"It's not clear. It's not clear at all..." The Doctor (The Dalek Invasion of Earth).
I've been reading some old issues of the Doctor Who Bulletin recently, covering Season 26. The majority of letters were in favour of this story, but with a significant number objecting to its clarity of plot. Even the favourable ones mention certain aspects of the plot being obscure, or admit they had to watch episodes several times - rather undermining their insistence that they "got" this story.
(Personally I think it was very much a case of the Emperor's New Clothes - or the Doctor's lyre-playing).
I also looked at the extras on the DVD and can't help but notice that Andrew Cartmel often responds along the lines of "Well I know what the writer meant...".
Well, he would - wouldn't he, having had ample opportunity to discuss the story thoroughly with Marc Platt, as that was his job. We lesser mortals didn't have that opportunity. We have to go by what appears on screen, as it appeared on the evening of broadcast.
Some of the issues are small ones - imagery which appears to have been included simply because it looked striking and weird.
What, for instance, is the business with Fenn-Cooper's snuffbox? Is Light inside it? What is the light which it emits? Isn't Light supposed to be hibernating down in the spaceship in the cellar? Then there's the glowing eyes on stuffed birds and animals. Are these supposed to have video cameras secreted inside them? Why do they suddenly make noises, when they're dead and stuffed?
How can desiccated and definitely dead insects come back to life?
Why does the candle suddenly flare up in front of Josiah Smith?
He manages to devolve the Rev. Matthews into a monkey - but by what means? Smith does things, but they are never properly explained.
How can his discarded husks have any animation for a start? We know that they were only included at JNT's insistence to give the story some traditional monsters, but some sort of reasoning behind their inclusion and subsequent actions might have been useful - apart from providing a cliff-hanger.
Who undressed Ace and put her to bed, and why can't she recall it happening? Did she beak into the drinks cabinet the night before?
Charles Darwin published his On the Origin of Species in 1859. Other natural philosophers had written along similar lines prior to this, with some evolutionary theories going back to the 18th Century. This story is set in the 1880's when the arguments between Creationists and Darwinists were hardly topical.
The way Matthews talks, Smith's "blasphemous" views are new.
Apparently the writer had intended the story to be set a couple of decades earlier - but JNT intervened as he preferred the frocks of the later Victorian era...
Smith does not want Control to evolve for fear she will supplant him - so why does he permit Mrs Pritchard to deliver her a copy of The Times every day?
(Understanding what's going on isn't exactly helped by the fact that we can hardly make out what Control is saying half the time).
What exactly is the point of the day staff, if everyone in the house appears to be nocturnal? Mrs Grose claims that you'd never catch anyone staying there after dark. If the house is that scary, why doesn't she just leave? Positions in service were ten a penny at this time - it was only with the mass casualties of the First World War and subsequent influenza pandemic that the days of the wealthy having huge households began to draw to a close.
And who - or what - are the maids who only come out at night? They look the same, so are they clones, or androids? There are four of them, but we don't see what happens to them all by the end of the story.
If the day staff are employed just to keep up appearances, then Smith is running quite a risk that Mrs Grose and the other servants might say too much about what they see / hear in the house. Perivale is pretty much still a village on the edge of London at this time, so gossip would be rife about everything.
The Doctor and Ace turn up at the house out of the blue. Instead of being arrested as trespassers, or simply killed as intruders, they are accepted and treated as guests, as though they were expected all along. If Smith knew who or what they were, it might explain this behaviour.
Smith thinks that human beings are the ultimate evolutionary forms on Earth - hence him wanting to be the top dog of the British Empire. But there are animals and insects which are far more successful than us - many insects like the cockroach, or animals which sit at the top of the food chain which would happily prey on humans. Some plants are even better at adapting than us.
If evolution is a constant process, with plants and animals adapting to conditions ever since life on Earth began, why hasn't Light ever noticed it before? It drives him insane now that he's awake, but it should have been obvious to him from the start. Didn't they have similar natural processes where he originated from?
Why did he hibernate in the first place - and why for so long? Why not complete his survey and simply move on to the next destination, or retire?
Ace got probation for committing arson. Highly unlikely even today but almost impossible in the 1980's. It was considered such a dangerous crime that a custodial sentence was almost guaranteed, minimum 5 years, but some people were jailed - or committed to mental hospitals - for life as the risk was always that they would do it again. Ace ought to have found herself in Feltham - the Young Offenders Institution south west of London. As someone who constantly rebels against authority, hers would probably have been a lengthy stretch.
Ace tells the Doctor that in her time she felt a sense of evil about Gabriel Chase, which is why she burned it down - but the Doctor must have already known all this - otherwise why did he specifically bring her here in the first place?
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