Alas, poor Ghost Light. The second of four adventures aired in the final season of Doctor Who, it was actually the last one filmed - making it the last BBC-produced Doctor Who to be made until the cameras began rolling on the new series earlier this year. Ghost Light has since been afforded something of a near-mythic status, hailed as a truly revolutionary turn in the show's storytelling style...while others still scratch their heads a bit and wonder what it's all about.

Which of these reactions is most apropos? Well, a bit of each. To be sure, it may well mark the pinnacle of Sylvester McCoy's portrayal of the Doctor, and Sophie Aldred's portrayal of Ace as well. It's hard to debate that - even The Curse Of Fenric didn't afford both of the principal players this much meaty material to work with. On the other hand, the multi-layered, densely-packed story roars along, just barely squeezing its story content into the time allotted - Ghost Light was a three-parter that was always meant to be a four-parter. The resulting edits ramp up the speed of the story to a breakneck pace, sometimes savaging continuity and story logic along the way.

Ghost Light's legendary cryptic nature is the heart of its bonus features, perhaps not surprisingly. It's a bit telling that so much of the commentary - provided by Sophie Aldred, writer Marc Platt, script editor Andrew Cartmel and music composer Mark Ayres - is given over to Platt explaining, almost narrating, what's happening on screen. With only three 25-minute episodes, we're already assured of a somewhat truncated commentary, and with so much of it spent on trying to lift the story out of cryptic obscurity, the end result is perhaps a bit unsatisfying. Far more satisfying is the Light In Dark Places featurette, which weighs in at half the full length of Ghost Light itself and provides a lot more of the behind-the-scenes dirt on the origins and making of the story. Additionally, the featurette includes and interviews several people who aren't in on the commentary, including Sylvester McCoy, Katharine Schlesinger, Ian Hogg, and several others. Even the featurette gets bogged down a bit, however, with discussions of how cryptic the story is. If anything, the poignancy of this being the last BBC-made Doctor Who for 15 years isn't addressed enough for my tastes in either the commentary or the featurettes.

A selection of deleted scenes and extensions to existing scenes is included, sourced from a VHS copy of the raw original edit, each scene prefaced by a humorous text intro placing it in some kind of context with the rest of the story. Another section of rough cut material gives some behind-the-scenes insights as well. And if you missed the now-long-out-of-print CD of Ghost Light's beguiling soundtrack, it is included in its entirety as an isolated music track. Mark Ayres has also treated all three episodes to a shiny new 5.1 surround mix, available as another optional audio track; if left on default settings, you'll hear Ghost Light's original stereo mix (in what was only Doctor Who's second season of mixing episodes in stereo).

As for the picture itself...for all of the praise I've lavished upon such DVD releases from this series as The Dalek Invasion Of Earth and The Aztecs, I'm afraid that - somewhat paradoxically - Ghost Light is a bit of a disappointment. According to the technical notes on the Doctor Who Restoration Team's web site, the low lighting conditions of Ghost Light, while atmospheric and realistic, doomed any attempt to salvage the video portion of the presentation. With the low lighting, there simply isn't that much detail available to bring out digitally. The result, sadly, is something of an "old video" look: details occasionally blur and color occasionally bleeds. At times, it looks more like video that was shot in 1979, not 1989.

Overall, it's an impressive package for one of the show's shorter adventures, though the show itself seems to be a little the worse for wear, perhaps - particularly when the bonus features spend so much time addressing the criticisms that have been leveled at Ghost Light for so long - in more ways than one.

Reviewed by Earl Green
theLogBook.com webmaster / editor-in-chief