GHOST LIGHT
by Marc Platt
PART TWO
The lighting is dim, yet she looks around in fascination at the interior
of the chamber, at the Victorian desk and the wooden door contrasting
so ridiculously with the advanced altar-like crystal controls and the
deep blue translucent stones set into the walls.
She sees Nimrod still sprawled unconscious next to the main control altar,
and she goes to see if she can help. While she examines Nimrod, she
hears a whispery voice from inside the wooden door.
"There's a new scent in the dark," it says, "Warm and pulsing. Racing
blood!"
A curtain in the corner of the room rises, and Ace sees two hideous
things dressed absurdly in full tuxedos. One has a completely reptilian
head, as though it were a lizard, and the other has something resembling
an amphibian's with large, bulbous white eyes.
The two creatures stagger towards Ace, and she backs away in fear.
She suddenly stops as she bumbs into a stuffed bird on a pedestal behind
her, which squaks at her.
The whispery voice continues its bad imitation of human speech as the
two creatures begin to corner Ace....
"Ratkin..... Ratkin......."
Gwendoline kneels by a display cabinet next to the wall between the
entrance hall and the drawing room, from the drawing room side, whilst
from the entrance hall door, the Doctor leans softly inside and watches
Gwendoline with fascination.
She pulls open the first two droors in succession, looking briefly at the
collections of butterflies behind glass arranged in neat rows inside.
She pulls open the third and bottom droor much more slowly than the other
two, owing to the weight of its contents.
Its contents provoke the Doctor to enter the room properly and mutter the
words, "Beetles and bluebottles!"
Inside the droor is a traditional, blue-uniformed police inspector, right
down to the stereotypical white hair, sideburns, and moustache. His eyes
are closed and he appears as inert as the stuffed animals and other
collections in the house.
Gwendoline looks up slightly at the Doctor, then back at the policeman,
and she tells the Doctor that this is one of her favorites in the entire
collection, and that it's from Java.
"Java?" asks the Doctor in confused revulsion.
She tells the Doctor that the Reverend Ernest Matthews will be leaving for
Java soon, and wonders if he'll see her father there.
The Doctor asks again if her father is there, and she tells him her Uncle
Josiah sent him there after what he saw in the cellar.
The two tuxedoed monstrosities have Ace in their grips and are dragging
her towards the open dark, wooden door and the babbling creature inside...
As they pass Nimrod's unconscious form, the Neanderthal suddenly gets to
his feet, slams the door shut, and grabs a lantern off a table near the
door, lighting it to its brightest, and fendin off the ambhibian and
the reptile creatures with its luminescence.
Ace stands a few steps behind him as he asks if she is hurt. She ignores
the question and notes how the creatures don't like the flame.
From inside the locked door, the creature finds its primitive voice again
and gargles an order to the creatures, "Door must open!"
Nimrod hears it too and tells Ace that they must leave this chamber now.
The creature yells, "Open door! Quickly, quickly!" and the reptile creature
turns and begins to pull the door open....
Ace shouts to Nimrod that the thing is getting out, then tries to grab the
lantern away from Nimrod, thinking she has a better idea what to do with it
than he does.
Nimrod hangs onto it and tells Ace to remain calm and follow the tunnel out
of here. He assures her that while they have the lamp, they're safe.
Guess what?
The flame goes out!
"No more lamp!" cries the creature still inside its now-open cell, and
the amphibious reptile takes its opportunity and knocks the lantern right
out of Nimrod's hand. "Stop Ratkin!" orders the creature.
"I'll sort you lot out!" cries Ace as she grabs a cane from the floor and
starts bashing the amphibian creature.
As Josiah descends the stairs in the main entrance hall, the Doctor calls
out an accusatory question to him, "Josiah, Where's Ace?"
Josiah says, "How should I know?" and asks the Doctor if he has considered
his offer.
The Doctor responds that he's not Josiah's pet executioner, and crosses to
the lift doors, and he says Ace is in trouble.
Josiah reaches the end of the stairs and tells the Doctor that to cross
him would be a serious error, and with a point of his finger, summons
his servants....
Mrs. Pritchard steps forward with the night staff, holding a lantern in
the Doctor's face and insisting with a cheery smile that Miss Ace has
already retired to bed. She tells him to come and she will show him.
The Doctor turns away from Mrs. Pritchard's advancing and collides with
Gwendoline, who too is holding a candle in the Doctor's face and offers
it to him as a means to light him to bed. She tells him to sleep well
and says good night.
The Doctor looks anything but sleepy as he tells them all, "Good night,
sleep tight, up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire, otherwise known as Java!
Well, not tonight Josiaphine!" and he blows out Gwendoline's candle.
He tells Josiah his puppet show doesn't fool him at all.
He crosses back toward the lift doors and says that he's sorry to spoil
Josiah's big game hunt, but Ace needs his.....
The servants all turn and point revolvers at his head.....
