It's difficult to do justice to Ghost Light's reputation of complexity, but I shall try in just a few paragraphs. I'm slightly surprised to find its reputation as confusing, as to be honest, I've always thought it's an undeserved reputation.
Ghost Light probably suffers most from the fact that plot points in Doctor Who stories have been spoon fed information, whereas Ghost Light refuses to, more because of the edited version finally seen on screen. But for all those that say it is radical, there are all the elements everybody would expect of a typical Doctor Who story. There's a haunting atmosphere, some very scary moments (such as the creature coming out of the lift) and a collection of bizarre characters that inhabit this place. But what Ghost Light suffers from is a lack of time for the story to breathe, and the audience to reflect upon what they've just seen. All the information just is there, it's just a frenetic pace.
Onto the DVD itself, due to the dark lighting, the picture quality is quite grainy, although the picture quality isn't poor. The new Dolby Digital 5.1 remix is excellent, making the soundtrack really shine, though the mono is there for the purists.
The commentary comes from Aldred, Platt, Cartmel and Ayres and will probably make more of an impression on those that like technically minded commentaries rather than fun commentaries as there's a lot of production information. The biggest documentary is Light in Dark Places with some of the actors. It probably suffers from being slightly too long and lacking contributions from Platt and Alan Wareing. It's a good documentary though, and interesting to hear some of the contributor's memories.
The reason Platt didn't appear in the documentary is because of his nerves on camera. This comes across in his question time recorded at a convention. It's interesting to hear his thoughts on the story, but most of the information you'll learn from the commentary.
`Shooting Ghosts` is some behind the scenes footage. It will impress those of us who like this sort of thing, and shows the cast and crew having a good time on set along with Wareing's dedication. There's also an extended and deleted scenes package, which will disappoint those hoping that there's a missing scene which explains Ghost Light.
Aside from that, there's reasonably amusing production subtitles, an isolated music track, a photo gallery and two Easter Eggs. Ghost Light is an excellent story presented on a very reasonable disc and is welcome addition to DVD
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