The Stones of Blood

Chapter The 235th, which demonstrates that it is relatively easy to get blood into a stone. 

Plot:

Sometime around 2000BC, the villainous Cessair of Diplos stole the great seal of Diplos, really the third segment of the Key to Time, giving her the power to transform the appearance of people and objects. She then abducts some silicon-based lifeforms called the Ogri from their home planet of Ogros to use as muscle; these creatures look like massive stones and drink blood. Somehow she still gets caught, and is taken off in a hyperspace ship for trial, with the arresting officers, plus justice machines called Megara sealed in one of the ship's chambers. They also transport the powerful seal and the Ogri in the same ship, which is asking for trouble. Cessair escapes and takes her weapon and hench-monoliths with her, leaving the ship stalled, and transfers from hyperspace to the corresponding area of real space: somewhere in rural England. The Ogri pose as part of a megalithic stone circle, and Cessair takes on a variety of aliases over the years so she has control of the land on which the stone circle stands. She could go anywhere and do anything, but she chooses to spend 4000 years pretending to be a Celtic goddess, the Cailleach. In the late 1970s, the Doctor, Romana and K9, arrive at the stones searching for the third segment. Cessair is now posing as Vivien Fay, a research assistant to Professor Emelia Rumford, presumably to sabotage the study Rumford is doing, the latter's curiosity having been piqued by discrepancies in the numbers of the stones recorded over the years. 

The Doctor visits De Vries, the leader of a local (fake) druid society based in a nearby manor house, and ends up the centre-piece of a pagan sacrifice, his blood to be food for the Ogri. Meanwhile, Vivien / Cessair cosplays as the Doctor using the segment's power and tricks Romana into falling off a cliff. Luckily, the 'druids' have second thoughts; plus, Romana manages to hang on. After having failed to sacrifice the Doctor, De Vries is killed by an Ogri; examining the manor house after this, the Doctor and Rumford find clues that help them piece together that 'Vivien' is behind everything. Cessair sends Romana to the hyperspace ship, so the Doctor builds a gizmo to follow her, which Rumford and K9 operate. While on the ship, the Doctor opens the seals on the Megara (who appear as floating sparkling balls), which they inform him is a capital crime. With Cessair in attendance, the Doctor defends himself appealing the death penalty, trying to get the Megara to realise that their escaped defendant is in the room. He fails, but moves near to Cessair at the point when the Megara are going to execute him; the Megara inadvertently knock her out, then scan her brain to check she's okay, revealing her identity. The Megara punish Cessair by turning her into another stone in the stone circle back on Earth. Before the Megara can carry out sentence on the Doctor, he uses the seal (somehow) to banish them back to their ship and the ship back to Diplos. The Time Travellers leave Professor Rumford and carry on with their quest...

Context:

After enjoying watching the last Doctor Who story for the blog on a Saturday morning, I did the same for episode one of The Stones of Blood. Last time, this led to many members of the family coming in and watching for long periods, but absolutely nobody so much as glanced in from the doorway this time. Separately, though, the two youngest (boy of 12, girl of 10) unexpectedly asked to join me for the next Who watch - this was after I'd caught up on parts two to four over the weekend. We'll see if they are still interested next weekend. I watched the story from the disc within the Australian region DVD box-set. (Why the Australian version? See the First Time Round section of The Armageddon Factor blog post for more details, but be prepared for man-baby whinging!)

First Time Round:

This is the fifth blogged of a total of six stories from the Key to Time series, season 16 of the classic run. I first experienced every one of this linked set of stories in the same way: on VHS. The tapes were released in the first half of 1995, two a month between April and June. The Stones of Blood was one of the middle pair released on Monday 22nd May 1995 with The Androids of Tara. Following the usual pattern of my purchases of this era, I would have ventured into central Worthing after work on the day the VHS came out (I was employed at the time in a factoring company based a little way out of the centre near the hospital, and it was just a little too far to go there and back in my lunch hour and still find time for lunch) to Volume One, my supplier of the time. Volume One was a book and video shop with a large cult and sci-fi section. I'd have bought both the two videos and then most likely have stopped to get a burger in Old Nick's Diner, then get the bus home, all the while soaking in every bit of information available on the cover about the new and special delights that awaited me when I was finally reunited with a VCR. This would have included opening up the boxes and reading the inner covers too, as BBC Video at this point had started to print slightly more in-depth sleeve notes on the inside (as pictured below). Once I was back in my old family home where I was still living at that time, I was on my own; my sister was at university and my Mum was living almost full-time at my soon-to-be Stepdad's place. As such, there would have been nothing and no-one stopping me from gorging on all eight episodes in one sitting, and nothing and no-one did. Volume One and Old Nick's Diner are no more, the family home sold, and the video tapes long ago consigned to landfill, but I feel they are in some small way commemorated by my still retaining that VHS sleeve in a plastic wallet in a folder alongside all of its stable-mates.

Reaction:

The most memorable part of The Stones of Blood is a scene late in episode three that is totally divorced from the main action: two campers find Ogri, or as they appear to them massive standing stones, mysteriously and suddenly situated outside their tent. They touch the stones, their hands become fixed causing them immediate terror, and we watch as one of their hands become a skeletal version, flesh and blood absorbed; the screen then fades to red. It's a chilling and effective contemporary horror moment, but it is telling that it stands out, unencumbered as it is with the weight of the ongoing narrative. The ongoing narrative, you see, is absolute pants. The Stones of Blood is nonetheless overall a good example of this period of Doctor Who, but it works as a series of moments, some witty and some horrific, that are connected by a loose plot that essentially involves the characters travelling randomly - and often quite slowly - from one location to another, with a backstory that struggles to make much sense. To see this, you just have to study the text to try to locate any motivation for Vivien Fay / Cessair's actions, and you'll come up blank. She is an escaped convict, and has the Ogri and the power of the seal. She could pretty much do anything she wants, and could certainly leave the immediate vicinity of the prison spaceship in which she was previously incarcerated, