The alien is revealed to be a fabulous, shiny manny, a bit like Ky from The Mutants only he is golden and called Light. Ace thinks he is "an angel stupid."
The Doctor explains
"That's just its shape here on Earth. It's called Light, and it's come to survey life here. And while it slept, the survey got out of control."Control says
"Control is me."to which the Doctor replies
"And the survey is Josiah."although that makes no sense. Josiah tries to get one of his servants to shoot Light, but Light pewpewpews her first, which annoys the Doctor.
In the next scene the Doctor is trying to explain what is going on - not to us, but to Light. Ace asks
"How does Light move so fast?"
"He travels at the speed of thought."Lol, this is an amusing line of the Doctor's that plays with our expectations, although it does not actually answer Ace's question or, indeed, make any sense.
Control wants to be free from Light. He does not like her either, but seems to need her for something, although I do not expect we are likely to find out what. While it is still hard to make out most of what Control is saying, she wants to be "a ladylike" and decides to run away. The Doctor and Light fight some kind of mental contest that causes the Doctor to make a face.
It is not clear who wins this battle of wills, but Light disappears for now so it was probably the Doctor.
Ace gets frightened by all the stuffed animals. While stuffed animals are not normally scary, the scene is shot with a red filter and shakycam that, accompanied by the animal noises, make this an effective scary scene that we all enjoyed. It gets even better when the lighting and noise metamorphose into the light and sound of one of those manny emergency vehicles, which is clearly tied into the part of Ace's backstory with the haunted house that has not been revealed to us yet. This is probably the best bit of foreshadowing in the whole story, although the competition is not strong.
Control meets Redvers and then she changes costume. The Doctor comes in and Control jumps through the window like Hitler escaping from Danger 5. The Doctor finds out that Redvers wants to shoot Queen Victoria "the Crowned Saxe-Coburg", which is a sudden and unexpected turn to the plot. Redvers invites the Doctor to join him.
Josiah sends Gwendoline to kill Ace. They are having a fight when Control climbs back in the window, distracting Gwendoline so that Ace can lock her in a room, which she later escapes from using an axe.
Nimrod finds that Light is far from armless.
"I wanted to see how it works... so I dismantled it."Inspector Mackenzie is unlucky enough to come in and speak to Light next and he gets hypno-eyesed or pewpewpewed or some such thing.
Gwendoline attacks Ace again. The Doctor and Redvers come in and the Doctor picks up Gwendoline's locket and shows what's inside to Gwendoline. In a less busy story this could have been a good moment, somewhat akin to when Crayford removes his eyepatch in The Android Invasion, but there are a lot of subplots in Ghost Light, too many for a three-part story perhaps, so this does not have room to have the desired impact upon us in the audience.
Apart from Gwendoline, who is left having a cry, and Light, who the script requires to not be present yet, the characters all go to another dinner scene. The Doctor says
"Who was it that said Earthmen never invite their ancestors round to dinner?"indicating that The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy exists within the Doctor Who universe in some form. The Doctor shows the locket to "Lady" Mrs Pritchard and she leaves the room.
Lady Pritchard and Gwendoline are reunited just in time for Light to come in and turn them into statues. So much for that subplot.
The plot about assassinating Queen Victoria, which appeared out of nowhere earlier this episode, now takes over as Redvers changes his mind about taking Josiah with him and instead he wants to take Control, who just wants to have noms "out to dinner" instead of killing the queen.
Control takes the invitation and then, for no good reason except that it is required to set up the next bit, threatens to burn the house down. Ace says
"No, Control, don't do it! Please don't do it, that's what I did!"completing the reveal of her backstory. Control only burns the invitation, concluding the 'assassinating Queen Victoria' plot.
Light appears in time for the next subplot. By this point it is clear that in each scene he is glowing a bit less. Light threatens to turn everything on Earth into noms, like he has already done with Inspector Mackenzie "the cream of Scotland Yard." That is a terrible joke, and one which appears to have warped the entire plot around it in order to set it up. It was not worth it, mew.
