Image of the Fendahl

Chapter The 168th, let's hope Nigel Kneale and his lawyers were watching the other side.

Plot:

The Doctor and Leela, leaving K9 in the TARDIS as it was a somewhat rash decision of the Doctor's to accept him as a gift in the previous story and the scripts haven't caught up yet, investigate the operation of a Massive Great Plot Device (MGPD) scanner thingy that's being operated somewhere on Earth, well England. A small scientific team - two archaeologists, Adam and Thea, a rich electronics expert called Fendelman, and his assistant Max - are investigating a skull that's been unearthed and appears to be much older than the recorded origins of human life. They are using the MGPD scanner thingy for this in some way, and are operating out of an old priory in the Home Counties. Why work there? Unclear, but it's probably something to do with the haunted woods nearby, caused by a time fissure. The combination of MGPD and fissure creates power that the skull absorbs, and uses to entrance and transform Thea into the Fendahl, an ancient evil known to the Time Lords.

Unbeknown to Fendelman, Max is a satanist working with a local group. The visions and predictions of a local occultist Ma Tyler, who works as a cleaner and housekeeper at the priory, have been coming true and that's clued Max in to the power of the skull. Max imprisons Adam and kills Fendelman; then, with his followers who've arrived at the priory, he performs a ceremony which completes Thea's transformation. The Fendadl skull, all that remained of the creature after it travelled to Earth millions of years before, had been influencing human development though the ages to get to this point, hence Fendelman's name and all the other coincidences. Anyway, it backfires on the satanists who all get transformed into parts of the gestalt Fendahl creature, except Max who kills himself before being converted. Realising that this will mean the Fendahl will be incomplete and weakened, the Doctor, aided by Leela, Ma Tyler, her Grandson Jack, and a freed Adam, attacks the Fendahl with salt, steals the skull (to destroy in a star going supernova at a later date) and implodes the priory using the MGPD.

Context:

Watched from the DVD, one episode at a time, spread out over a couple of weeks. The Better Half is not in the mood to watch Doctor Who at the moment, but is separately embracing binge-watching of things she's already seen. In the last few weeks, she's completed a re-watch of Lucifer (Tom Ellis starring ex-US network show now on Netflix), and Fleabag series 1 and 2 on the BBC iplayer. Next up for her is Good Omens on Amazon Prime. In her absence, I was accompanied by all three children (boys aged 14 and 11, girl aged 8). The eldest was derisive about the supposedly impressive computers in Fendelman's scanner room, but kept watching every episode to the end. Middle child is getting very narrative-savvy, usually predicting accurately what might happen in anything he watches; this time he predicted Thea would be possessed from very early on. He also expounded at length after one of the middle episodes about the theory that life on Earth actually originated on Mars (Nigel Kneale would be proud - more on him in a moment). The youngest is getting braver; she wouldn't have sat through those creepy scenes of characters being stalked through the dark woods even relatively recently, but she enjoyed them this time. What upset her more was the Doctor offering someone a jelly baby when it was clearly a liquorice allsort on screen - she couldn't accept that! Everyone found the final large version of the monster comical and un-scary, with the eldest querying why it had party streamers coming out of its mouth. Because we watched the episodes spread out over quite a while, they had all forgotten the set-ups in the early TARDIS scene that were called back to in the button scene in the TARDIS at the end, with the Doctor calling K9 a 'he', so that fell a bit flat.

First time round:

I first got a tantalising but tatty glimpse of this story in the autumn of 1992 when a clip featured on The Tom Baker Years double VHS release. This was a proto-Gogglebox / Behind The Sofa Blu-rays extra presentation where Tom was shown at least one clip from all his Doctor Who stories to get his reactions and memories (there were more of the former than the latter). As it was released relatively early on in the range, it provided such a sneak peek of all the stories of his that had not yet come out at that point. The producer of the Tom Baker Years tapes was John Nathan-Turner, and - though it may have been my imagination - it did seem to me at the time that he was choosing some of the worst-looking clips from the three years of his predecessor in the producer's role Graham Williams, better to differentiate with those once he'd taken over and made everything glossier. The clip from Image of the Fendahl showed up the worst aspects of the Fendahl monster's cumbersome and unconvincing costume. Only a few months later in March 1993, when the story came out on its own video tape, I got to see that the production values were not as bad in the piece as a whole. I'd bought the tape from WH Smiths in Durham, as I was up there studying, it being term-time.

