctor Who adventure originally aired here in the UK during October 1989 Ghost Light was the second story from Sylvester McCoy's third & final season playing the Doctor & one has to say this is a pretty good opening episode as long as you can keep up with it although I am not sure I will ever regard it as a classic. The one & only script for the classic series by self confessed fan Marc Platt whose first story idea submission for the series came as early as 1976 & originally had the working title Life-Cycle the opening episode of Ghost Light is all about mystery & ambiguity as there are lots of things going on but your not quite sure what's behind them or how they are connected. The one thing that is noticeable is that the Doctor seems a little bit callous & malicious here, it transpires that Ace has already been to the house in her future a century later in 1983 & burnt it down because she was so scared of the place & felt great evil there. Maybe the Doctor thought it would be therapeutic? There's some heartfelt dialogue between the Doctor & Ace as she confesses racists firebombed her best friend Manisha's flat that wouldn't feel that out of place in the new series. Evolution as well as facing & dealing with ones fears are the central concepts behind Ghost Light so far, most of this episode is exposition that will hopefully come together & mean something across the following two remaining episodes.

Although broadcast as the second story during season twenty six Ghost Light was actually the last Doctor Who serial to be filmed by the BBC in the UK during the twentieth century until Rose (2005) over fifteen years later. Set in Victorian times the BBC have always been great at knocking out period English drama so the production design is really good with a very detailed & convincing Victorian house sets, costumes & props. Shot entirely in the studio the exterior shot of the house Gabriel Chase were filmed during the location work for Survival (1989). Most Doctor Who stories have a monster or two & Ghost Light is no exception, here we get reptilian (in the mask which looks like Omega's seen in Arc of Infinity (1984) & insect (a giant Mantis head) like creatures dressed in suits who are usually locked away in the basement.

Ghost Light: Part One is fine, having just watched it I can't actually say it is lingering in my memory but I liked it & at only twenty five minutes in length it's worth watching.

Ghost Light: Part One

[Prismark10 · 8/10 · 26 May 2023]

It's the haunted house story and a very atmospheric once.

The Doctor and Peri in a Gothic mansion called Gabriel Chase in 1883. The same house Ace would burn down in 1983.

What was about this house that so upset Peri. She always said that she did not like big scary houses. That was the impetus for the visit.

The Doctor finds out that the owner Josiah Smith (Ian Hogg) his housekeeper Mrs Pritchard (Sylvia Syms) are up to no good.

There is a manservant called Nimrod who is a neanderthal. An explorer and hunter Redvers Fenn-Cooper who has gone mad. The Reverend Ernest Matthews who wants words with Smith over his support for theories on evolution.

Writer Marc Platt has really gone for creepiness. The Gothic look means that for a BBC studios production, it is dark and sinister.

The opening episode is another high for the McCoy era. To some Ghost Light albeit confusing, is regarded as one of the best seventh Doctor stories.

Ghosts of Ideas

[A_Kind_Of_CineMagic · 8/10 · 18 March 2020]

Review of all 3 episodes:

Ideas from script editor Andrew Cartmel were meant to form this story and reveal dark pre-history of the Doctor from times before the First Doctor that viewers knew. These ideas were dropped as Showrunner John Nathan Turner apparently felt it was 'revealing too much too soon' and wanted to drag the storyline out much longer. However, the show was already threatened with cancellation so this tactic was actually leaving the story to be explored in an unknown, uncertain future. Sure enough the show was taken off the air for many years and the ideas of pre First Doctor dark history would be left for novels/spin offs and unexplored in the TV show until 2020 when Chris Chibnall created his version of the idea.

Ghost Light was written by Marc Platt starting with some ideas from the previously planned story but changing it completely. The result is a muddled and confusing story but it does have an enjoyably dark and sinister atmosphere and some good elements. Instead of the Doctor's dark past we explore Ace's dark past and the best part of the story is the psychological aspect of Ace's past trauma and how it links into the story set 100 years before her experience in a derelict mansion. Here we see the mansion in the 1880s with very strange goings on and aliens in the cellar.

