Ghost Light

Ace doesn't like haunted houses. Imagine her reaction when the Doctor takes her to an old Victorian mansion in 1883, on a dark night when the Reverand Earnest Matthews has arrived to give Josiah Samuel Smith a good talking-to about his support of Darwin's theories of evolution. But there is more to it than that; in a house shrouded in darkness there is a stone spaceship in the cellar where a creature named Light is asleep, and on the floors above the halls are stalked by the explorer Redvers Fenn-Cooper, his mind snapped by something he has seen on his travels. The Doctor realizes that there is something evil and alien at work in the house, and Ace realizes that this is no ordinary house - it is the same house in her home town of Perivale that frightened her so much as child in 1983...

Ghost Light has the distinction of being the one story that gets almost the same reaction from anyone who watches it: nobody quite understands what's going on. I'll admit when I first saw it in 1990 I had no idea where the story was going or what was supposed to be happening. My friend Brian watched it with me back then and despite seeing it a few times afterwards he still has the same reaction, which is to look at me after episode 3 and go "Huh?". The big joke to this day is to say they will explian everything is episode 4, but there is no such thing. Writer Marc Platt could have done with an extra episode to get all his points across, although to me part of the magic of the script is that it does everything it wants to do in 3 episodes, even if we don't exactly get it.

Here's how Jay and I saw it when we watched it: Light came to to Earth in his spaceship, but for whatever reason ended up hibernating. His original mission was to study life on the planet and create a comprehensive catalogue, but as soon as he has got everything down, life on Earth began to evolve. The survey creature assisting him broke free of its bonds while Light was asleep and became Josiah Samuel Smith, invading the house known as Gabriel Chase in Perivale and taking over the people who lived there. The Control creature in the spaceship was imprisoned and kept in the basement while Josiah went about establishing himself, even going so far as to plot an assassination of Queen Victoria (timeline note here: this is 4 years after the events in the 2006 episode Tooth and Claw). Along come the Doctor and Ace, and after he realizes what's going on, the Doctor awakens Light to sort out the mess, but things get even tricker at that point.

Ghost Light has so much going for it. All the confusion aside it is a beautiful production set entirely inside the mansion, all done in studio as a sharp contrast to the extensive location work in ther est of the stories of season 26. The BBC do this sort of thing so well, right down to the period costumes on the creepy night time maids of the house. The set itself is huge, with the main hall dominated by the central staircase, and the hallways filled with all manner of creatures stuffed and put on display. All those critics of Doctor Who who go on about bad production values and wobbly sets need to take a look at this one and take back their comments.

Character wise, we are given even more insight into Ace's backstory as she is forced to confront the source of the evil that would terrify her as a child, and as she faces the consequences of her actions after the fact. The Doctor risks their friendship by taking her back to this place, but his interest is piqued, and there are more revelaing moments about him, most notably how he admits to hating unrequited love. Exactly what happened to make him say that is never revealed, but it's out there now.

The DVD release of Ghost Light comes with a fantastic supplemental piece where the cast and crew are all interviewed years later and all of them go through the same pains to say how they enjoyed themselves on the production, and how great it was to have some of the biggest names in British television in the same studio, and how, in the end, they had no idea what they were doing on set. There's no sense of that in the final production, though; everyone performs with such conviction that it feels like we the audience are not paying close enough attention. That is a risk as well; let your attention wander during this one and you'll be wondering what you missed.

NEXT EPISODE : THE CURSE OF FENRIC