....."help...." he says in a voice that says he's been through this bit
a few hundred times before....
"Let us go or I'll smash it!" shouts Ace to the creature in the room
as she threatens the glowing honeycomb chamber in the wall with a hit
from her cane. Strangely enough, it is Nimrod who is objecting to this
more than the creature, telling Ace to give him the cane, and that she
is profaning the Temple of Light.
Ace tells him she'll profane him in a minute, and yells at him to shut
the whining creature in the cell up.
Nimrod tells her that she's afraid and will not understand, and leaps
for control of her cane-weapon. Each tries to twist it out of the other's
grip, as Nimrod shouts that "The Sleeping One must be woken!"
They twist again and the cane hits the side of the honeycomb, causing it
to break open at the point of impact and eject a stream of high-pressure
gas, like steam. The stream knocks Ace and Nimrod to the floor into
the darkness of unconsciousness while the honeycomb chamber glows with
ever-greater yellow light....
A sickly musical whine pierces the doomy quiet of the entrance hall where
Josiah's servants hold the Doctor at gunpoint.
Josiah looks up at its source, a stained-glass window above the main
staircase glowing with yellow light.
"The fool!" he shouts, "What's it done?"
All eyes look up at the light, all but the Doctor's, who rushes to Josiah's
head, pulls out his radiation detector and points it at the nape of
Josiah's neck as though it were a gun.
"Right, Josiah," he threats, "We're going down the rabbit hole."
"Get that lift!" shouts the Doctor to the servants, who do as he says in
fear, calling the lift immediately to their floor.
He backs himself and Josiah with his raised-in-surrender white-gloved
hands toward the lift doors as the Doctor next orders them to open the
doors.
Ace picks herself up slowly off the floor and looks at the disaster she
seems to have created. The creatures are frozen-in-place and the
celled one silent. Nimrod kneels in front of the still-leaking and
still-glowing lighted oval and stares at it, transfixed.
"Brainpower!" she calls to him, and he just stares.
She gets up and calls "Tarzan, Nimrod!" and still he just stares.
"What's happened?" she asks him, and still he just looks into the glowing
light.
And the storm-clouds once again discharge static electric fire above the
dark shape of the house of Gabriel Chase....
"Light!" cries Josiah in fear as the Doctor ushers him at radiation-detector-
point down the tunnel to Ace's latest playground.
The Doctor quips that the light is at the end of the tunnel, and like a
man with a gun yells for Josiah to get a move on.
They enter the chamber and the Doctor calls over to Ace. She gets up
from Nimrod's side and asks the Doctor where he's been, and he asks where
he hasn't been.
When Ace joins the Doctor and Josiah, the latter puts shaking hands on
Ace's shoulders and demands to know what she's done to his observatory.
She tells him to get off and retorts that it nearly did something to her.
"Ace, you haven't been tampering?" asks the Doctor in slight dubiousness.
"It was an accident," insists Ace.
"All my work could be ruined!" worries Josiah.
"That's my girl," smiles the Doctor to Ace.
Ace asks her Professor to come on and get out of this madhouse with her,
but he tells her to keep Josiah covered with his "gun."
She begins to protest that this device isn't a gun of any sort, when he
clamps the "weapon" in her hand and points her arm out at Josiah with a stiff
smile on his face.
Ace gets the picture and shows Josiah a picture of the end of a "weapon" and
the face of a determined weapons' user as she says, "Move it you!"
Gwendoline sinks to the floor in a crying, weeping heap, and moans about
her father, wondering why he went to Java and left her, and wondering
where her momma is.
"I try and try, but I can't understand," she cries.
Mrs. Pritchard and the other maids step forward, and Mrs. Pritchard looks
down at Gwendoline with a holier-than-thou attitude, and tells her
that that is a wicked thing to say.
"Your mother would be ashamed if she could see you, and you're sitting
there dressed like a musical *trollop*.... It's this Doctor, filling your
head with his ideas."
The Doctor fills a hole in the altar in the basement with the glowing red
crystal rod connected to it, pushing it slowly into the surface.
As soon as it comes hard to its end stop, a white rod next to it rises
quickly with a low electronic hum, as though part of some puzzle game,
and keying off the venting of a jet of steam from a vent on the right
side of the glowing chamber.
The Doctor picks up a large, ornate pot off the floor, and uses it to
shield his face from the steam as he moves the pot against the stream
until it covers the vent, where he hangs the pot on the vent, thus
stopping the jet.
The Doctor slaps his hands together in satisfaction and declares it to
not be a patch on the Flying Scotsman.
Josiah kneels helplessly watching as Ace still holds the "gun" on him.
He calls over to the still-still Nimrod and tells the "fool" to "get up,
it's gotta be stopped!"
The Doctor steps over to Nimrod and examines his head, gently touching his
face and Neanderthal forehead, and giving his diagnosis that it would be
better not to move him.
