Started 14-Apr
Young fan: Wait what was that? What does that mean?
Old Fan: It's Ghostlight. Don't ask...
We watched the enhanced/restored/extended version on the new BluRay set. All in one go...
It has several low res scenes with amusing blurred out timecode segments in the picture. New bits look interesting but don't necessarily add much to the story.
The story is studio bound. The action is non-existent. The drama is all talky-talky (unlike Battlefield).
The starting point for this is its reputation for extreme symbolism.
Everything in it is some kind of representation of something else
political, scientific or literary. There's obviously scientific method
(Josiah and Control) v. dogmatic received knowledge (Light and
Matthews). There's gender politics (Ace and Control v Gwendoline and
Mrs Pitchard, consider how each of these characters relates and reacts
to the 'order of the house'.). There's more about imperialism and
classificationism and plenty of bookish gear. Hell, there's even a dig
at the character of Doctor Who in Josiah Smith. (He's an empiricist
"know it all" who regenerates and so can handle the light and the modern
world as a result.)
Sylvester
and Sophie are pretty good in this. It has more than some subtlety and
sense. Ace is deliberately written WITHOUT asking the "what" and "why"
questions which is progress. Since series 24 this is a major turnaround.
Audiences
(I probably mean me) sometimes struggle to identify with the languid
Scotty bum and the cheeky young delinquent/vandal girl more than some
other DW crews (past and since) but they qualify as eccentric. And that
is the main requirement.
Other actors and the cast are impressive. There are no dud performers. The cast is well chosen.
But is it an actual story?
Snell said this:
"The bigger problem with Light is that, c'mon--he cataloged ichthyosaurs
AND Neanderthals (separated by some 90 million years), yet he doesn't
understand/can't handle evolution?!? That's risible. The microbes would
have been just as "evolving before his eyes" before he went to sleep. So
the fact that the Doctor is able to "Kirk" him into destroying himself
(could Light be a computer/android?) just feels, as is much of the story
in my opinion, like a failure on the literal level in order to make a
point on the allegorical level....
Ghost Light may be the most brilliant, insightful "coded" critique of
Britain/whatever, but if it neglects to do its job to actually tell a
story, in my eyes its an ambitious failure."
The thought that I have about this is that genetic
evolution is constantly in flux. If you consider each of the millions
of biological species as some kind of component of the biosphere of
course it changes constantly (and massively over time.)
But if you
look at the natural history of life as a complex of holes in an
ecosystem which are filled by differing versions of the same type of
creature, moderated by climatic conditions. Tyrannosauruses in
Cretaceous scrubland are replaced by lions and tigers in grassy
savannahs as alpha predators for instance. Looked at this way the
ecosystem is actually quite stable over a long period of time.
Coded allegory... needs
very brilliant
story telling or it ends up a confusing mess. On a late 80's DW 3
episode schedule/budget that is wa-a-ay too much to expect. This could turn into a
very good novel or a series long story arc but having to wrap up in 3
eps means quite a lot of ideas are neglected.
That it prompts such thoughtful analysis is a major achievement. But at what cost to the popularity with the audience?
ABM Rating 2.30/4.00
LJM Rating 3.51/5.00
SPJ Rating 5.55/10
No. 89 (out of 156)
Link to Cumulative Rankings
Rankings Scoreboard
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From Quickflix
This Dr Who has a reputation of being a bit dense and hard to follow.
It's hard not to disagree. But there's a few points perhaps that should
be considered.
It's actually allegory about the conflict between what Lord Ernest
Rutherford (a famous NZ physicist who discovered alpha particles) called
"stamp collecting" and what real scientific knowledge actually means.
Of course because it's Dr Who the consequences of "Light" failing to
realise this fairly elementary difference means the end of the world (at
least) and it's the Doctor's job to put a stop to it.
This is obviously a rather high aimed, philosophical topic which is well
over the heads of all but one in a million viewers but nonetheless is a
valid, hard SF theme and needs to be recognised as such.
As a piece of Dr Who, I think Ghostlight fails simply because the plot
isn't presently quite clearly enough and hence the criticisms of Paul G.
make some sense.
At some point if you're into Dr Who, you're likely to try this simply
because you will become a "complete-ist". When you do bear in mind that
there might be some higher meaning to the dramatic goings on.....
From http://siskoid.blogspot.com/2013/10/doctor-who-702-ghost-light-part-2.html
REVIEW: Here's how Ghost Light is opposing evolution and
creationism. The personified Light is undoubtedly God/creationism, and
is often off-handedly equated to Divinity. The light at the end of the
tunnel. Redvers seeing its face and going mad. Nimrod's god, the Burning
One. A literal reading of Genesis would make Earth an unchanging
ecosystem, where all the plants and animals were made whole and have not
since changed. The Reverend Matthews is its unknowing advocate, but
even he is transformed by other forces in the house, regressed to an
ape-like state as Josiah's joke. Josiah and Control, the two main
denizens of the house, represent the forces of evolution, though they
serve Light each in their own way. That isn't a contradiction. Light has
been made prisoner, after all, and both Josiah and Control fear Light,
perhaps out of guilt for their evolutionary sins. Though now that Josiah
has taken on a new body, one that doesn't fear daylight and doesn't
need dark glasses, that he as evolved into a Victorian gentleman, one
who might better embrace Darwinism and reject dogma, it'll be worth
seeing if Light has less influence over him.
Whether
Light/God/Orthodoxy wants to admit it or not, they're living in a
changing world. In the house, this manifests as dead bugs coming to life
in drawers (and a "bluebottle" policeman too, his prodigious eating as
much a symbol of all-consuming humanity pushing us "forward" as a joke
about his having slept for two years). But the outside world, too, is
changing. The Doctor's eco-message throw-away joke about the Amazon
desert is just such a reminder. But it's not just a physical change,
it's a social one as well. There's a very good reason to cast the male
Josiah against a female Control. The role of women is changing. Ace and
Gwendoline in boys' attire was the first shot across the bow, but female
Control climbing out of the cellar demanding her "freeness" is outright
war against the house's status quo, and so, against society. Ghost
Light then becomes a condemnation of the innate fascism of any system
that would seek to restrain social evolution in favor of a status quo,
one which in this case, has favored one gender over another (and more,
the inspector's various racist remarks speak to another flaw of the
Empire). While Josiah's plan hasn't been made known yet, we do see him
using a picture of Queen Victoria as target practice, the anomalous
woman-on-top in this Man's World. And of course, at the center of
things, Ace, a thoroughly modern woman who doesn't believe in gender
roles.
All of which is theory and doesn't get at the story as a
literal Doctor Who story. If I neglect that aspect of it, it's that
Ghost Light is so thought-provoking, I can't help but turn the review
into a bit of a literary essay. As a story, I like what it's doing too. I
feel for Gwendoline's loss of identity, crying over her absent parents
in her mother's presence it turns out (so don't tell me this isn't about
gender politics, the women here aren't allowed to follow their true
selves). McCoy is stellar as the Doctor, restrained, funny, and active. I
love the small touches like Ace sleeping away the day, bringing her
back to the spooky evening. Mad Redvers keeping himself prisoner though
his bonds have already been loosed by the Doctor. And being sent to Java
is an amazingly colorful metaphor for getting boxed. Great images.
Previewed 22-Apr 
