Ghost Light Part One

The one where the Doctor takes Ace into her worst nightmare...

Wish me luck with this one, guys. I'll need it. Right, I'm going in...

A dark and spooky Victorian house. Gothic, funereal organ music. A hatchet-faced housekeeper. And something nasty locked up in the cellar. This is the stuff that nightmarish dreams are made of, and the sort of thing the BBC always does so well. If it involves a period setting, the BBC usually come up trumps. And a period Victorian setting never fails to serve Doctor Who well. The two seem to go together like fish fingers and custard!

Aesthetically, Ghost Light looks splendid. Nick Somerville's sets are absolutely stunning, dripping with depth and detail and making Gabriel Chase a completely convincing environment. I mean, look at that sweeping imperial staircase, which looks like it goes on and on thanks to the high walls beautifully decorated with animal skins, and the ornately carved wooden newel posts and balusters. Every room of the house is beautifully considered, and at every turn there are animal hides, the mounted heads of game, ornamental skeletons and ornithological taxidermy. They're probably the richest sets Doctor Who ever had (in this, the final story filmed for the classic era).

And of course, the costumes are splendid too. The work of Ken Trew was always rich and thoughtful. Think back to the sumptuous Manussan fabrics of Snakedance, the pastel Lakertyan clothing of Time and the Rani, the period accuracy of Remembrance of the Daleks, and yet to come, the austere wartime designs of The Curse of Fenric. It seems he became a favourite of producer John Nathan-Turner, who also used him for 1993's 3D special Dimensions in Time. Trew's work here is truly beautiful, particularly the frocks worn by Gwendoline and Mrs Pritchard, and Josiah's velvet smoking jacket. Even the servants look spot-on.

Also pleasing is Mark Ayres' filmic score, which cheekily incorporates themes from whatever's happening in the scenes, whether that be eerie organ sounds, the lightness of harp strings when the Doctor and Ace explore, or the integration of jungle drums for Redvers Fenn-Cooper. Like the design and the script, the score is an elegantly rich concoction, but sometimes it is far too high in the mix, as if Ayres is a bit too pleased with himself. For instance, the scene where the Doctor and Ace emerge into the corridor to explore is drowned out by Ayres' music. It's far too loud and intrusive, made even more so by the fact it's a very in-yer-face composition. You can't ignore the music, when actually, an incidental score is supposed to complement what you're seeing, not fight with it for attention.

By these early minutes we've already established that there's something monstrous locked up in the cellar. But something monstrous which reads The Times and eats plated meals from cloched trays. So far, so weird! It's also hinted at that something's amiss in Gabriel Chase when we see the nervy day staff keen to leave before darkness falls. "We shan't stay here a moment longer," quivers daytime housekeeper Mrs Grose. "And Heaven help anyone who's still here after dark."

The TARDIS materialises at the top of the house in a children's nursery, and Ace seems to be taking some kind of initiative test, like she's at school. The Doctor is her mentor, I suppose, and as well as showing her the universe, he's teaching her things as they go, and she is very obviously maturing too. The way they've dressed Ace this series, and the way Sophie Aldred's played her, is subtly different to before. The wide-eyed stroppy teenager of Dragonfire is becoming a young woman.

Ace comments on how weird the nursery seems to be. She's been tasked with working out when and where they might have landed. The Doctor, perched atop a spooky rocking horse, teases: "It's a surprise." Hmmm, I'm not sure I trust him, especially when Ace mentions she told him about a haunted house she once visited ("Did you tell me that? How many have you been in?"). The idea that the Doctor may have brought her to a haunted house on purpose after she told him she doesn't like haunted houses is somewhat disturbing, particularly so soon after making her confront her fear of clowns. It's a harsh method of therapy.

Elsewhere, they find an abandoned silver snuffbox inscribed with the letters R.F.C, and Ace has to work out what it means. She immediately settles on the Royal Flying Corps, but is told by the Doctor it wasn't founded until 1912. Randomly, the Doctor tests the snuffbox for radiation (why?) before they are discovered by a game hunter stalking the corridors with a Zulu assegai. This story just gets weirder.

The game hunter is searching for a man called Redvers Fenn-Cooper, "one of the finest explorers in the Empire", to save him from the blackguard Josiah Samuel Smith. He enlists the Doctor's help in finding him, but it's clear this chap - a perfectly-cast Michael Cochrane - is a little unstable, seeing the environs of this gloomy old house as a jungle. His mind wanders, to the point where he aims a Chinese fouling piece at the Doctor and Ace and recounts a tale about the time he witnessed a burning light at the heart of the Interior. "It burnt through my eyes into my mind," he trembles. "It had blazing, radiant wings!" Whatever this guy's seen, it's made his mind snap.

But when he catches a reflection of himself in the window, it becomes clear that he is Redvers. "There you are, old chap!" he says to himself. "What have they done to you? You look like a ghost." Then in barges the hatchet-faced housekeeper Mrs Pritchard, played by three times BAFTA-nominated acting legend Sylvia Sims in what must be one of classic Doctor Who's greatest ever casting coups. She is terrifying in the part, an obvious riff on Rebecca's austere Mrs Danvers, and you feel she could fell a charging rhino at 30 paces with that withering glare! She may not say very much, but she can give a mean arm twist when required, or a particularly vicious tug of a plait!

As Redvers is marched away by the merciless menagerie of mute maids, the Doctor and Ace are left with the remarkable sight of a Neanderthal dressed as a butler. I adore the perfectly timed look Sylvester McCoy gives Nimrod when the butler looks away, taking in this bizarre sight as quickly as he can without causing offence! Handing his conspicuous hat and brolly to Nimrod, the Doctor agrees to meet the head of the house, Josiah Samuel Smith, in the drawing room.

Once there, a case of mistaken identity kicks in, and the permanently piqued Reverend Ernest Matthews takes the Doctor to be Smith. The clergyman - dean of the fictional Mortar House College, Oxford - has travelled to see Smith to discuss his "blasphemous theories" about Darwinism. Matthews is particularly exasperated by Smith's heresies about evolution and mankind's need to adapt to serve nature in order to survive. Writer Marc Platt - someone obviously very knowledgeable about the Victorian period, and also very keen to show it - is clever to drop the controversies of Darwinism into the story, as the naturalist's ideas were so revolutionary and heterodox at the time. It adds an element of realism, and a nice bit of tension between guest characters.

Clearing up the confusion, Smith himself walks in, demanding the lights are turned down. He looks like a dusty Victorian recluse in blue velvet smoking jacket laced with cobwebs, wild and wispy white hair, and dark glasses to shield his eyes. Smith is sensitive to light, Redvers was almost blinded by a radiant light, and the day staff don't like to stay in the house after dark. There's a theme emerging here...

The centrepiece scene in this episode is the moment when Ace discovers the house is Gabriel Chase, the haunted house in Perivale that she told the Doctor about. She found it derelict in 1983, but climbed over the wall for a dare and sensed a terrible evil in the ruins. Aldred gives her best ever performance here, and you can really feel the deep hurt the Doctor has caused her by bringing her here. Of all the places, the Doctor takes her to the one place she told him she never wanted to visit. Aldred portrays Ace's simmering anger so well, not over-playing the heartache, but keeping a lid on it so you can tell she's suppressing a rage.

It's wonderfully well written too, with the Doctor outed as rather heartless, trying to make Ace confront her fears. "We all have a universe of our own terrors to face," he tells her, rather patronisingly. And quite rightly, Ace responds: "I face mine on my own terms!" Then the Doctor reveals the real reason he's putting the poor girl through this: "But don't you want to know what happened here?" Ace doesn't, but it's very clear that he does. The Doctor has been terrifyingly selfish in bringing Ace to Gabriel Chase at a time when the evil she sensed is thriving. It's not because he wants her to face her fear of haunted houses. It's because he wants to know what the evil alien was, and presumably vanquish it.

