Doctor Who, "Ghost Light"

[holli]

srevans came over last night for Who. We watched my very first Seventh Doctor serial, "Ghost Light," which, uh. Was different. Maybe it was that were were watching on a laptop, so that it was hard to hear what everyone was saying, but 90% of this serial made NO SENSE. The Doctor and Ace landed in a Victorian manor, where the housekeeper and staff were... robots? or something? and keeping something locked in the cellar, and there was a clergyman there to yell at Josiah, the guy in charge, about evolution for some reason, and also the manservant was a Neanderthal. I don't even know. There was a crazed Victorian adventurer wandering around. The guy in charge had a niece who at first seemed to have been duped by her "uncle" and later turned out to be evil. And then Elderly David Bowie (Who Glows) turned up. It was very confusing.

From what I could piece together, the plot works like this: a spaceship that had been cataloguing all life on Earth crashed at the house, and its crew usurped the places of the people who belonged in the house, hypnotizing some of them and killing others. Josiah kept another crewman locked up with Elderly David Bowie (Who Glows) on the ship. His Evil Plan was to use the adventurer's invitation to meet Queen Victoria, kill the queen, and take over the British Empire. The Doctor and Ace wandered into the middle of this and freed Elderly David Bowie. This proved to be a mistake, because Bowie was pissed that life on Earth had evolved after he went to all the trouble of cataloging it. Then some stuff happened? And Ace was upset because in the future, she snuck into the house and burned it down.

Basically, it was kind of a mess. The pacing was really weird, there was some after-school special stuff going on with Making Ace Face Her Fears, and everything was really confusing. But there were some nice moments between Ace and the Doctor, some bits where Ace gets to be a badass, and some really great outfits-- I wish I had the sewing skills to cosplay the blue-and-white dress Ace wears for Part 3.

Comments

[liviapenn]

The actors do actually explain a bit more in the commentary-- it's pretty funny the way they do it. "You know, I remember when I read the script, was afraid this would be confusing, but now that I watch, it's really pretty clear that Control is blah blah blah and the hunter guy is locked up because etc. etc." and I'm like "Nooooooo."

I think because this was the last (or second to last?) Seven & Ace adventure that was filmed, they thought it would be longer and then it got cut to a three-parter? Maybe. I could be making that up.

[holli]

Yeah, the Wikipedia page says that a bunch of stuff had to be cut. Presumably they lost the bits that made the rest make sense.

[liviapenn]

Yeah. And like you were saying, the sound is terrible. Maaaaybe if there were subtitles, it would be less confusing. But nooo.