Episode #156 : Ghostlight

Ace: It's true isn't it. This is the house I told you about.

Doctor: You were thirteen. You climbed over the wall for a dare.

Ace: That's your surprise isn't it? Bringing me back here.

Doctor: Remind me what it was that you sensed when you entered this deserted house. An aura of intense evil?

Episode 156:   Ghostlight.
Companions:   7th Doctor and Ace.
Air Date:         4th to 18th October 1989.

The Doctor brings Ace to Gabriel Chase, an old house that she once burnt down in her home town of Perivale. The year is 1883 and the house is presided over by Josiah Samuel Smith, who turns out to be the evolved form of an alien brought to Earth in a stone spaceship that is now in the basement. Others present include the explorer Redvers Fenn-Cooper, who has been driven mad by what he has seen there, and Nimrod, Smith's Neanderthal manservant. Smith intends to use Fenn-Cooper's unwitting help in a plot to kill Queen Victoria and restore the British Empire to its former glory. His plans are hampered by Control, a female alien whose life-cycle is in balance with his own. Ace inadvertently causes the release of the spaceship's true owner - a powerful alien being known as Light.

Ghostlight is a fantastic story and a real example of how good late 80's Doctor Who could be. It starts off as a suitable atmospheric horror tale in a "haunted house" and then it slowly resolves into well thought out science fiction. Ghostlight has so many levels to it that a viewer really needs to watch it several times over to catch them all. This was explained by Julian Knott in an issue of DWB as follows:

'A script as well-balanced as it was well-packed into three episodes (with no discernible padding) deserves much praise. After a couple of viewings it becomes apparent that there is hardly a word wasted, and that many key words and phrases have been picked to convey a very specific meaning (such as the Doctor's remark that Ace's change of clothes into [those of] a "Victorian gentleman" is a "metamorphosis"). Every action has a reason, every occurrence an explanation. Even the standard defuse-the-bomb/stop-the-countdown "firestorm program" sequence at the end made enough sense in context, and succeeded in rounding the story off nicely. Even if some things are not made clear at the time they occur, then they are explained, or can be explained, at a later stage.'

The Doctor is simply fantastic in this story. He balances numerous "games" and seems to be fully aware of everything that is going on in the old house. While this is an element of every incarnation I don't think it is ever so well written in classic Who as it is in both this story and the following on Curse of Fenric.

The story gives Ace a fantastic and long awaited story where she is the centre of the plot. Not nearly enough companions get that in my opinion. In Ghostlight we learn about an event that scared her as a young teenager and the Doctor brings her back to the past of that event to force her to confront her fears.

Ghostlight is a simply marvellous story that gets better with age. I recommend it fully.