Where were we? Oh yes, I remember...
Nimrod wakes up and saves Ace by waving a light at the husks until one of them breaks it, and then Ace sets about them with a stick (a Hand of Omega-powered baseball bat being unavailable). The Doctor wants to go and help Ace but Josiah's servants point guns at him to stop him.
For some reason Ace decides to break the fancy lights in the wall, and Nimrod tries and fails to stop her. This sets off an alarm that distracts the servants, allowing the Doctor to capture Josiah by pretending his radiation detector is a gun.
The Doctor and Josiah go down to the basement. Ace says
"Doctor, where have you been?"and he replies
"Where haven't I been?"
There is something "hibernating inside" the light. The Doctor makes an unsuccessful attempt to repair the damage Ace did, while Josiah gets a gun of his own and he knows the Doctor and Ace do not really have a gun. He makes the Doctor help him repair the damage, but they taunt him until he makes a mistaik and they can steal his gun. Then the prisoner, "Control" from Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, comes out of her cell and chases them all back to the lift.
Control says a lot of things here, but it is very hard to understand any of it. Josiah is "evolving again" and Mrs Pritchard takes him away, leaving the Doctor and Ace free. There is then a scene of padding where Josiah wakes up Reverend Matthews in order to turn him into a monkey. This is evolution in the Terry Nation or Threshold mis-use of the word - no wonder Reverend Matthews was so annoyed.
The Doctor decides he now wants to know more of Ace's backstory, but she decides to have important sleeps instead.
The Doctor wakes up policemanny Inspector Mackenzie who has been having sleeps in a drawer for two years - impressive even by cat standards. It turns out this was because he was hypno-eyesed by Josiah, which explains it.
The Doctor has sorted the lift to allow Control to escape from the basement. They have done a deal off-screen, so as to keep what is going on on-screen as incomprehensible as possible. But then we finally get some explanation from the Doctor as to what is going on:
"Josiah Samuel Smith and Control are frightened of it. Redvers Fenn-Cooper saw it and lost his mind. Nimrod, he worships it."
"Let there be light?"A lesser Companion might ask the Doctor to explain further, but Ace knows it is more important to make quips. Truly she is the first modern Doctor Who Companion.
"It's asleep down there in its spaceship and Josiah doesn't want it awoken."
Control wakes up the hibernating alien. The Doctor moves the clock forward so the mannys will all think it is time for night. Ace and Inspector Mackenzie find Josiah, Mrs Pritchard (who the Inspector recognises is Lady Pritchard, the real owner of the house) and Gwendoline all having sleeps, sitting up in their chairs, waiting for night. They wake up and capture Ace and Inspector Mackenzie, and there is a new Josiah who is younger and more evolved - it is a bit like when the Doctor regenerates, except that the old Josiah remains as another husk.
The episode has been building steadily towards a climactic scene. Everybody assembles in the main hall as the lift comes up. First Control comes out, and then Josiah tries to stop the alien coming out after her but he gets electriced instead.
The Doctor shouts "Light!" and a bright light shines out of the lift. The episode ends with it being reflected in the Doctor's face, keeping us in suspense as to who the alien is or what it looks like.
Starcat and Scary Cat are experts at watching confusing TV programmes, and found this much easier than Sapphire & Steel. They pointed out that the Doctor's few lines of explanation are all you need to understand the plot enough to enjoy it, and that if some of the individual bits seem pointless or make no sense then that is just because our cat minds are too highly trained, and we can't expect everything mannys do to make sense.
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