Wednesday, June 15, 2022

Ghost Light Part Two


The one where the Doctor finds a policeman in the drawer...

It's just the latest in a string of weird and wacky ideas and images in this story: the Doctor and Gwendoline coming across a Victorian sleeping policeman in the bottom drawer of Josiah's moth collection. "It's from Java," Gwendoline bewilderingly states. It seems Java is a simile for being killed, or perhaps just "preserved", as Gwendoline adds that the Reverend Matthews will be sent to Java soon, where he might meet her father.

"Your father, is he there?" enquires the Doctor. Gwendoline's reply always gives me goosebumps, thanks to the slightly unhinged way Katharine Schlesinger delivers the line, and the way the scene is edited. "Uncle Josiah sent him there," she says, "after he saw what was in the cellar." Cut to the cellar! Such an effective cut, sadly spoiled in the otherwise superior blu-ray workprint version, which adds a line on the end before cutting.

As this episode unfolds it's clear that everybody is completely unhinged (except perhaps poor Mrs Grose). Gwendoline's wandering around in men's clothes, her hair a scribble, and crying for her missing parents. Mrs Pritchard has no sympathy whatsoever, describing her as looking like a "music hall trollop". We know that Josiah sent her father, Sir George Pritchard, to Java, but where is her mama? The clues are there quite early on: the night housekeeper is called Mrs Pritchard, and about 15 minutes in, when Inspector Mackenzie asks where Lady Pritchard is, Ace replies: "You mean the old bag, the housekeeper?" Why does nobody tell Gwendoline that Mrs Pritchard is her mother, even if Mrs Pritchard appears not to recognise it?

Also, later in the episode when the Inspector and Ace are in the upper observatory, the policeman unveils Mrs Pritchard and refers to her as "Lady Pritchard", to which Ace responds: "Lady?" as if she didn't know already. An editing error mayhaps?

All of the scenes in the cellar - murkily lit through obstructive fog by Henry Barber - are mysterious, and a little frightening. While Ace and Nimrod fend off whatever the heck is in the cell using lamplight, the Doctor takes control upstairs and demands he and Josiah go down in the lift to save his friend. Sylvester McCoy is really strong in these scenes, a commanding presence as he holds Smith at gunpoint (or radiation detector point!). The Wonderland of oddness just keeps coming too, with the stained glass window at the top of the stairs erupting into some kind of flashing alarm system linked to the cellar. It's all quite disorientating and mildly baffling. Looks good though.

In the cellar, which is actually a stone spaceship, Nimrod is afraid of waking whatever's hibernating behind the golden lozenge. "The sleeping one must not be woken," he insists. Nimrod seems to worship whatever's sleeping, while Josiah is clearly terrified of it. He insists that the ship's crystal rod controls must be rectified to avoid a firestorm destroying the south of England. The Doctor and Ace play wonderfully well together here, the McCoy and Aldred team in evidence in both the repartee and the unspoken connection of commonality between them. The Doctor trusts Ace completely, and she understands what it is he's trying to achieve when they fool Smith with the rods and steam.

One of the scariest moments in classic Who for me is the bit where the Doctor, Ace, Nimrod and Smith rush toward the lift as the cell door opens, and director Alan Wareing cleverly shoots it from the perspective of inside the lift. As our heroes rush towards us in silhouette, you can make out the fluttering form of the Control creature chasing them in the background. I've always found the way that's shot quite unsettling, with the good guys rushing toward camera and supposed safety, but being pursued by whatever the creature is that's escaped. "Give me my freeness!" the creature snarls, pulling at the Doctor's tie like a crazed Harry Styles fan. The petrified Josiah calls it a "depraved monstrosity", but the Doctor recognises there's more to it. "Depraved or deprived?" he says. "Which is the Jekyll and which is the Hyde?"

By the time the lift reaches ground level, it's 4.35am, dawn is breaking, and the light-sensitive Josiah must be escorted to safety in the upper observatory (love the fact the lower observatory is the cellar!). Despite his urgency to avoid the daylight, Josiah does not go into hibernation, but instead proceeds to chat to the Reverend Matthews about Darwinian theory, his skin peeling like sunburnt paint. The clergyman says what's happening to Smith must be "divine retribution" for his heretical theories, but what's this? Something's happening to Matthews too. He's changing, and as he chomps into a banana, his hands have turned hairy, his whole demeanour regressing to that of an ape (love the shot of the chloroformed hankie covering the camera as Josiah chuckles evilly).