After dragging the coulrophobic Ace to a circus full of clowns, this is a dangerous step for him to take. He'll go on to reunite the pentheraphobic Ace with her mother as a child, reveal that she is actually the pawn of an ancient evil the Doctor plans to destroy with her help, and then take her back to modern day Perivale to make up with her mother as an adult. If this is therapy, Ace never asked for it. It's actually more like psychological torture. One of my favourite songs of recent years is MS MR's 2013 single Think of You, which lyrically sums up how Ace might feel about the Doctor in retrospect: "I still think of you, and all the shit you put me through, and I know you were wrong..."

Ace runs away, unwisely making her way down to the cellar where we know the caged creature has escaped (when it clubs Nimrod unconscious and growls: "Did that hurt? Good!", I get shivers). It builds to a horrifying cliffhanger which rates as one of Doctor Who's scariest as Ace is confronted by two hideous monsters dressed in dinner suits, and the stuffed birds on pedestals around her seem to come alive with squawks and squeals. And there's that guttural, threatening voice calling her a "ratkin" as the end titles crash in. It's really unsettling stuff, directed uncompromisingly by Alan Wareing. This is a ghost story, a spooky Victorian horror, and the production team is going full-throttle.

Quickies:

• This episode is packed full of really weird and wonderful sights and juxtapositions: zombie-like maids emerging from the walls, insectoid and reptilian monsters hiding in the cellar dressed for dinner, a caveman butler, a game hunter searching for himself, a radioactive snuff box with blinding lights inside, a mysterious broadsheet-reading monster breaking out of the basement. And that's just the start.
• Why does the Doctor randomly give Nimrod the fang of a cave bear ("a totem of great power") when he wasn't expecting to meet a Neanderthal butler anytime soon. Does he just carry cave bear fangs around with him all the time? There seems to be element of preparation in this gift, but I don't see how, or why?
• When everybody goes to see what the straitjacketed Redvers is screaming about, I love the fact everybody shields their eyes from the snuff box's blinding light except for the Doctor. He's an alien, he can stare into the radiance unharmed. I like little details like that. Just don't ask me why Redvers has been put into a straitjacket in an empty room and left to confront a snuff box full of light.
• Gwendoline reciting the Victorian music hall song That's the Way to the Zoo by J F Mitchell is a genius choice, the lyrics making hints about the monkey house being nearly full, "but there's room enough for you". The sick relevance of this line will become clear in a future episode (perhaps it might have been better to have Gwendoline sing it in the pertinent episode?). If you want to hear the whole song, rendered by The Splendid Chaps, click here.
• Ace mentions her childhood best friend Manisha, whose flat was firebombed by "white kids". The book Illegal Alien gives Manisha the surname Purkayastha, and adds that the "white kids" were also neo-Nazis (there's a lot of them about in the McCoy era!). It's suggested Manisha was wounded in the attack, but other sources - numerous New Adventures - confirm she actually died.
• When the creature in the cellar detects Ace's presence, it growls evilly: "There's a new scent in the dark. There's a warming, pulsing, racing blood!" I find this utterly terrifying, even now, at the age of 46.

Ghost Light part 1 feels like the imaginings of a madman given pen and paper after waking from a particularly feverish cheese dream. How it's going to pan out I have no idea. I'm just about following it, but there are still plenty of questions I'd like answered by the end.

First broadcast: October 4th, 1989

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: The stunning production design: costumes, sets, make-up.
The Bad: "CAN YOU TURN THE MUSIC DOWN A BIT PLEASE, MARK?"
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★☆☆

Ace says "Professor": 73 - Even Gwendoline calls the Doctor "Professor" in this episode!

NEXT TIME: Part Two...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Part Two; Part Three

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site.

Ghost Light is available on BBC DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Ghost-Light-DVD/dp/B00029QXBO