The Curse of Fenric

Chapter The 130th, which is really really good - let's cancel the series!

Plot:

The Doctor and Ace, posing as visiting officials from the War Office, visit a top secret naval base in 1943, where Alan-Turing-tippexed-over-and-retyped-as Doctor Judson is working on his Enigma-hastily-crossed-out-and-replaced-in-biro-as Ultima machine. The camp commander, Millington, has an unhealthy obsession with Viking folklore and in particular a local legend about a curse. Judson is using his machine to decipher some Viking carvings in the crypt of the local church. Meanwhile, a squad of Russians arrive, on a secret mission to steal the Ultima machine, the local vicar is having doubts about his faith during wartime, and a couple of evacuee girls - who befriend Ace - want to have a swim in the local bay, Maiden's Point, even though it's forbidden as it's a metaphor for sex. The Doctor discovers the church also has a secret laboratory beneath it, as it is built upon a source of natural poison that can be used as a chemical weapon. A vial of this poison is built into the Ultima machine, and it's been booby-trapped to explode when the Russians, who Millington knows all about and has been expecting, take the machine and try to use it back home. But, the same trick Millington is planning to play on the Russians is played on him. When Judson decrypts the final Viking rune stones, it runs a program on the Ultima which wakes the dead, or undead rather, as creatures emerge from the sea and ground.

These creatures are Haemovores, creatures into which human beings will evolve in thousands of years time, and they're also the original Viking victims of the curse and their descendants that settled in the area risen from the dead, and they're also any new victims who they convert, if they decide not to drain them of blood... Look, they're vampires, basically - no point trying to wangle some scientific explanation for them, they're bloody vampires. Anyway, the vampires attack the Doctor and Ace at the church, but with some help from the Russians, and a neat little trick where having faith in something creates a psychic shield, our heroes escape back to the camp, finding an ancient flask in the underground laboratory first. This flask contains an ancient evil force, Fenric, who escapes and takes over the body of Doctor Judson. Judson/Fenric's henchman is the ancient leader of the Haemovores, who'd been brought back in time to 1943 to create his own future, or something... Look, he's Vlad okay, he's supposed to be bloody Dracula, that's all you need to know. Anyway, they're going to kill all the humans, but first Fenric has to solve a chess puzzle that the Doctor set him millennia ago, which he's previously failed and that's why he got trapped in the flask in the first place. (As an aside, if I were an ancient evil force, and a Time Lord challenged me to a chess puzzle, and I lost, I think I'd just kill him and not get in the flask - Fenric is clearly an ancient evil force of his word.)

Ace inadvertently helps Fenric to solve the puzzle, but this turns out to be all part of the plan: Fenric can manipulate anyone who's touched by the curse, and Ace's Nan turns out to be a local - one of the the WRENs who works at the camp, and whom Ace rescued earlier. The Ancient One looks like he's going to come in for the kill, so Ace protects them using her faith in the Doctor as a psychic shield. But the Doctor undermines her faith in him by saying some nasty things, and the Ancient One is released; surprisingly, the Ancient One attacks Fenric instead, as the Doctor's persuaded him that Fenric is the bad guy. The Doctor explains to Ace that he only said the nasty things to break the curse once and for all, and Ace seems to have surmounted all her teenage demons.

Context:

Watched from the DVD with the whole family (the Better Half, boys of 12 and 10, girl of 7) over a few evenings. I considered which version to share with them: the DVD has the original four episode version, and an extended feature length presentation, knitting together all the episodes, updating the special effects and reinstating twelve - twelve! - minutes of cut footage. That updated version certainly makes the plot flow better and adds some nice character moments, but - as we didn't have time to sit down and watch it all in one go, it really had to be the original, as broadcast on BBC1 in 1989. Everyone really enjoyed it. Eldest boy, on seeing the introduction scene of Commander Millington, with his office mocked-up to look like how his Nazi counterpart's digs would look, said "Is that Hitler?" Then, whenever, Millington appeared, he'd say "Oh look, here comes Hitler again". It may be that he was just trying to wind me up, or it may be that he likes being mentioned on the blog, I couldn't say for sure. The Better Half pointed out that McCoy's umbrella was useful for the only time ever during a storm scene, and highlighted that Ace had laddered her tights in the church attack scene.

Addition: we finished the story just before swanning off for 10 days in Mallorca, and during this holiday it became clear to me that The Curse of Fenric had had quite an impact. Whenever anyone was standing by the side of the swimming pool and not getting in with the rest of the family, someone would say "You shouldah come intah the wartah wiv us, then we'dah bin tuggevah". I should mention that we were lucky enough to find an airbnb with a private pool, so this wasn't in front of strangers, but even so...