Ace tells the Doctor that Nimrod fell against the glowing chamber-"thing."
The Doctor says Nimrod disturbed whatever is hibernating inside.
Josiah tries to stand and warns the Doctor with fear for his own self not
to touch the chamber. Ace stares him back down to his knees, then
pulls the gun back a little into herself as she realizes he's scared of
the thing too, and says as much to him and the Doctor.
The Doctor says his fear is due to the fact that Josiah knows what's in
there.
Josiah protests that there's an energy escape that he must stop, with
urgency in his voice.
The Doctor tells him not to worry as he always leaves things till the last
moment. The Doctor crosses over past Nimrod and examines the creatures
standing inert in the corner. The Doctor calls them "husks" and half-asks
half-already-knows that these are old cast-offs of Josiah.
Ace tells him they attacked Nimrod and her.
Josiah tells the Doctor he's insane, for if the membrane is broken...
"Yes?" prompts the Doctor, and Josiah falls silent.
Suddenly on the left wall near the Doctor, the translucent blue strip lights
in a new pattern, a set of words or symbols or hieroglyphics lights up in
soft white letters across the surface.
Ace runs over to investigate along with the Doctor the things he pronounces
as genetic codes, leaving Josiah to do as he pleases behind their backs...
The Doctor remarks that Josiah has done a lot of exploring in here, and
as he makes his remarks, Josiah leans over to the dark wooden writing desk
near him and pulls a revolver out of a drawer....
Ace remarks that this is a stolen spaceship.
The Doctor says she's right, and that the real owner won't be pleased when
he wakes up.
Josiah now stands and slowly aims the gun at Ace's back as he tells them
he's the real owner.
The Doctor says no he's not, he says Josiah's just part of the cargo, and
as he speaks, he turns away from the codes back to Josiah, and so does
Ace, and both are dismayed to see him armed and dangerous.
It seems like a Mexican standoff between Josiah and Ace's "weapons" as
Josiah sneers with envy how the Doctor is so smug and self-satisfied.
The Doctor says he tries.
Ace tells Josiah to drop his gun, but Josiah ends the standoff when he
tells them both he knows now that that device is a radiation detector
rather than a gun. The Doctor takes the detector and pockets it with a
frown on his face.
Josiah tells them they're going to help him stabilize the energy loss or
most of Southern England will go up in a firestorm.
As he gestures them over to the main control altar, the creature behind
the wooden door peers through its eyehole and says it will be free.....
Josiah orders them to align the crystal rods when he instructs them.
Ace says that after this is over she'll get a job at Sellafield where it'll
be safer
As the Doctor turns to the altar, he whispers to Ace to "do what I do when
I do it."
Ace says that's very helpful.
Josiah orders them to lower the first rod.
The Doctor starts stalling for time and babbles, "Oh dear, oh dear, skeletons
in the cupboard, husks in the cellar..."
"...Bats in the belfry?" completes Ace.
Josiah shouts at them do "Do it!"
The Doctor chastizes him and warns him he'll never evolve into a nice Victorian
gentleman if he shouts.
Ace asks if those things in the corner really used to be Josiah, and the
Doctor says yes, and adds that Josiah's current form isn't much improvement
on a reptile.
Josiah loses his temper and runs to the Doctor where he nearly rams the end
of his gun up the Doctor's nose as he yells once again, "DO IT!"
This is the type of thing the Doctor hoped for, so he smiles at Ace and
shouts "Now!"
Both the Doctor and Ace slam their fists down on the two raised rods and then
both duck. Josiah doesn't duck, and catches the full force of not one but
two steam jets blasting him full in the face from the sides of the hibernation
chamber. He clutches at his face in pain and stumbles to the floor,
dropping the gun which Ace picks up.
The Doctor examines their handiwork and the now completely blue hibernation
chamber and says he thinks congratulations are in order.
As Ace asks what he means, the creature behind the door shouts out into the
now much darker room to the husks for them to "Give me freeness!"
The two husks start moving from their corner and begin opening the door
to let the demon inside out.
The Doctor and Ace pick up Josiah and Nimrod and run for it, down the tunnel,
making for the only exit, the lift.
As they run, the creature and the husks follow, the creature howling that
"Control needs freeness now! Free, be like you!"
The Time Lord, the woman, the Neanderthal man, and the whatever-Josiah-is
clamber into the lift and try to close the door, but the Control creature
has forced one hand into the lift and is preventing its sealing.
Curiously enough, the hand looks somewhat human, and seems to be wearing
a lady's white lace glove. It rasps at them to give it its freeness!
The Doctor shakes the hand and introduces himself as the Doctor and his
friend Ace. Ace says Control can just call her Ratkin.
The creature's hand moves up from the Doctor's hand to the top of his
shirt, trying to get to his neck, and hacks at them: "Oh, poor Control!
No way up. No escaping!"
Josiah tells them not to listen to it, "It's a depraved monstrosity!"