Reaction:

Based on several public pronouncements he made during his life, Nigel Kneale, TV sci-fi innovator and genius, did not like Doctor Who, but Doctor Who certainly liked him. Arguably, the shadow of Kneale's work, particularly the 1950s Quatermass serials, was cast over Who from its very first story, and in the years since and to date it has continued periodically to seek inspiration / shamelessly steal from that source. Image of the Fendahl is perhaps the epitome of this tendency, merging as it does elements and approaches from three famous Kneale works, Quatermass and the Pit, The Stone Tape and The Road. Despite this, or possibly because of it, the story is well thought of by fandom; the general consensus is that while it's not an out-and-out classic, it is an effective horror-accented adventure from the last days of Tom Baker's Imperial phase. Is it more than the sum of its individual 'homage' parts, though? Yes, I think so. Writer Chris Boucher brings things to the party that Kneale wouldn't or couldn't, and the foremost of these is a lightness of touch regarding characterisation. Boucher creates characters that despite the heightened scenario are grounded without being dull. Little moments like Adam and Thea cheerfully ribbing Max about not making the breakfast when it was his turn go a long way, as does some great dialogue. Kneale's characters tend to be a bit more sombre and single-minded, and when he tried to introduce more levity he turned out Kinvig, widely considered to be his least impressive work (though I rather liked it at the time).

The dialogue, as well as being more fun than Kneale's, is better than usual for Doctor Who too. When I first saw this story, my only previous experience of Chris Boucher scripts were The Robots of Death and the Star Cops series, which were both more zinger-laden than Image of the Fendahl, so I was disappointed on first watch. This time, though, I realised how close run a thing it is. Perhaps it's just that very early on there is a duff line, one of Doctor Who's worst, when Adam says to Thea that he accepts "without reservation the results of your excellent potassium-argon test". That overshadows much of what comes later none of which is as clunky. A lot of the good lines are also spoken by Adam, e.g. "You must think my head zips up the back", "I think you have an industrial relations problem". or the reply to an enquiry about what kind of corpse he's found: "A dead one, of course - what other kind is there?". There's also a personal favourite Doctor line "You know, I don't think these cows know anything about the time scanner", and the exchange between the Doctor and a withering Leela towards the end: "Sodium chloride. Obviously affects the conductivity, ruins the overall electrical balance and prevents control of localised disruption to the osmotic pressures / "Salt kills it" / "I just said that!".

The regular cast are on top form; Baker talking to cows one minute, and next minute walking into the room just as Thea collapses with an instantly commanding "Don't touch her". Louise Jameson as Leela gets to be brave and funny as ever, despite the backwards step of her being back in leather leotards again. The guest cast too are perfect. Dennis Lill is good at doing the mad scientist without going over the top. Scott Fredericks, as the closest the serial has to a villain, gives good sneer, but also has the great scene where he asks for the gun to sacrifice himself rather than become part of the Fendahl. Wanda Ventham is good, but doesn't have much to do once she is transformed apart from stand there and wave her cape about. Ma and Jack Tyler are also fun characters, but again they don't have a huge influence on the plot. Even the Doctor and Leela don't add that much. Though it is fun to watch them all interact, there isn't much that's pushing the plot along, and the ending is a last minute plan to shoot things and blow them up. This is cleverly disguised by the script and direction, but it all boils down to that.

A giveaway that some padding was needed is the narrative cul-de-sac in episode 3 where the Doctor and Leela disappear off in the TARDIS to visit another planet rather than stick with the action. They discover said planet to have been hidden by a Time Lord cover up, which has no relevance and is never referred to again. There should have been a better way to fill up the running time. Despite this, some questionable design choices, and a few other flaws, the story is indeed what everyone thinks of it, a solid Tom Baker effort from the end of his early phase, before things got a bit too silly. It also has more jokes than the Quatermass serials combined.

  

Connectivity: 

Slim pickings are to be found in the search for connections between Galaxy 4 and Image of the Fendahl. Both feature cute family-friendly robots (though K9 is only barely in the story), and the antagonist is female in both (though Thea is more of a possessed victim than full-on baddie like Maaga); that's about it.

Deeper Thoughts:

Scare factoring. The latest Doctor Who Magazine, to tie-in with Halloween, features a top 50 of the show's scariest moments. The purpose of any such article is to provoke debate or even fury, such passion being good for the subsequent issue's letters page. So, maybe I'm playing into their hands, but I didn't think many of the examples presented were that scary at all, and I didn't agree with much of the ordering. Image of the Fendahl, for example, is represented by the end of part one, with the Doctor rooted to the spot intercut with the skull starting to glow. That's the right choice of scene, I think, being the creepiest moment in the story, but it is languishing near the bottom of the 50, with scenes placed above it not scary at all - most of them are just thrilling, some strange, but not many provoking fear. As an example, Spearhead from Space makes the top 10 for the celebrated scene of dummies smashing through shop windows and going on the rampage, but that's an action sequence, an all-out attack. If anything it comes as a relief, a moment of catharsis after the build up of the previous episodes. There are various slower, more gradual scenes in those earlier episodes that I'd say therefore qualify better for this list: Ransome in the factory with - unbeknownst to him - one dummy in a long line behind him breaking ranks, and stalking towards him; the Doctor and Liz alone in the waxworks, surrounded by dummies who may or may not come to life any moment; Scobie opening the door to find his plastic replica staring back at him, advancing slowly. All these, though, are creepy but are they truly horrifying? Is there a difference? I know these things are very personal, and maybe I'm splitting hairs, but I believe there is, and will try to interrogate why.