First time round:

A Wednesday evening in autumn 1989, and I'm crouched by the TV; a video cassette in the slot of the VCR, my fingers are poised to hit record. Anticipation rises. The continuity announcer talks about Bergerac being on in 25 minutes, and I ready myself. "But now..." he finally says - and I press record, breathing out - "It's Doctor Who". Blank tapes were always scarce in our house, at least until the 1990s when they became a bit cheaper. A whole season of late 80s Doctor Who, all fourteen episodes worth, would fit on a single 180 minute tape, on long play mode, which sacrificed quality but doubled the capacity of the tape; but one had to be careful not to include too much spool either side of the episodes themselves. The last thing I wanted was to miss the last few minutes of the final episode of the year because I'd left in too much blather about Bergerac. I've mentioned previously about my ineptitude where programming - or even operating - the VCR is concerned, and this razor's edge of pressure brought on by needing to conserve tape did not help matters. By the 1989 season, I'd got better, and I only failed to record (and see) one episode of the fourteen that year. The Curse of Fenric was not the impacted show, so I was able to watch it in full, over and over again, over the next couple of years, until the commercial VHS came out. That version reinstated a few minutes of footage, and that version was the one that I then watched over and over again until the DVD came out. I didn't find the DVD version quite so compelling, or I was just more busy, and so the extended VHS version is probably my default - I certainly noticed the 'missing' bits of this recent watch.   

Reaction:

From the off, it's clear this story is something very special. Filming on the water, a sense of scale and atmosphere achieved with mist effects, the first lines of dialogue being in Russian with subtitles - at the time, and even now, it screams out at the viewer about a level of sophistication that's rare for Doctor Who. Having watched this quite soon after another 1980s story, Frontios, which was the previous watch for the blog, the vast difference in approach - after only 5 short years have gone by - is phenomenal. Frontios was a studio only affair, yes, and Fenric has the luxury of being all on location. They're all really good locations too - the perfect church, bay, and camp. There's expensive-looking underwater filming too (done by a second-unit - it has a second unit, this is almost unheard of - helmed by producer John Nathan-Turner, and bloody atmospheric it is too). It's not just how it looks, though, as a lot of that's just down to budget. The script has such a density of rapid fire information being conveyed, it makes Frontios - a pretty good story, lest we forget - seem plodding by comparison. Now, stories from Sylvester McCoy's previous season often had a lot going on, lots of characters chasing around - but they didn't manage necessarily to make all those things cohere. Fenric, the first story filmed for the year, marks an evolution, as everything has been integrated well in order that the piece as a whole builds to a fantastic conclusion.

Keeping up a break-neck pace while still remaining coherent is smoothed by some clever stylistic choices: lots of inter-cutting between events, with dialogue running over multiple short scenes as narration; there's also some wonderful touches that add character and depth while not necessarily being slaved to unfolding plot - moments like the Reverend Wainwright reciting 1 Corinthians 13 to an empty church, or Millington's haunted look as he explains that the code word that will detonate the Ultima machine is 'love', or the Doctor quietly reciting his companions names, as he has faith in them. A lot of the heavy lifting is done by the fine set of actors that's been assembled, and they are more than up to the job. Every small guest role is expertly cast, with only the two young girls giving anything slightly less than believable (and they're fine pre-conversion - if they're a little wooden once they've been made undead, it's forgivable, I think). Whether star name or newcomer, everyone gives their all. Anne Reid, earlier on in her career, has a smaller and less showy role than she got when she appeared in post-2005 new Who, but she's just as excellent here. Nicholas Parsons is a miracle - his casting was pre-announced and caused a shiver of fear to run through the collected fandom of the day (perceptible even in those pre-internet days), but it was all unfounded as he comports himself excellently. Sophie Aldred also does very well with some stretching material, which dances coyly around what would be more overt sexuality in a more traditional vampire tale.

There's a confidence on display here, that - had they got another series - might even have developed into a deserved swagger. At the start, the two lead characters are at the height of their powers, Ace and the Doctor are completely unbowed by being surrounded by armed shoulders "What would happen if the Germans attacked now?" "In fact, how do you know we're not Germans?" - it reminded me of the Season 10 blu-ray box set stories that I've been watching recently, containing Katy Manning's last stories as Jo Grant. Just as in the 1970s, when Jo's character was allowed to develop and mature, so here. The final scene, where Ace is finally allowed to swim in waters loaded with metaphorical baggage, probably irritated a lot of fanboys at the time, but by golly Doctor Who needed stuff like this. It helps that the scene is accompanied by the best cue in possibly the best score of the period. Composer Mark Ayres managed to produce something in his bedroom on his keyboards that is the equal or better of any incidental music made for Doctor Who to this date, and it's just another reason to feel sad that this era didn't carry on, to see what great music he would have undoubtedly provided for future stories.

