'Doctor Who: Ghost Light' (1989)

I'm not too keen on those old Doctor Who stories that are only three episodes long, mostly because I love 'classic' Doctor Who and just want the stories to keep going really. There's nothing worse (okay, there clearly is but you know what I mean...) than really getting into a story, only to find that you get onto episode three and suddenly everything's done and dusted. Sometimes, it's good to have a 'three episode story' on standby though. Like when you really want to do a 'Doctor Who' post but you've spent the whole day watching trash and there's hardly any day left to watch what you should have been watching the whole time. That was me yesterday and yes, one of the films I watched was 'Cabin Fever 2'... What? It was one of those days...

But anyway... 'Ghost Light' had been sat on my shelf for ages, almost like it was waiting for this moment, so I watched it :o)

London, 1983: an old house mysteriously burns to the ground. One hundred years earlier, the Doctor and Ace arrive at a sinister mansion in the rural hamlet of Perivale. Horrors old and new await the Doctor amongst the peculiar residents of Gabriel Chase, but it is Ace who must confront her own worst nightmares when she discovers that her past and the house’s future are inextricably linked.

Whereas other incarnations of the Doctor seem to have things happen to them (they'll turn up in the middle of something and have to sort it out), one of the things that I'm growing to love about the Seventh Doctor is that he already knows what the problem is (and where it is) and will head straight to it, knowing roughly what he needs to do. We've seen him do it in 'Remembrance of the Daleks', 'The Curse of Fenric' and 'The Happiness Patrol'; now he's doing more of the same in 'Ghost Light' (thanks to Ace). What makes it even more entertaining is that there is just a little too much going on for the Doctor to be able to handle; every time the Doctor focusses on one thing, two things happen elsewhere and he is constantly on the back foot trying to hold everything down. Everything evolves and not even a Time Lord can keep up with all the ramifications. This makes for a story that I found a little difficult to follow at times but was still easily caught up in the frantic pace and the feeling that there high stakes to play for, even if you couldn't see them right away. This is 'Doctor Who' partly as a detective story but also as a neat little slice of Gothic horror with the dark atmosphere of the house itself and the fates of certain people who step inside. I always thought that Gothic horror was a bit more of a 'slow burner' but it's not here and it works very well I thought. I wasn't too sure about the character 'Light' (who I thought didn't really bring anything new to the plot, I've seen a few aliens 'cataloguing life' in my time) but he ended up really adding to the weirdness of the house so it ended up being an approach that worked out.

It's also interesting to see Ace become more of a pivotal player in stories like this where her past (or future...) experiences set the Doctor off on a path to trouble. We find out exactly why this is in 'The Curse of Fenric' but in the meantime, it makes for an interesting new Doctor/Companion dynamic now I think of it. While other Doctors like to show off a bit to their companions, the Seventh Doctor really seems to listen to what Ace says and this drives him to right some pretty big wrongs on their travels. Again, this all gets explained later but it makes for a nice change to watch in the meantime.

'Ghost Light' is very much a 'blink and miss something important, like the ending...' kind of episode but once you get into it, there's a lot going on that will reward a little patient watching. It's a far better episode than I remember it being first time round.