Generally, when I think of Doctor Who - and I'm certainly not alone in this - I think of corridors. Sometimes these are corridors in an old mansion house, sometimes they are corridors in a gleaming space station; not a fusion of science fiction and horror following the pattern laid down by the pioneering Quatermass serials mentioned above, but sometimes one, sometimes the other, and sometimes, yes, both. Sometimes the characters race down these corridors (action adventure) and sometimes they slowly creep, fearful of what's around the next corner (horror again). Despite all the 'Behind the Sofa' commentary over the years since the very beginning, Doctor Who was never primarily a scary show, because it was never primarily any one kind of show. More by accident than design, but very early on, it's prime production movers (including producer Verity Lambert, script editor David Whittaker, and regular writing contributors John Lucarotti and Terry Nation) broke any structural template that might have been laid down in the show's pre-production gestation. This time it's going to be a survival drama, then there'll be the Bug Eyed Monsters that the commissioning high-ups said should never be included in the first place, then we're going to do a surreal chamber piece where everyone goes mad stuck in the TARDIS. Well, then, I'm going to do a sweeping historical epic that takes place over months and months of narrative time. Okay, not to be outdone, I'll make the story after that a quest narrative where the genre changes every single episode.

So it continued. Through desperation for stories to put on every Saturday, those early Who pioneers created something unique, the show that could sample anything and turn it into 'Doctor Who'. That's the macro level, but even at the micro level things could never get too scary before there would be a joke, or a counterpoint with the endearingly mundane, or some philosophical strangeness, or some spectacle on a budget (indoor fireworks). There were children watching, so the truly horrific could never be fully embraced. Again perhaps more by accident than design, by reflecting life's plurality and not wanting to scare the kiddies too much, Doctor Who embraces a cautious optimism that is particularly attractive. Things will be bad, but we'll work together and we'll get through it. Horror, on the other hand, usually has a more bleak message than that, because the evil is never truly defeated, and usually comes back in some way at the end (or in the sequel, or both). So, even though at first I was surprised that Doctor Who Magazine had never done such an article before, I think now that it may be because Doctor Who doesn't have that many truly scary moments; there is always hope in the mix somewhere. Looking back, only three moments strike me as having properly scared me when watching Doctor Who, either as a child or an adult. Let's look at each of my top three, to see if my theory holds.

Number three is from The Seeds of Doom (it makes number 13 in the article): Keeler is tied to a bed, gradually being converted into a Krynoid, begging for help, and his voice and vocal patterns gradually change as he stops being human and becomes a predator of humans. This is lovely body horror style stuff, but it is extra bleak because a character is asking for help and neither the Doctor or his companion can do anything for him. I find the whole of this story unsettling, as the menace is actually natural plant life, meaning - as every gardener knows - it is relentless and can only be kept at bay for so long. Number two is the whole of the David Tennant story Midnight. A particular moment makes the article's number 19, but everything in the story is unnerving, and is finely calibrated through clever changes to ratchet up the tension (the creature inhabiting Sky starts copying everyone's speech, then syncs up so she is saying everything simultaneously, then zeroes in on just the Doctor ignoring everyone else, then starts to overtake him, so he is copying her, effectively stealing his speech and his soul). Again, this is much bleaker than usual: not only can the Doctor not help, but everyone else fails to work together too. The defeat of the monster happens by accident, and at the end the characters and audience know nothing about what exactly the threat was, meaning it could come back at any time. I think this is the closest Who has come to effectively doing a true horror without overstepping the bounds of acceptability for its audience.

My number one scariest moment ever did not make the article at all, though a different moment from the same story did. It is the material either side of the episode 2 cliffhanger of Kinda. The Doctor, Saunders and Todd sit around the small wooden box of Jhana. The narrative has established that opening this box has potentially killed, or driven mad, anyone who's tried it before. The tension builds, the Doctor is forced at gunpoint to open it, Todd screams, the theme tune crashes in, roll credits. The next week, though, it gets better. A jack-in-the-box jumps out, and everybody laughs. This is a classic Horror effect, the "Cat" or false scare. But it is immediately followed by something else coming out of the box. Again, the Doctor and other characters are unable to stop something happening, and there's the terror of the unknown, but interestingly it turns out not to be something bleak at all, exactly the opposite really - it is an attempt to bring the conflicting factions of the story together. But the alien quality of the communication is frightening as well as intriguing. As such, I think this might be something rare in Doctor Who, a fusion of true horror and true science fiction, using the grammar of the first to explore the ideas of the second. This story and the other two of my top three are coincidentally all stories I have not yet covered for the blog, so it will be interesting when I finally get to them, to see if I still feel the same about these moments.

In Summary:

Derivative and a bit tatty, but still effective