Ghost Light

Dear Gary—

What the heck? Ghost Light is a nightmare gone mad. Even after viewing it several times and watching the DVD extras and listening to the commentary I still have trouble making sense of it all. But that is OK because it actually is a nightmare. This is a fantasy straight out of Ace’s head, and it does make sense in that dreamlike context.

If any Doctor Who serial needs to be viewed sideways, this is it.

Ghost Light, as Scrooge would say apropos of the season, is a bit of undigested beef, or perhaps a fragment of an underdone potato. Ace and the Doctor are sharing a nightmare; a nightmare called Ghost Light.

As in many a dream, one can discern a broad framework based on some semblance of real life. In this case, Ace and the Doctor must have recently been discussing Darwin, and combined with their space/time travels as well as Ace’s memories, they have concocted this adventure. A survey team consisting of three members—Light, Survey, and Control—is on Earth to conduct a study of all life. Their ship has landed in the cellar of Gabriel Chase; a house from Ace’s checkered childhood.

However, any resemblance to reality from this point is merely coincidental. Like the specimens found in Gabriel Chase cabinets, just when you think you have the story securely pinned down it comes to life in a fluttering chaos.

There is no design to the evolutionary chain transpiring in Gabriel Chase. There is neither rhyme nor reason; there is no order; there is no method to the madness. Light is not enlightening; Control is not controlled. What evolves within the walls of this Victorian mansion is a pandemonium of horror.

“This isn’t a haunted house, is it Professor?” Ace might well ask the question. A playroom that doubles as a laboratory complete with dead things floating in jars; glassy eyed servants gliding out of sliding panels in the wall as night approaches; and the day shift making a bolt for the exit with the warning “Heaven help anyone who’s still here after dark.” It’s a wonder that pouring rain and lightening don’t accompany this opening atmosphere.

“I told you I’ve got this thing about haunted houses.” It’s not surprising that Ace has been reminiscing about past fears, seeing as the Doctor has recently forced her to confront her dread of clowns. This latest anxiety resulting from her experience at the age of thirteen now lends the mood for this shared fantasy of terror.   

“The house is like a morgue; everything dead.” Hand in hand with haunted houses, we have this new imagery. Stuffed animals on the walls; bugs and insects pinned down in cabinet drawers; lifeless organisms pickled in jars; and the inhabitants of the house aren’t any livelier—walking about as though in a trance, hibernating during the day in cubby holes and under sheets, and with husks of shed selves littered about.

“That’s the way to the zoo. That’s the way to the zoo. The monkey house is nearly full but there’s room enough for you.” Haunted house. Morgue. Add menagerie to the list. Josiah/Survey has collected a houseful of oddities.

Chief amongst these is Nimrod, the Neanderthal manservant. (I still remember how Carrie laughed and laughed when she discovered a Nimrod Spencer in our family tree; but she shouldn’t have been surprised given the outlandish names of some of our nearest and dearest on that side.  Fittingly, Gary, when I did a search of Nimrod Spencer I discovered on Ancestry.com that we have our own missing link—Grandpa Spencer is non-existent according to that website. Instead there is a phantom child with no known facts and with a misspelled variation of another child who also is misspelled. Perhaps we don’t exist; or we exist in some Doctor Who alternate dream reality.)

Then there is Inspector Mackenzie who has been stored away in the bottom drawer of the specimen cabinet for two years (“beetles and bluebottles”). Revived by the Doctor, he barely skips a beat and carries on with his investigation into the disappearance of Mr. Pritchard. (Why no one has bothered to investigate his own disappearance these past two years . . . well, as in any good dream, it’s no use asking questions; people just pop up and do inexplicable things that seem to make perfect sense but upon reflection are completely illogical.)

The latest subject entered into the Gabriel Chase collection is the newly transformed Reverend Matthews—“Homo Victorianus Ineptus.” The most bizarre of this trio of curiosities. I haven’t quite figured out why he was invited to dinner in the first place; why he accepted; why he stayed; and how exactly he was converted into Monkey Man; but again there you go, Gary—dreams and such.

“This place is like a madhouse.” Yet another description of Gabriel Chase. A madhouse complete with a straight-jacketed inmate. Redvers Fenn-Cooper looked into the light and went mad. How the light got into his snuff box; what his snuff box has to do with anything; how he happened to be at Gabriel Chase; why he thinks he is still in the jungle . . . there I go again; it’s only a dream after all.