It's not perfect, of course. I've watched too many episodes of Foyle's War in the interim, which has made me conscious of the historical errors, including signposts to coastal locations still being up, Kathleen's tie being very wonky when she's addressing her C.O., an older man and a younger woman being billeted together... There's insufficient defences on the shoreline too, but that might have something to do with the deliberate opening up of an opportunity for the Russians to steal Ultima, so I'll let them off that one. There's probably quite a few logic issues with the plot too, but it moves fast enough that these don't really register. The big one that stood out for me on this watch was the Ancient One, on Fenric's orders, killing off all the Haemovores just before the end, so that the climax can be more focused on Fenric, the Doctor and Ace.  A more elegant solution to achieve the same aim should have been found, as it doesn't make sense for Fenric to ask it, nor for the Ancient One to agree to do it, nor of him having the power to do it. Also, I'm presuming that Ace's Nan remarried, as it would stretch credibility for Ace to know her maternal grandmother's home address but be ignorant of her mother's maiden name!

Connectivity: 

Four more episodes of 1980s goodness produced by John Nathan-Turner. Both The Curse of Fenric and Frontios are from their respective Doctor's final season, and in both the Doctor has donned a new version of his usual costume - Sylv has his darker jacket, Davison has his slight variant on the cricket outfit worn in his first two years. More monsters emerging from below, more focus in the narrative on records about people being a key to a mystery.

Deeper Thoughts:

Don't mention the war! The Curse of Fenric was the penultimate story of classic Doctor Who, the last but one tale of the show's first 26-year stretch, and it's the first time ever that a story has been set - wholly or partially - in World War Two. This fact struck me on this watch, and seems very unusual. As someone wise once posited, if you've got a time machine, a thought that will rapidly occur is "Let's Kill Hitler", or at the very least, let's pop back and have a look and see how accurate Downfall was. Stepping the other side of the fiction, one might wonder why it never occurred to anybody making Who for the previous 25 years that there might just be stories worth telling in the rich seam of 1939 to 1945. Why did a succession of production teams ignore what seems to be such an open goal? Partially, it must be that near history was a no-no. I don't think this was ever an official policy written down anywhere, but there must have been some reason, some blocker in the collective unconscious, as until the Sylvester McCoy era (the last three years of the original run) the nearest time period to the war depicted was 1935, then a big gap before the contemporary and future Earth-based stories.

The couple of other Sylvester McCoy near-history tales broadcast before Curse were set later (in 1959 and 1963), sidestepping the WW2 period, and would have been seen as contemporary when Doctor Who started, and perhaps too close to contemporary in the years the show ran after that. Also, the story set in 1935, the Abominable Snowmen, could have been set at any time really, as it focuses on an isolated community away from anywhere, and doesn't focus on anything that was happening in the 1930s. It is also only from that story's later sequel that it is retrospectively dated so firmly. Chronologically before that there are a couple of outings to the 1920s, but never for a whole story. You have to go back in time another thirty years or more to find regular historical stops for the Doctor - the show seems most comfortable in Victorian and Edwardian periods, plus a smattering of renaissance trips, and a handful of earlier historical periods visited, mostly in the William Hartnell years. The Second World War falls in a section of history that they just didn't want to go near.

The main reason, though, is that Doctor Who was doing WW2, but not in historically set stories; instead, it was playing it out allegorically in those contemporary and future stories. The Daleks were used multiple times as Nazi analogues, most notably in The Dalek Invasion of Earth which borrows liberally from World War Two action film tropes. UNIT too, for all it's post-war style of pan-nation cooperation, was from its inception heavily influenced by the experiences - direct or indirect - of soldiering between 39 and 45. That aforementioned Abominable Snowman sequel was The Web of Fear, and the soldiers depicted within it, though they are supposed to be from the near future of its 1968 broadcast, draw heavily on wartime or at least movies of wartime. People sheltering in underground train stations from a menace above would have been a scenario familiar to those watching who were alive and in London during the war, and the story's wider situation - the whole of London evacuated - would certainly have been something that was imagined as a possibility in those terrible times. There are dozens of other examples from classic Who, which is not surprising when one considers the experience of those of the age making the show in the 60s and 70s, and the long shadow that the war cast over all UK culture. In those times, to have done proper historical stories set during the war as well as it permeating everything else must have seemed like overkill.

In Summary:

The only problem with watching The Curse of Fenric is all the while thinking, "What will they do next series to top this?!!" and remembering that they didn't get another series, and there wouldn't be another one for 16 years. Boo.