"Depraved or deprived?" asks the Doctor. He tries to prise the hand off
his shirt and pets it saying "there, there Control, there, there..."
He then asks himself which of these two, Josiah and Control, which is
the Jekyll and which is the Hyde.
Control suddenly seems to adopt a Cockney accent and says, "Spare a
farthing Guv'nor, pity poor Control, locked away all alone....Free!"
Josiah suddenly slams his fist down on Control's arm, breaking its
grip and making it yank its hand back into the tunnel, allowing the
lift door to close.
The maids and Mrs. Pritchard turn to the lift doors in the main hall as
they hear it start moving. Mrs. Pritchard says they're coming, then
looks worriedly at the time on the grandfather clock, for it's nearly
six a.m. and first light......
Ace looks at the Doctor bent over looking at a near-unconscious Josiah.
Josiah's face seems to be developing flakes, and Ace shouts above the
din of the noisy lift that he's getting weaker.
"It's been a hard day's night!" proclaims the Doctor, and he says that
Josiah's evolving again, to his next stage.
The Doctor pulls at one of the flakes and a piece of Josiah's skin peels
easily away in his fingers.
The lift stops at the main entrance and the maids form a circle around it,
pointing their guns at the lift doors as they open.
Josiah stumbles up from the floor of the lift and pulls the lift switch
inside right off the wall, telling everyone that he's sealed the lower
observatory, and they'll let Control rot down there.
The maids lower their guns and Mrs. Pritchard steps forward to help Josiah
up, saying he's ill with a worried look on her face as she sees the state
of his. She orders the other maids to help her help him.
They pick him up and he tells them to take him to the upper observatory.
Gwendoline is at the top of the stairs and she cries "Uncle!" at the
sight of his features. He gives us a preview of things to come as he
tells everyone to secure the house as he must change.
Ace asks the Doctor if they shouldn't follow them, and what they should
do about Josiah, and he replies that Josiah sounded a little husky.
He and Ace start leading a still-dormant Nimrod out from the lift and
across the hall to the drawing room as Ace asks if Josiah is changing
into one of those things in the cellar, to which the Doctor replies, "yes."
Daylight shines through a clear blue sky down on Gabriel Chase....
The Reverend Ernest Matthews sits in drug-induced sleep in a wooden chair
just in front of the TARDIS in the "upper observatory."
Thshort barrel of a revolver looks him point-blank in the face.
Josiah is holding the gun, and he suddenly turns the weapon to another
target and fires....at a black and white photograph of Queen Victoria
with cross-hairs drawn on it.
The noise wakes Ernest, he raises his eyelids and smiles at what he sees,
a Josiah Samuel Smith whose skin is badly peeling now.
"So hear you are at last," says Ernest, oblivious to everything that's
going on in the house, "Haven't I been kept waiting long enough?"
Josiah's hand rises to his mouth which he covers with a white handkerchief
as he coughs and hacks into it.
Ernest perceives that Josiah is a sick man, and says as much with satisfaction,
and offers that perhaps this is divine retribution for his blasphemous
theories.
Josiah waves his hand and says the sickness will pass.
"And so too will your unholy theories of evolution," assures Ernest,
"It's a complete absurdity that the line of my ancestors can be traced
back to a protoplasmic globule."
Ernest eyes a bowl of fruit on the table between himself and Josiah,
and Josiah pushes it forward telling him to go on and take a piece.
Ernest selects a banana and begins peeling it at he maintains to Josiah
that Man has been the same since he stood in the Garden of Eden and
that he was never, ever a chattering gibbering ape.
He takes a bite of the banana, and as he does, Josiah begins hacking again,
this time with laughter.
Ernest asks what Josiah's laughing at.
"Devil take you, why are you laughing?"
He follows Josiah's line-of-eyesight down to his own hands, raises them,
and with surprise and shock, sees them covered with brown fur......
Gwendoline kneels by Nimrod in the drawing room and asks if Nimrod can
be woken now to the Doctor.
The Doctor doesn't respond, he just bends up straight and walks over to
Ace who is looking up something in a book from one of Josiah's display
cabinets. She says Josiah's "lucifugous," and the Doctor adds that Josiah
doesn't like light either. :)
Ace puts the book down and joins Gwendoline for a look at Nimrod.
Ace asks the Doctor what's up with the spaceship in the cellar, and asks
if it's knackered. The Doctor tells her yes it is, but he fixed it.
He says Uncle Josiah knows as much about its secrets as a handbag knows
anout the Amazon desert. Ace notes that that sounds like the Doctor
and the TARDIS.
Gwendoline has snuck away unnoticed to the window. She holds open a curtain
and cries "Light!" in fear at the sunlight outside. She picks up her
skirts and runs out the drawing room.
Ace sits down in a large, comfortable cushioned wicker chair as the Doctor
tells her he's just started. She puffs out her cheeks in weariness.