Some creatures in Gabriel Chase evolve, as Smith is doing, while others devolve it seems. There's a strange, electric atmosphere through the house, exemplified by the fact Smith's insect collection is coming back to life.

I like the fact writer Marc Platt allows Ace to grow tired. She's had a long day (or night!), without sleep, and drops off in the armchair while the Doctor's talking to her. It's nice that the script acknowledges the passage of time, and gives Ace her sleep. When she wakes, Mrs Grose says it's almost 5pm, which suggests Ace has been asleep for roughly 12 solid hours! One thing's for sure, the Victorian breakfast Mrs Grose knocks up for Ace is a true belly-buster: scrambled egg, hot buttered toast, kedgeree, kidney, sausage and bacon!

What's the Doctor been doing all day in the meantime? One thing he's done is awaken Inspector Mackenzie from his slumber in the bottom drawer. He tells Ace he was originally sent to the house in 1881 (two years ago) to investigate the disappearance of Sir George Pritchard, but he's been in Josiah's cupboard ever since. There's some great characterful interplay between McCoy and Frank Windsor, who makes Mackenzie ravenously hungry, spitting bits of sandwich over the Doctor when he speaks! Windsor makes for a bumbling Dr Watson-like presence. You have to laugh when you learn that since he woke up he's eaten three of Mrs Grose's breakfasts (no mean feat), as well as two elevenses and an entire four-course meal.

Nimrod wakes up and suddenly gets very chatty, recalling what Ace thinks might be a Neanderthal race memory, but is actually personal experience. Platt's words are beautiful: "At the season when the ice floods swamp the pasture lands, we herded the mammoths sunwards to find new grazing. Wise men cast bones to make hunting magic, and spoke with the voice of the Burning One. Now the wild world is lost in a desert of smoke and straight lines. There is smoke thickening." The whole fang of the cave bear thing rears its head again, and is just as baffling as when the Doctor first produced it in part 1. But I do like Mackenzie's amusing interjection: "Tricky things, mammoths."

What is less amusing - and I'm surprised fandom hasn't imploded in a state of apoplectic rage as some did for The Talons of Weng-Chiang - is Mackenzie's accurately Victorian but nevertheless racist remarks. He refers to the manservant Nimrod as a "nasty looking customer, must be a foreigner", and goes on to equate having "gypsy blood" with being lazy. Finally, he adds: "No self-control, these Mediterraneans. Too excitable. Nasty tempers too." It's dialogue which was perfectly acceptable in 1883, and passable as narrative fiction in 1989, but in the year 2022 I'm surprised some fans haven't called the script out and started an online campaign to have the story edited/ banned/ burned by Pamela Nash.

I do like how curious the Doctor is about what's sleeping in the cellar. "Josiah Samuel Smith and Control are afraid of it. Redvers Fenn Cooper saw it and lost his mind. Nimrod, he worships it," he ponders. He's desperate to know more, he doesn't like being in the dark (excuse the pun), and is itching to wake it up. Ace (wisely) advises that he just leave things alone, but the Time Lord is resolute. "Just one chat," he appeals. This is why the Doctor has always got himself into trouble at every turn, his curiosity always gets the better of him. He's the eternal explorer, the ever-enquiring mind. It's the very reason he left Gallifrey in the first place.

After seeing the Reverend Ernest Matthews preserved in a glass display case as Homo Victorianus Ineptus (a sight both ridiculous and unsettling at the same time), Smith emerges from his old husk as a new man, a fine, younger-looking and rather suave Victorian gentleman. But this new Josiah has no desire to meet what the Doctor has persuaded the Control creature to bring up from the cellar.

When Control - which is also evolving every time we see it - opens the lift doors, Josiah greets it with a sobering: "Control: quintessence of wickedness, corruption incarnate!" Charming, but also rum words from a man who keeps changing and corrupting himself, leaving discarded husks in his wake.

A bright light pours out of the lift, everybody shields their eye - except for the Doctor, who stares defiantly into the glare, desperate to see what or who the Burning One is. It's not so much a cliffhanger as a pause, but I'm desperate to know how all this sews together and what all the craziness actually means. Fingers crossed...

First broadcast: October 11th, 1989

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: I just love that shot of the fluttering, scampering Control chasing the Doctor etc. It gives me the creeps!
The Bad: There are so many questions being posed in almost every scene, and so few answers, that it does get a little tiring. I mean, Redvers only has one scene in part 2, after being so prevalent in part 1.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★☆☆☆


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