Ghost Light

Don't eat the soup.

The Seventh Doctor era is one that divides a lot of people. Some love it, some hate it and some are indifferent. In the whole canon of the Seventh Doctor, it is Ghost Light that seems to be the grand touchstone. In all the reading I've done, I don't know that I've ever seen an opinion where it was just treated as another story. It is either a story that people love or one that they despise.

For me, this story is more of an unfulfilled potential. In many ways, it's a lot like The Curse of Fenric. It is a story where there is a deep and interesting plot, good acting and reasonable production values but time and money forced the show to cut out key pieces of the story. The big difference between Ghost Light and Fenric though was that Ghost Light is edited in such as way that the overall story is still somewhat coherent. You didn't come in on the middle of conversations and nearly everything that wasn't necessary to understanding the overarching plot was removed. There are still holes, but they are smaller relative to the overall story.

However, despite the improvements in editing, this story had a bit of a let down. Episodes one and two had very good build up. They were witty and sharp with just enough confusion to whet the appetite to know how things finished up. The sound was better too so I wasn't losing bits of the conversation like I was in Fenric (although to be safe, I turned on the subtitles). But then came episode three and Light.

Light drew the focus on himself as a secondary villain who was trying to be the main villain. Worse, while Josiah carried himself with an air of menace and relative competence, Light came across as a powerful dimwit. It is one thing to be frustrated by change, but it seemed like the very concept of change was beyond him. His dismembering the maid and reducing the Inspector to his base elements seemed like a gruesome tack on to make him seem more menacing and powerful than he actually was. His dissipation at the end also seemed like a giant temper tantrum rather than an act of malevolence gone wrong. The story would have been better served to have Light be more of a neutral, focused on observation rather than malevolence.

It would have been nice to get a line or two of why Josiah wanted to assassinate Queen Victoria. This goal was hinted at through episodes one and two, but a line about why he desired this would have been nice. One can assume that Josiah was drawing on the power of Light's ship while keeping Light subdued to accomplish his goals. His own use of reverse evolutionary forces was also an interesting use of Light's power, which added to my frustration over Light's confusion on the nature of change. How does Josiah harness the power of Light's ship to accomplish acts which Light himself does not comprehend?

So again, this episode is more about unrealized potential. That being said, I wouldn't mind watching it a second time. There is a real nuance about this episode and a depth of performance that is somewhat lacking in other stories. I think it also helped that I saw this one after Fenric, which was it's intended order rather than broadcast order. Ace's relationship with the Doctor is much improved and there is more trust between the two than we shown in The Curse of Fenric. I'll be curious which end of the spectrum is more apparent when I get to Survival, which while shown last, was supposed to be a bridge between these two.

Overall personal score: 2.5 out of 5