He paces the room and says there's only one thing she hasn't told him
yet, and he turns and asks her what it was that frightened her so much in
this house in a hundred years time.....
...and he sees that Ace has fallen asleep.
Gwendoline runs up the stairs into the upper observatory to her Uncle
Josiah and the regressing Reverend. Josiah, his face even more peeled now,
beckons for Gwendoline to come to his chair.
She asks her dear Uncle is he is unwell, and he says he's only sick at heart.
Soon he will restore the blighted British Empire to its full power and vigor.
The Reverend now looks almost completely like some species of monkey,
and says, "You're no better than animals! ooh, ooh!"
Josiah smiles and says "the Reverend made such a tedious toy, don't you
think?" and then he pulls a small vial of some chemical out of a jacket
pocket and shows it to Gwendoline.
"Dear Uncle!" she smiles as she accepts his offer with glee, taking the bottle,
unscrewing the lid as Josiah says he's so glad the Reverend has to go,
asking her Uncle where the Reverend is going as she pours the chemical onto
the white handkerchief he hands her as he replies that Ernest is going to
Java, rising like a child going to play as she steps to the Dean of
Mortarhouse College Oxford's side and stuffs the wet cloth into the monkey's
mutated face........
The Doctor pulls open the bottom droor holding the policeman Gwendoline
showed him "from Java" earlier, and asks the sleeping man if perhaps he
would like to assist them in their enquiries as he snaps his fingers
in the man's face. At first nothing happens, and then suddenly his eyes
snap open to the snaps of the fingers of the Doctor.
Daylight continues to pour down out of the crystal clear sky onto the house...
....and into the clear windows in an upstairs bedroom whose curtains are
being opened by one of the day staff, the cheerful woman who greeted the
late Reverend Ernest Matthews on his early arrival. The sunlight pours
into the room onto the canopied bed that Ace is sleeping in, shining on
her face, causing her to blink and wake at the light.
"Hello?" she asks of the woman.
The woman picks up a large silver breakfast set on a silver platter and
tells Ace that the Doctor said Ace would be fair famished when she woke
up. She places the tray on Ace's bed and doffs the dome cover over the
meal, revealing a full compliment of scrambled eggs, hot buttered toast,
kedegree, kidneys, sausage, bacon, porridge, and cream.
Ace smiles in hungry delight and says "Cholesterol city!'
"No, dear, Perivale village," corrects the woman.
Ace starts tucking in to her breakfast-in-bed as the woman turns to a
wardrobe and pulls out a very good and expensive-looking white dress
and tells Ace that she was properly exhausted when she put her to bed.
She brushes down the dress a little, then turns as she remembers to deliver
a message from the Doctor that Ace join him and the police gentleman
in the drawing room.
Ace bites into her breakfast and asks about the policeman, and the woman
says it's high time they were called in, and that she said as much
to her husband, Mr. Grose.
Ace tells Mrs. Grose that she thinks she'll give that amiss actually and
that she wants to have a walk around Perivale village before lunch.
She remembers something the Doctor once said on Iceworld and asks if there
is a blacksmith on the village green.
Mrs. Grose smiles at the thought and says there isn't, there are in fact
only seven houses, and tells Ace that she's missed lunch, that it's
all of five o'clock by now.
Ace drops her silverware in surprise and asks "What?"
"Yes, almost evening," says Mrs Grose as she crosses the room to the door
and tells Ace that she must hurry since no one in their right minds stays
in this house after dark.
The door closes behind the departing Mrs. Grose and Ace stares into the
distance, suddenly not very hungry.
"Snap out of it Nimrod," says the Doctor as he snaps his fingers in the
caveman's face. He mutters that if he didn't know better he'd say this
trance was deliberate.
He then shouts into Nimrod's face that it only took ten minutes to wake
the most civilized and sophisticated police inspector.
This inspector of whom the Doctor speaks now enters the drawing room via
the normal door, busily eating a sandwich and speaking with his mouth
full. He asks the Doctor for confirmation that he earlier said this house
was owned by Josiah Samuel Smith, and on the word "Smith" bits of sandwich
shoot off the Inspector's mouth onto the Doctor's jacket.
The Doctor brushes off the spit and says he didn't say Smith owned the
house, but rather that he inhabits it.
The Inspector asks where Smith is, and points out that the whole house
seems deserted. He crosses the room to where Nimrod is seated by the
window and surmises that this must be the manservant, and comments that
he's a nasty-looking customer who must be a foreigner.
"Neanderthal," replies the Doctor.
"Gypsy blood, I can see it in him," replies the Inspector.
He goes on to say that gypsies are lazy workers and asks what's the matter
with this one.
The Doctor tries to explain that he's been mesmerized, and the Inspector
notes that these Mediterraneans have no self-control and they are too
excitable. They have nasty tempers too.
"Yes," remarks the Doctor, "especially when roused."
