Ghostlight

[JoeZhang]

So I'm staying at someone's house for a bit and I notice they have a copy of Ghost Light, so I put it and it's dire really really dire, the acting is particular awful with the guy playing light being mind-bogglingly awful.

All of the Who sites claim this is a wonderful story, what am I missing? is it a bag of crack?

 

[Brendan Moody]

"Ghost Light" is one of those wildly divisive stories- some people (myself included) think it's brilliant, others think it's incomprehensible crap.

 

[Starkers]

Chalk me up for incomprehensible crap I'm afraid. Last time I tried to watch it I couldn't even bear to watch the third episode.

Tis definitley a bit of a marmite story though

 

[Stevil2001]

It's brilliant incomprehensible crap.

Sylv puts in a truly awful performance at some points, though.

 

[26138]

Put me in the "WTF?!" crowd. As much as I love McCoy's Doctor - I can't figure out why people love this story. It's creepy - yes, but it's just different - and not in a good way like The Mind Robber.

 

[Starkers]

The Mind Robber makes more sense though...kinda!

 

[The Nth Doctor]

I love Ghost Light but I can understand why others don't like it. I'm not one to try to convince them otherwise.

 

[Iamnotspock]

I love Ghost Light but I can understand why others don't like it. I'm not one to try to convince them otherwise.

Same here. It's a truly bizzare story that would've benefited from having an extra episode, as I believe it was originally supposed to. At some point, a lot of things went missing from script to screen, although it has been discribed as "DW for the video age" - a story that has to be watched several times to be truly appreciated.
Most of the required elements of the story are there, if difficult to find, but the main thing that isn't explained is the exact nature of Light's experiment, i.e. how it works, which is key to the whole thing.
This story was clearly the result of Andrew Cartmel having watched, at many fans' suggestion, several of the Tom Baker/Philip Hinchcliffe era stories, and is a return to the gothic horror of that era. I could easily hear Tom Baker saying many of McCoy's lines in this serial. McCoy's performance vears from truly terrible to some of his best work on the series, IMHO. Sylvester McCoy was good at the quieter, contemplative moments but completely inept at anger/outrage. His confrontation with Light in part 3 is embarrassing, but (partly) in his defense there was apparently some special effect that was dropped from that sequence, so when he's clenching his fist and screwing up his face, he's actually having some kind of psychic battle with Light.

 

[Phillip Culley]

Ghost Light looks absolutely stunning.

It's just a shame the story is a load of twaddle...

 

[Kelso]

I liked it.

 

[EJA]

Boring and confusing. I had it on DVD once, but I think I only watched it all the way through once before I sold it.

 

[DWF]

I rather liked Ghostlight, it was something of a throwback to the gothic horror stories of the Hinchcliffe era. And I even have the soundtrack.