Doctor Who Logo 'Ghost Light'
(3 Parts)
Story Code '7Q'

by Marc Platt
The Doctor

The Doctor takes the TARDIS to Gabriel Chase, a mysterious old house in Perivale, in the year 1883. The house is owned by Josiah Samuel Smith, and home to several strange people. The Doctor and Ace meet a deranged explorer, Redvers Fenn-Cooper, who has been driven mad by what he has seen in the house, Gwendoline, Smith's ward, and Nimrod, Smith's Neanderthal manservant. A creature named Control overpowers Nimrod and escapes from imprisonment in the cellar. Ace realises that Gabriel Chase is the evil house that she burnt down in the year 1983. Angry with the Doctor, she flees to the cellar, and discovers that it is in fact a stone spaceship. She is attacked by animated alien husks, previous forms of Smith, who is revealed to be an evolved form of reptilian life, brought to Earth in the spaceship. Smith intends to use Fenn-Cooper's invite to attend a party held by Queen Victoria, where he plans to assassinate the monarch so that the British Empire can be restored to its former glory. But Smith's plans are hampered by Control, in reality a female alien whose life cycle is in balance with Smith's own. Ace inadvertently releases the spaceship's real owner, a powerful alien explorer known as Light, who originally arrived on Earth in order to compile a catalogue of its species. On discovering that its catalogue has now been made obsolete by the process of evolution, Light turns Gwendoline to stone, and decides to destroy all life on the planet. But the Doctor convinces him that evolution is irresistible, and that he himself is also constantly changing, and so Light merely dissipates to nothing. Control has now evolved into a lady, while Smith has reverted to his earlier primitive form. They leave in the spaces ship along with Nimrod and Fenn-Cooper.

Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Sophie Aldred (Ace), Ian Hogg (Josiah), Sylvia Syms (Mrs Pritchard), Michael Cochrane (Redvers Fenn-Cooper), Sharon Duce (Control), Katharine Schlesinger (Gwendoline), John Nettleton (Reverend Ernest Matthews), Carl Forgione (Nimrod), Brenda Kempner (Mrs Grose), Frank Windsor (Inspector Mackenzie), John Hallam (Light)

Produced by John Nathan-Turner
Directed by Alan Wareing


TX:
Part 1 - 4th October, 1989 @ 7.35pm - 8.00pm
Part 2 - 11th October, 1989 @ 7.35pm - 8.00pm
Part 3 - 18th October, 1989 @ 7.35pm - 8.00pm

Notes:
*Featuring the Seventh Doctor and Ace

*Working titles: 'The Bestiary, 'Not the Bestiary' (a joke title by Marc Platt, after JNT didn't like his orginal title), 'Life-Cycle'