In the main entrance hall, in the lift-shaft, a hand pries itself up the
shaft into the floor of the lift, a hand wrapped in a lady's lace glove.
The voice identifies the owner, as it speaks, "Control, be free to change..."
The Doctor is becoming a little annoyed with the police inspector, and
points out that since the Doctor woke him, the inspector has consumed
three English breakfasts, two elevensies, and one full course meal.
He suggests he go and get Mrs Grose to make him some afternoon tea.
The inspector says she's hiding facts from him, and that so is the Doctor,
and he warns that unless he's told where the rest of the household is,
he will arrest the Doctor for obstructing his enquiries.
Ace breaks up the conversation and steps into the drawing room dressed
in the full-length white dress and whalebone corset Mrs Grose laid out
for her earlier. She tells the Doctor he could have woken her sooner.
The Doctor introduces the policeman as an Inspector McKenzie from
Scotland Yard. He was sent here in 1881 to investigate the disappearance
of the owner, Sir George Pritchard. Ace points out that that was two
years ago, and the Doctor says he's been in Josiah's cupboard ever since.
Preserveand hypnotised. He tells her to humour him.
The Inspector turns to them and the Doctor introduces Ace and Ace says
"Hallo, alright?" The Doctor pauses for a moment to appreciate Ace's
dress before he returns to Nimrod. McKenzie comes over to her with his
sandwich and a notepad and asks Ace if she can tell him where Lady
Pritchard is. Ace asks if he means the old bag the housekeeper while
she struggles a little in the corset. McKenzie asks if she lives in
Perivale village and Ace tells him she'll be moving to the area sometime.
Ace walks in a manner very non-Victorian in her Victorian dress over to
the Doctor and asks how Tarzan is doing.
The Doctor says there's still no change, Nimrod is still out like a light.
The Doctor's words suddenly give himself an idea, and he leans forward
closer into Nimrod's face and says "Light!"
And Nimrod wakes.
And outside in the entrance hall, the Control creature watches. We cannot
see its features as it walks hunch-backed allowing the filthy rags covering
its head and body to totally obscure its features. It peers in the door
and watches the scene in the drawing room.
The Doctor places the fang-tooth in Nimrod's waking hand and tells the
Neanderthal that the Fang of the Cave Bear calls him to tell him his tale.
Nimrod grabs the tooth and recites a history like a litany...
"At the season where the Ice Floods swamped the pasture lands, we herded
the mammoth sunwards to find new grazing!"
"Tricky things mammoths," says McKenzie.
"The wise men cast bones to make hunting magic," continues Nimrod,
"and spoke with the Voice of the Burning One."
Ace asks if this is a race memory, but the Doctor says these are his
own experiences.
"Now the wild world is lost in a desert of smoke and straight lines.
But Light will return...."
And from the door, Control repeats the words, "Light will return...."
The Doctor hears the words behind him and steps out the drawing room..
,...to the seemingly empty entrance hall. He looks at the lift as the
following Inspector McKenzie tells everyone this madhouse needs one more
good going over. The Doctor tells him that's a good idea as he makes
for the staircase, but warns him to be back by six. Ace sees something
in the lift shaft and tells the Doctor and he lets her know he's seen
it too. McKenzie asks why six and the Doctor tells him it's because
around here the forces of darkness don't wait until midnight to appear.
Ace steps over next to the lift shaft and says "Professor!"
He walks next to her and tells her he knows. She says she thought the
lift was broken and he tells her he mended it. He then shouts his
next words as if to make someone hidden nearby hear them, "It's very
clever, climbing up the lift shaft, but I had hoped the Control creature
would bring something with it, and for that, it will need the lift!"
"Professor, what's going on?" asks Ace and about four million television
viewers in our world.
The Doctor leads Ace into the drawing room and paces, and thinks.
he tells Ace to be quiet and then he says,"
"Josiah Samuel Smith and Control are frightened of it.
"Redfers Fenn-Cooper saw it and lost his mind."
"Nimrod, he worships it."
"Let there be Light?" asks Ace.
"It's asleep down there in its spaceship," says the Doctor, "and Josiah
doesn't want it awoken."
"Maybe that's a good idea," says Ace, "Maybe it should be left alone.
Professor, just this once."
"It's very very old," says the Doctor, "perhaps even older."
"Just one quick chat?" he says to Ace as if asking her permission.
Ace looks over at the window and sees that Nimrod is gone, and so she asks
the Doctor where he's gone. "Gone to see a man about a god," quips the Doctor.
They hear a small noise, a little whine or flittering noise coming from
across the room from the direction of the display cabinet.
They cross to the cabinet to take a look, and the Doctor opens the top
drawer to find the frozen specimens inside coming alive.
Ace reacts with disgust and the Doctor too is a little surprised as things
are beginning to hot up a little quicker than he expected.
He tells Ace to run and get Inspector McKenzie.
Nimrod opens the door to Redvers Fenn-Cooper's room and steps inside.