The creepy atmosphere, Ace's unease as she starts to feel an evil presence and the intriguing set-up of the mysterious residents in the first episode is the strongest part. It already feels slightly muddled but is a really solid, interesting episode. The second part starts to get more muddled and strange but still maintains some great threads of interest about Ace's involvement and the mystery of the house and some great gothic horror stuff. Part 3 turns into a rather camp, bizarre and confusing mish mash of ideas that are not fully formed with a villain who is quite ridiculous. It still has some good, enjoyable horror feel and strong scenes, mainly the climax of the story thread of Ace's past trauma in the house. Sophie Aldred is great and some of the guest cast are good too but it is all rather bonkers and there are some over the top performances, particularly from the silly, unconvincing bad guy.

Rather jumbled but atmospheric and interesting serial overall.

My ratings: Part 1 - 8/10, Part 2 - 8/10, Part 3 - 7.5/10. Overall - 7.83/10

Gothic horror at its best.

[Sleepin_Dragon · 10/10 · 1 February 2020]

Ghostlight opens up with The TARDIS landing inside Gabriel Chase, it's 1883, a hundred years before the grand house burnt down.

I can see why this story could be seen as Marmite to some, it is one I particularly love. Part one has an incredible sense of atmosphere, which is sinister and unnerving. For several years we had some quite brash sci fi, this was a return to subtlety, everything in this first part is measured and restrained. The menace is hinted at, with servants desperate to leave, and cameras hidden in the eyes of a stuffed emu.

The visuals are sublime, The BBC has its faults, but when it comes to historical dramas, nobody does it better. Sylvester and Sophie are at their very best, one of the best Doctor/companion duos of all time, so easy in each other's presence. The writing is fabulous, deep, mysterious and intriguing, Marc Platt truly delivered.

Michael Cochrane is a delight as Redvers Fenn-Cooper, Sylvia Syms is terrifying as the Stern faced Housekeeper.

Fabulous 10/10

Gothic Who

[timdalton007 · 10/10 · 26 February 2017]

(Note: A review of all three episodes.)

Ghost Light.

Mention just the title to fans of Classic Who and you're likely to elicit a series of responses. For some, it's a compelling piece of work full of atmosphere and good dialogue. For others, it's a baffling mess of ideas string together across three episodes. For me, I fall into the former category rather than the latter. Why? Because Ghost Light might be the most deceptively complex Doctor Who stories ever made.

On one level, Ghost Light is an alien invasion story masquerading as a Gothic ghost story. All the elements for a Gothic tale are here: large spooky house, a strange and dominating male figure, a seemingly innocent young female, a menacing housekeeper, guests who are not what they seem, and family secrets all come into play. What makes Ghost Light unique is what writer Marc Platt and script editor Andrew Cartmel do with them by turning some of the tropes on their head (Gwendoline becomes both victim and villain for example) and by turning it not into a ghost story but into a tale of alien invasion that is largely contained to this one house. In fact, it might well be considered more in the vain of the Gothic genre than many of the tales from the era more than a decade before that is more generally associated with Doctor Who and that genre.

On another level, it's a tale about Victorian naturalists and evolution. Light in his way is a Victorian naturalist, cataloging different species and eventually coming to feel overwhelmed by what he's encountering (becoming a kind of conservative who wants everything to stay the same). Control and Josiah are evolution and science at work: Contol being the experimental control who stays aboard and never changes while Josiah is a creature that goes out and adapts to the environment around him. Evolution plays a major role in the story, both in terms of dialogue but also in plot.

Speaking of dialogue, Platt's script bristles with references and wit. There's the occasional reference to the series' past with a brief reference to The Talons of Weng-Chiang and the works of Douglas Adams. There's literary references ranging from Henry James to George Bernard Shaw, and even pop culture references such as the Beatles. Platt also pokes fun at Victorian culture with characters such as the anti-evolutionary Reverend Matthews and a reference to one of the real-life examples of evolution pointed to in the era the story is set. The wit is on play as well with some wonderful one- liners that, along with the aforementioned references, makes this one of the most literary and humorous tales the series has ever produced.

Yet for all of that, it never loses sight of its characters. By both design and accident of scheduling, this was to become the first in a series of stories that developed the character of Ace and, indeed, in three episodes Ace got more character development than some companions had in multiple seasons just a few years before. Yet the Doctor is never too far away with Sylvester McCoy's Seventh Doctor firing on all cylinders playing master chess-player and unknowing clown, depending on whichever suits him. Outside of the TARDIS crew, all of the characters here are richly drawn and superbly brought to life from Ian Hogg as Josiah, Sylvia Syms as the housekeeper Mrs Pritchard, and Michael Cochrane as Redvers Fenn- Cooper. It's a richly written tale, brought to life superbly.

