Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Tom Baker, Louise Jameson, Carolyn Seymour, Gethin Anthony, Martin Hutson, Emerald O’ Hanrahan, Alan Cox, Ivanno Jeremiah, Andy Secombe, Sean Carlsen, Andrew French, Mandi Symonds.

The fourth Doctor was arguably never better than when thrust into the tale of the Gothic persuasion. It was a running theme throughout his tenure in the shoes of the Timelord that the Gothic, in one shape or another would feature heavily and the macabre would be accompanying with relish.

From his first meeting with the amateur detectives and friends Jago and Litefoot in The Talons of Weng-Chiang, to the Hand of Fear, The Brain of Morbius and The Horror of Fang Rock, with the very obvious exception of one of the greatest stories ever in the Genesis of The Daleks and the powerful stand alone story of The Deadly Assassin, The fourth Doctor is pulled it seems inexpiably towards the haunting tones that the Gothic displays with great power.

The Ghosts of Gralstead, part of the Philip Hinchcliffe Presents Box Set, sees the Doctor pulled to London in a very different world to that both he and Leela are used to, there is no Jago and Litefoot to count upon should the going get tough and fresh pair of eyes in which to tackle the complexities of Victorian society with. It is a London in which foulness breeds even in the comfortably well off, it is a place where Monsters can breed and evil ideologies can take root.

What Philip Hinchcliffe, and his story adaptor Marc Platt, have achieved with this six part story spread over three C.Ds is to give the listener the thought of change that was happening in London and the country as a whole between the turn of the 1840s and 1870s, the turmoil of people seemingly rejected by its Government, of the thin divide that separated wealth and affluence from the horrors of the poor house and the world that was inhabited by the less fortunate, forced to prostitute their disfigurements for money and adulation of the nefarious and notoriety persuasion.

By holding up a mirror to today’s society in which programmes that deal with the less fortunate being used as the nation’s scapegoats and cheap reviled entertainment, the writers have shown that we, as a society, are no better than the outdated and emotionally crippled Victorian era; in many ways we are worse for whilst there was little else to amuse the Victorians in their leisurely pursuits, we are more exposed to the grubbiness that we have allowed to infiltrate our modern sensibilities.

With the fourth Doctor allied with the savage Leela, played as ever by the tremendous Louise Jameson, the macabre and those that exploit it are in for a fight, only Time can tell if the cause is just on all counts.

The Ghosts of Gralstead is part of the Doctor Who: Philip Hinchcliffe Presents Box-Set and is available to purchase from Worlds Apart on Lime Street, Liverpool.

Ian D. Hall