"Redvers knew the relief column would arrive," he says.
Nimrod asks Redvers to excuse him, and says that Redvers speaks with the
wildness of the Old World. He asks if it appropriate to seek his wisdom.
"You won't get far without good supplies, baggage handlers, animals,
porters."
Nimrod tells Redvers the one he serves, the Burning One, is waking.
"What should I do?" he asks the explorer.
Redvers smiles in his straight-jacket and tells Nimrod to hunt the Dark
Continent and seek what he desires, but be warned, he may find it.
Nimrod pulls a knife from his coat pocket and says he must release Redvers
from his bonds, but Redvers pulls his arms out free in front of him and
tells him that the Doctor did that hours ago.
In the stolen stone spaceship, Control and the two husks of Josiah are
operating the controls in the ship's main control altar, alighting the
hibernation chamber with yellow light.
"Not of poor Control," says the creature, "Control going, showing Light
way up. Then Control on way up too!"
Control presses one last crystal rod, and the hibernation honeycomb splits
open, flooding the room with a hideously bright yellow Light.......
Twilight is falling over Gabriel Chase as Inspector McKenzie stands in
a hallway very high in the structure. He hears an exotic bird call from
somewhere above him which startles him, until Ace steps up the stairs
behind him. She calls for him and asks if he's found anything.
He tells her depressedly that he's found nothing, and that this place has
more locked doors than Reading Jail.
The locked door behind them suddenly decides to be funny and open, so it
does, and Ace and the Inspector step cautiously inside.
A small insect crawls over the Doctor's hands. He tells it all civilizations
start with hunting and foraging. "Don't worry, you'll soon work your way
up. You must excuse me." He lowers his hand into the drawer, and with a
flick of his wrist flips the bug into the shelf, telling it "things are
getting out of control."
The door leads Ace and McKenzie up a short flight of steps into the upper
observatory, which at first appears deserted of living things apart from
the TARDIS.
There are several chairs covered with white sheets as though they were
new furniture. McKenzie takes the sheet off the right-most chair and
underneath is the motionless husk of the albino Josiah.
McKenzie remarks on its disgustingness while Ace explains it's all that's
left of Josiah Smith, a husk. She says she thinks they should get out of
here. McKenzie says that's nonsense and that this thing isn't dangerous.
He unsheets another chair and proclaims the head night-maid underneath
to be Lady Pritchard. "Lady?" asks Ace, and he says she's "Sir George's
wife." He takes the cover from a third chair and underneath this one is
Gwendoline. Ace suggests that she is their daughter and McKenzie's
silence seems to confirm her question. He does ask what is happening in
this house, and Ace plays the Doctor for McKenzie and says the two
women are just Josiah's toys.
She creeps to the corner of the room to look at a draped cabinet whose
plaque underneath is visible as the sheet doesn't reach that far down,
and this plaque reads, "Homo Victorianus Ineptus."
She says she doesn't want to see, but they unsheet the glass display
cabinet anyway to reveal a frozen and preserved monkey-mutated Reverend
Ernest Matthews, clutching a banana in his simien hands that once held
sermons.
"I think I'm gonna throw up," says Ace.
The Doctor steps into the main hall to see Nimrod standing by the lift
shaft as though waiting for the elevator. The Doctor asks him where Ace is
and he tells him he hasn't seen her, but that he must seek out the
Burning One. The Doctor tells him to stick around and he'll save him a
trip. Nimrod asks if the Doctor can summon it, and the Doctor tells him
they'll just say he made a deal with its agent.
A mechanical whirr starts up from the lift shaft and the Doctor frowns
at this. He says that that'll be them now. He turns and looks at the
staircase wondering where Ace has got to. He looks at the windows on
the door and notes it is not quite dark yet, but since he doesn't want
Josiah to miss the show, he steps to the grandfather clock and turns the
hands from fifteen to six to full six o'clock. It begins ringing its
chimes and the doors beneath the stairs open to reveal the night staff
gliding out their chambers.
The chimes of the clock also seem to set those in the observatory into
motion, with both Gwendoline and Lady Pritchard rising. Ace tells
McKenzie to get out of here quickly with her, but Gwendoline grabs and
holds Ace, and as McKenzie backs up, the human husk of Josiah reaches
forward and pins McKenzie to the chair.
From behind the TARDIS steps a newly-evolved Josiah, a complete Victorian
gentelmen in every detail from flesh coloring to the buttons on his
suit to the red hair, moustache, and sideburns.
At the sight of Josiah, Ace breaks Gwendoline's grasp and tells him,
"Stitch this Dracula," as she runs to the window and pulls the shade to
allow the last shards of sunlight in the room.
Even though there isn't much light outside anymore, Josiah spreads his
arms wide and tells her he no longer has to crouch in shadows.
Mrs. Pritchard grabs Ace by the hair again, while Ace tries to tell
Josiah he's no gentleman. He steps forward and caresses her face with
his hand as she tries to scratch and peel his face.
