Ghost Light is the second story of season 26. It stars Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor and Sophie Aldred as Ace. It starts with some mannys - we don't know who they are yet but doubtless this will be made clear in time - giving "dinner and your copy of Notorious Right Wing Tabloid Newspaper The Times" to a prisoner who is hidden behind a door so that we only get to see their eye.
Reverend Matthews (played by John Nettleton, Sir Arnold from Yes Minister) arrives at Gabriel Chase house, while the TARDIS arrives in a room elsewhere in the same house. The Doctor and Ace come out and investigate.
Some other mannys leave the house, frightened, in an attempt to build up a scary atmosphere about the place. Am I going to need Scary Cat's help to watch this, I wonder? He is the bravest of all cats, and would not be worried by things like that.
The rocking horse has glowing eyes. I suspect this is also meant to be scary, but it isn't. Ace admits she is frightened of, or "has a thing about", haunted houses. The Doctor asks her how many she has been in.
"One was enough. Never again."The incidental music is very loud and intrusive here and so it is hard to make out some of what Ace is saying. They find a box on the floor and it is radioactive for some mysterious reason. It isn't very scary so far but it is building up the level of intrigue nicely.
They meet a manny who picks the box up, it is Michael Cochrane from Sharpe. He is looking for Redvers Fenn-Cooper, and gives some more exposition but the music does its best to drown him out and thus keep us in the dark for now.
Reverend Matthews is fed up waiting and goes around acting at the servants until he is met by Gwendoline. Michael Cochrane gets a gun and points it at the Doctor and rants something about a light "burning bright in the heart of the interior" which sounds like it may become relevant later. He sees the reflection of Redvers in the window and doesn't recognise it is himself. This is easily done, I've seen plenty of my friends do the same thing (although I've never done it myself of course).
The servants come in and capture Redvers and take him away as he shouts
"No, not the interior! Please, I don't want to go back to the interior!"
The Doctor and Ace meet Nimrod the butler, Gwendoline and Reverend Matthews, the latter of whom mistaiks the Doctor for the owner of the house, Josiah Smith. The Doctor trolls the Reverend for a while by not correcting him, until the real Josiah Smith comes in. As he does so the room gets darker and more atmospheric, clueing us in on the fact that Josiah is the baddy.
There is thunder and lightning and Redvers gets scared of it. I'm beginning to think he is really a cat.
His box glows and he screams, and everybody goes to investigate. Josiah gets blinded by the light. Nimrod takes over and assures the Doctor that Redvers "is being made comfortable." The Doctor and Ace recognise that Nimrod is "a Neanderthal," although why this is significant is not made clear - like most things in the story so far.
Nimrod goes to the prison room from the opening scene and gets knocked out by the prisoner who seems to be escaping, although we see things from the prisoner's point of view so we don't know what they look like yet.
Best guess so far:
Josiah and Reverend Matthews are about to have a debate when the telephone rings. It is the prisoner calling to tell Josiah
"I escaped."
Ace discovers the house is Gabriel Chase, which is the same haunted house she was in in the future. She tries to get angry at the Doctor for bringing her here, but it is difficult to hear her over the music. Fortunately it goes away in time for the next scene, which was once nominated in Doctor Who Magazine #250 as one of the greatest moments in the series.
I don't know if I agree that it is one of the greatest scenes evar, since it does not feature Paul Darrow, but it is a good scene, featuring character development for Ace and, arguably, the Doctor, as we learn about things he doesn't like.
"I can't stand burnt toast. I loathe bus stations - terrible places, full of lost luggage and lost souls."He's obviously been to Perth Bus Station then.
Josiah has Mrs Pritchard (who you can tell is his chief henchmanny because she is dressed differently from the other servants and has her own name) chloroform Reverend Matthews so that we have one less character to keep track of - how nice of them to help out a poor confused cat.
Gwendoline sings a song to pad out the episode for a few moments, before we get more of Ace's backstory.
"When I lived in Perivale, me and my best mate, we dossed around together. We'd out-dare each other on things, skiving off, stupid things. Then they burnt out Manisha's flat. White kids firebombed it. I didn't care anymore."
"I think you cared a lot, Ace."
"That's when I came over the walls of the house. This house. I was so mad, and I needed to get away. It was empty, all overgrown and falling down. No one came here. But when I got inside it was even worse. I didn't know then. It was horrible!"
Josiah interrupts before Ace tells the Doctor any more. The Doctor knows Josiah is an alien, but he denies it and says
"I'm as human as you are."To which the Doctor just replies
"Yes."
Ace runs to the lift and goes down to the basement. Mrs Pritchard sees her and traps her there. Ace finds the prison room and sees Nimrod having sleeps on the floor.
"There's a new scent in the dark - listen" says the prisoner, mixing up three senses in one sentence, along with some stuff it is hard to make out because of the prisoner's husky voice and the incidental music doing the scene's comprehensibility no favours.
Two husks come out from behind a curtain and mistaik Ace for M Khan. It's not much of a cliffhanger, but it'll have to do.
Part one of Ghost Light is an atmospheric episode, but the plot is impenetrable for now - it seems more like a Sapphire & Steel story than Doctor Who. I think I will get my friends Starcat and Scary Cat to help me out with the remaining parts, they both love things like this.
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