Saturday, December 13, 2014

Target: Ghost Light

As is widely known, the screen version was heavily cut down to fit 3 episodes - some say to the point of incomprehensibility - and the Target retains much of the original material. I won't note every single example of an expanded conversation, concentrating instead on memorable bits from the novelisation which a new viewer might be surprised to find omitted on screen. That, after all, was the original purpose of these comparisons.

We join Ace shortly after the 'white kids firebombed it' incident, kicking open a door in the garden wall of an old house. In the overgrown garden she finds a stone lion

She briefly thought of childishly pencilling a pair of spectacles across the beast's stone face, but dismissed the idea as kids' book stuff.


(for anyone who doesn't recognise the allusion, it's to Edmund in Jadis' castle in The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe). In the TARDIS, there's some philosophical rambling about the Doctor as cosmic juggler, though it does come neatly to a point with the observation that he accepts Ace for what she is - a delinquent. She meanwhile is just wondering why he never changes his clothes.

We join the Rev Mr Matthews on his way to Gabriel Chase in the station dogcart. The time of year is September, and it's 5.52pm when he arrives at the house, and by 6pm the sun has set. Remember that please. Oh, and he sees the stone lion too.

The microscope in the observatory has a 'flywheel'. I thought a flywheel was a huge great heavy wheel for conserving momentum, not a delicate little focusing wheel.

Matthews sees a photo of Gwendoline and realises he's seen her in the audience at the opera. Very few Churchmen from this era would have visited a theatre, they were considered dens of immorality.The Doctor notes that a stuffed okapi is on show a couple of decades before they were discovered. Either a hint of upcoming oddness or a reproof to the nitpicker.Redvers is literally under the delusion that the house is a jungle - it's quite well described in his journal entries, which we read. He sees the carpets as beds of thickly matted leaves and so on. Unfortunately, we read that the date is September 19th - when sunset in Perivale was at 6.07pm in the pre-daylight savings time era. That's some 10 minutes later than the time of sunset established during Mr Matthews' arrival.

When Redvers holds the Doctor at gunpoint, the latter realises that he's too close to palm the bullets (?).

As Ace is taken away by Gwendoline to change clothes, she shouts that she isn't going to wear a bustle, and the Doctor urges her to try for some 'parlour-cred'. I think this must be what the 'OK Professor, you win' line in the deleted corset scene is about.There's an extra scene between Josiah and Nimrod where they argue about the cave-bear's tooth. It sets up the idea that Nimrod is ultimately going to leave Josiah's service.It's the Doctor's jumper that he says Mr Matthews doesn't like, not his tie. A sequence is inserted here before Josiah enters, with the Doctor playing boogie-woogie, and then the Moonlight Sonata, on the piano. Didn't really work as Seventh Doctor characterisation for me. Ace notices a dolls' house in Gwendoline's room - the inhabitants being a family of stuffed red squirrels. Gwendoline produces a box of cigars and offers her one to cement their friendship.

The Doctor distressingly refers to Ace's dinner jacket as a 'tuxedo', American-style. Later on he makes pointed references to Georges Sand and Vesta Tilley.

We hear the Doctor's thoughts about the progress of Ace's 'test' - which is after all ostensibly the whole premise of the story.

The last two lines of That's The Way To The Zoo are slightly different - and inferior to the screen version in my opinion. But 'white kids firebombed it' is there in all its glory.

The book in which Ace finds the term 'lucifugous' is Essays on the Unity of Worlds by Rev Baden Powell, who Platt refers to as Rev Baden-Powell, which is wrong in that (a) his surname is Powell and (b) Rev John Smith, Mr Smith, never Rev Smith. I couldn't find 'lucifugous' in the online version but we know that OCR still has some way to go.

Ace's breakfast has several extra items, and she's relieved that everything in the list isn't on the same plate. Mrs Grose brings it in on the Doctor's instructions: he's conducted a long interview with her earlier in the day.

There's an extra scene where Mrs Grose discovers Control in the drawing room and has to be revived from her shock with brandy, while Control returns to the basement. Mrs G walks off the job forthwith. The Doctor tells her to give his regards to Peter Quint (look that up and you'll find Henry James' story The Turn of the Screw in which a Mrs Grose features).

The reason Light is confused to find himself on Earth is that their next destination was a barren planet with a few social moss colonies.

The Inspector enters the scene with Light and Nimrod because he's being pursued by maids armed with machetes, who Mrs Pritchard has ordered to dispatch him. (That last is a deleted scene)

In the scene where Control saves Ace from Gwendoline, Control actually climbs into the room through the window, she isn't just already in there. The 'vicious little Victorian' epithet is transferred to the narration.

In between iusifying the Inspector, and calcifying Mrs P and Gwendoline, Light has been flying all round the world getting increasingly annoyed by the amount of change.

Before Light ladles up a portion of primeval soup, Ace does the same, and finds the Inspector's badge dangling off the ladle. The chapter, by the way, is called Beautiful Soup, which matches the other Alice in Wonderland reference in the earlier Ace's Adventures Under Ground.

The final exchange between the Doctor and Ace is just the same, but when he says 'Wicked.' he thinks 'That's my girl!'. I must say I think that is not an improvement.

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