"Scratch the Victorian vanir, and something nasty will come crawling out,"
she spits at him. He is incensed and covers her mouth.
"You and that Doctor thought you could get the better of me," he
growls at her, "but I'll see him squirming yet!"
He releases her face and makes for the stairs, ordering his maids to bring
Ace with them.
As they leave, McKenzie tells the husk to let go of him, since he's a
police officer and he must do as he says. He wrenches in the husk's
grip and splits its arms wide to allow him to stand and get away.
"That's quite enough of that," says the Time Lord as he stops the grandfather
timepiece in the main entrance hall.
Nimrod says the Doctor is as powerful as he is wise as the chiming stops,
but the Doctor tells Nimrod to cut the home-spun twaddle, since he's
lit the blue touch paper and found that there's nowhere to return to.
The Doctor steps toward the staircase and addresses the mesmerized-maids
and tells them he hopes they enjoy indoor fireworks.
He flashes an open palm in the air at the stained glass window above the
staircase as though it were him that conjured up the yellow flashing
lights that now dance behing the coloured panes.
Nimrod cries out that this means the Burning One is coming!
The Doctor motions Nimrod away from the liftshaft and self-doubts that
"to catch a wolf, I may have unleashed a tiger."
Josiah leads the party of himself, Gwendoline, and Ace being held by
Lady Pritchard that now descend the right-hand staircase to the central
steps that lead to the main floor.
The Doctor says, "So you've finally evolved into a Victorian, how quaint.
Ace, I see you made it in time."
She tells him she's sorry she got caught.
Josiah looks with worry at what's going on and orders Nimrod to stop the
lift. Nimrod doesn't move, and the Doctor tells him it's too late for
that. "It's now time to shed a little Light on your plans."
Mrs. Pritchard orders her maids below to hold the Doctor, and so two of
them do, grabbing his shoulders and arms. Ace shouts with worry but
the Doctor tells her not to worry.
Josiah warns the Doctor that if he's made a pact with that creature he
doesn't know what he's doing.
The lift arrives at the main hall and the Doctor says they're all about
to find out, and he shouts at it, "You can come out now! We're all waiting!"
The door opens and from out the dark lift steps Control, still in filthy
rags but now with a clearly human lower face at least.
Josiah looks at it with hatred and spits hateful words at it, "Control,
quintessence of wickedness...corruption incarnate..."
"Thank you for trusting me Control," says the Doctor.
"My half greeingement done now," snarls Control, "What you desiring...
in the Darkness you shall find it!" says the now distinctly female Control
as she points a greasy hand into the black interior of the lift.
"DON'T LET IT OUT!!!" screams Josiah as he rushes in blind panic to the
doors and slams them shut, but he is thrown away immediately by something
like a huge electrical charge.
"Too late!" snarls Control....
...and the Doctor looks at the lift and speaks one word of summoning...
"Light?!?"
And the lift doors slam open and a brilliant, bright,
LIGHT
a huge yellow sun of a light erupts from within the chamber
and floods the room, forcing Gwendoline to turn her eyes away
and Ace to wince at the intensity.....
yet the Doctor still stares directly into the blast of pure,ellow
LIGHT.
END PART TWO
The Doctor
SYLVESTER McCOY
Ace
SOPHIE ALDRED
Josiah
IAN HOGG
Mrs. Pritchard
SYLVIA SYMS
Redvers Fenn-Cooper
MICHAEL COCHRANE
Control
SHARON DUCE
Gwendoline Reverend Ernest Matthews
KATHERINE SCHLESINGER JOHN NETTLETON
Nimrod Mrs. Grose
CARL FORGIONE BRENDA KEMPNER
Title Music Composed by Theme Arrangement
RON GRAINER KEFF McCULLOCH
Incidental Music
MARK AYRES
Special Sound
DICK MILLS
Production Manager Production Assistant
GARY DOWNIE VALERIE WHISTON
Assistant Floor Manager
STEPHEN GARWOOD
Visual Effects Designer Video Effects
MALCOLM JAMES DAVE CHAPMAN
Vision Mixer Graphic Designer
SUSAN BRINCAT OLIVER ELMES
Technical Co-Ordinator Camera Supervisor
RICHARD WILSON SPENSER PAYNE
Properties Buyer Engineering Manager
NICK BARNETT BRIAN JONES
Videotape Editor
HUGH PARSON
Lighting Sound
HENRY BARBER SCOTT TALBOTT KEITH BOWDEN
Costume Designer Make-Up Designer
KEN TREW JOAN STRIBLING
Script Editor
ANDREW CARTMEL
Production Assistant
JUNE COLLINS
Designer
NICK SOMERVILLE
Producer
JOHN NATHAN-TURNER
Director
ALAN WAREING
episode copyright BBC-Tv, MCMLXXXIX
this synopsis by Steven Manfred
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