However we do now get a great scene as the Doctor defeats Light by talking to him, tricking him by saying that his catalogue of all life doesn't contain fictional animals, and then pointing out that everything changes and that his survey was a pointless waste of time from the very beginning. A bit like certain subplots I could mention, mew.
Everybody who is left goes down to the basement to try to stop Light's spaceship from blowing up the planet. Josiah tries to capture Ace, but he is defeated... somehow. Oh, I don't know. The story isn't trying any more so why should I? Josiah gets captured by Control and then Control, Redvers and Nimrod take over the spaceship and do... something... so the explosion will instead provide power to the spaceship.
Just when I thought my patience for this story was completely exhausted we get another really good bit - the Doctor and Ace leave, and instead of there being special effects for the spaceship taking off, it just vanishes in between shots.
The Doctor and Ace go back up and see Light blow himself up. So now Ace understands what happened here in the future when she burned the house down. The Doctor asks her if she regrets doing that, and she replies
"I wish I'd blown it up instead."
The Doctor's final line shows that he now understands that when he first met Ace she was a psychopathic pyromaniac and that, instead of her coming to terms with her troubled adolescence and the guilt she feels for her past actions, gaining closure and developing as a person through confronting her inner demons made manifest in the form of the inhabitants of Gabriel Chase, Ace is still a psychopathic pyromaniac.
"Wicked!"
Ghost Light doesn't make sense.
Too many things happen for no reason, or at least for reasons that are not made clear to us viewers. Here are a few of the questions I have:
Who is Josiah Smith? Who is Control? Why don't they get on with each other? What does Reverend Matthews want? How does Josiah turn him into a monkey (and, just as importantly, why)? How does Gwendoline know the way to the zoo? Why is it important that we know that she knows the way to the zoo? What made Ace think that breaking the light in the basement wall would help her escape from the husks? Did the character of Inspector Mackenzie exist for any reason other than a bad joke? What was Redvers and Josiah's plan to shoot the queen beyond 'go to Buckingham Palace and shoot the queen'? Why hasn't Light heard of evolution before now - is it because it didn't exist until Darwin invented it? Does the writer even know what evolution is? Who thought it was a good idea to have the incidental music cover up multiple important lines of expository dialogue? What the fuck happened at the end there? And most importantly of all: Did the script editor spend his time putting in little quips and references instead of actually editing the script?
It is unusual for a Doctor Who story to end with quite so many questions unanswered. I am left feeling that it should probably have either had less subplots or else been longer. As with cats, longer is usually better.
And yet somehow, in spite of this, Ghost Light succeeds.
It succeeds in much the same way as Sapphire & Steel succeeded, by having it not matter that it doesn't make sense. The atmosphere created in Gabriel Chase house - the single location for the whole of the story, just like in all the best Sapphire & Steel assignments - combined with the performances of the actors, is enough to make Ghost Light enjoyable with only the impression of a sensible plot being conveyed by the occasional line of exposition, hinting to us at what is going on while at the same time reassuring us that the characters know what they're talking about. At least, for the most part.
At the centre of it all stands Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor, the lynchpin of the show whom the other characters with all their many subplots revolve around. He holds it together with a fine display of acting throughout, from his trolling of Reverend Matthews in part one through to his trolling of Light in part three. His reassuring presence papers over the holes in the plot - if the Doctor isn't concerned about it, neither should we be. We know there is peril when the Doctor is worried, and we know everything is fine when he acts like it is so.
Almost buried under all the other guest characters and their subplots is the character-driven plot of Ace being purposefully brought back to a haunted house to face and overcome her fears - even if the character development she undergoes as a result is undone at the end by the need for her to quip. This is a very different type of plot from what we are used to in Doctor Who, it seems like it is starting to take the series in a different direction and has a modern feel - it would not be out of place in the new series, and may likely even have influenced writers such as Russell "The" Davies or Steven "Mechanical Digger" Moffat.
This is why Ace is the audience identification figure. We are the naughty cats who will set fire to Doctor Who in the future, and now we wish we'd blown it up instead. This metaphor may have gotten away from me.
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