All that being said, I stand by what I said in my review of Platt's own novelization in 2011: Ghost Light works better as a novel than it does on-screen. What it needs, as my best friend said when we recently sat down and watched this, is a scene where Ace (or really anyone) sits the Doctor down and says "What is going on here?" Outside of that, it needs what Platt was able to do in the novel: have space for the story to breathe and be fully told. Perhaps if it had been an episode longer and hadn't needed to be cut down as much (the DVD features nearly a full episode's worth of deleted scenes) it would be a clearer tale. That said, the idea that the story is a baffling mess is unfounded as there are plenty of context clues and references made for viewers to follow the story, if not always totally understand why something is happening.

In the end, Ghost Light is far from your typical Doctor Who tale. It's a layered tale, full of incident and references that make it among the most literary tales the series has ever produced on screen. It's a story that shows that, even in the last days of its original run, the series still had legs to run with. Or, to put in another way, it was still evolving...

The Light returns to Doctor Who

[Silhouetters69 · 9/10 · 17 June 2020]

Further proof of the magic that finally returned to Doctor Who after a long battle with mediocrity through most of the late 70s and early 80s. Seasons 25 and 26 introduced some of the most complex concepts of all of Classic Who with hardly a fault (save for large chunks of Silver Nemesis).

Ghost Light is a complicated beast, put succinctly in Martin Day, Keith Topping and Paul Cornell's The Discontinuity Guide '...in order to appreciate fully what's going on it is probably necessary to watch Ghost Light two or three times.' This is true to some degree, but there is more than enough to garner from the story on first viewing. This is a story that competently tackles a myriad of ideas and even interpretations of the Doctor Who mythos, something that almost NEVER works in the classic series. Ideas such as "Light" and "Control" being real, physical beings that can interact and exist to us is handled incredibly well, focusing these characters into depictions of Victorian values that, up until this point in the show, weren't as thoroughly demolished through criticism and light scepticism of their ideals and standards (something the modern show has excelled at, as of late).

The relatively short serial tackles a really interesting combination of metaphor-as-narrative storytelling and the darker, but still light and bubbly tone of the McCoy era, which fold onto each other in ways that don't often get presented in the show, let alone most shows.

The continuation of Season 26's ethos of "develop Ace more with each episode" isn't as strong as in the next serial (it's hard to compare anything with The Curse of Fenric, so it's hardly an issue), but there are further glimpses of Ace's clear flaws in an almost setting up of an arc to be followed through and completed in the final two serials.

McCoy's Doctor does exude an air of omniscience in this story, although more towards the final moments, which aligns with the unused ideas of The Doctor's God-like abilities being fleshed out for the unmade Season 27, but in this case this image of the doctor as the manipulator and the all-knowing all-seeing force of nature works into the favour of the serial, as if the overall story is punctuated by Gods and humans, the former battling it out for control, and the latter trying to simply get out alive, back into the light.

Just a Mess

[bookstore451 · 1/10 · 25 May 2012]

I like convoluted plots. "Convoluted," not disjointed, impenetrable, and impossible to rationalize, all of which describe "Ghost Light." Cheesy monsters with grand plans to destroy/take over the Earth are a staple of Doctor Who, but the motive for this story's monster makes absolutely no sense when considered in combination with its intelligence and level of scientific advancement. Why do the antagonists fight each other in one scene and then have a formal dinner party in the next? Why does no one wonder what the Doctor and Ace are doing running around a private home? What was with the snuffbox? The whole thing's a mess.

I kept rewinding and watching scenes again and again, figuring I must have missed something. Other reviews have said that the DVD extras make things more clear. That's sad. Who would want to subject themselves to more of this nonsensical story? I didn't.

This was the first time I've ever watched a Doctor Who DVD without watching the extras. If you need a commentary to explain what's happening and why, your script is a failure.

The lines whispered by Control through the door are impossible to hear. If you're going to have an actress hiss and slur her lines, don't have her also use made-up words. "Free-ness?" That would have been fine if you could have heard what she was saying underneath all the clanging music, otherwise, use "freedom," and give the viewer a chance. I'm not used to needing subtitles in an English television show. (Glaswegian accents excepted.

As always in the McCoy era, the theme and opening titles are a joke. The music has been sapped of its urgency, and somehow the enormous technological advances since 1963 resulted in amateurish-looking graphics in 1989.