This haunted house/morgue/zoo/madhouse is the stage upon which the Doctor and Ace have set and upon which Light, Survey, and Control act out their play.

 Light had sent Survey out into the world; Survey liked what he saw and decided to stay. So he locked up Light and now he not only wants to stay, he wants to reign supreme. He wants to become the highest order of being on the planet Earth, and to his mind that would be the ruler of the UK. How assassinating the Queen will achieve that end I’m not sure, but then I’m not sure that Survey has a clear grasp of anything that he does.

Survey, or I should say Josiah as that is the name he has adopted for himself,  is so fixated on his plan that he is now stagnating in the house while he evolves. He has stopped going out to survey and instead spends his days in hibernation and his evenings enjoying the fascinating company of his adopted niece, the eerie Gwendoline, while being waited on by entranced maids headed by the lady of the house turned housekeeper, Mrs. Pritchard (Gwendoline’s mother).

Control, meantime, is sick of having to stay home all day with nothing to do. She wants to go out and explore, to experience, to change. Josiah/Survey has his hands full when Control breaks loose, not to mention contending with a house full of chastising reverends drowsing in the playroom, explorers roaming the halls looking for their lost selves, and resuscitated constabulary munching their way through their line of questioning. Not only that, but now Light has been released into the house and the Doctor and Ace are digging too deeply into the secrets of Gabriel Chase.

What better time to hold a dinner party? (“Don’t have the soup.”)

It’s a whirlwind of madness served up in a house of horrors.

“Only the madmen may see the path clearly through the tangled forest.” The Doctor’s lateral thinking does him justice in this dreamscape. None of the fantastic twists and turns surprise him as he calmly deals with each improbable occurrence. Except for Control. When she makes a bolt out the window the Doctor exclaims, “Oh, things are getting out of control. Even I can’t play this many games at once.” However, Control isn’t gone for long. “Ran away into big empty nothing,” she says upon her return. Control can’t escape the nightmare any more than the rest.

Even Mrs. Pritchard, awakened from her trance by the Doctor (why merely seeing a picture of herself with her daughter brings her to her senses when living with Gwendoline day after day does not . . .) remains trapped. Trapped in her memories of a happy past; haunted by the horrors of what her daughter has become, or perhaps what she always has been. Gwendoline has taken a little too much pleasure in sending people off to Java, her father included. They are both lost, Mrs. Pritchard concludes as the two are turned to stone by Light, who has been driven mad by a light of his own.

Things come to a fast and furious head in Gabriel Chase. Josiah/Survey is thwarted in his assassination attempt when Control burns the invitation to Buckingham Palace (his whole plan apparently hinged on that lone piece of paper). This causes quite a stir with Ace who inexplicably believes that tossing this tiny scrap into the fireplace will burn the whole house down, and she blurts out a confession of having done the same herself in her youth. The Doctor reads great significance into this fact for some reason, although I don’t see how Ace having burning down Gabriel Chase in 1983 has any impact on our Victorian story at hand (except that it is this fear which provided the spark that instigated this nightmare that is Ghost Light).

Light is defeated as well. The Doctor simply points out to him that his work will never be done. Light is confounded by the infinite variety of life on the planet and its constant state of flux. Light is so demented that even pointing out a change in his locale sends him over the edge. I don’t know who sent this survey team out to begin with, but they obviously didn’t choose their crew too wisely. In the end, Light extinguishes himself and his firestorm program magically redeploys its energy into the ship’s takeoff with its new crew of Control, Redvers, and Nimrod (Josiah/Survey having been subdued by Control).

Nothing can really be explained in Ghost Light. Like Survey’s cast off husks, Ghost Light is a muddled mutation of evolution. No wonder Light went insane; I don’t know what evolutionary chain Survey was following that led him from bipedal bugs to human being; anyone would go mad trying to sort that out.

As the credits roll the nightmare ends, and we are left trying to explain the nonsensical happenings in a logical world. It can’t be done. But viewed sideways and with a dash of the Doctor’s lateral thinking, it can be enjoyed.

Pleasant dreams, Gary . . .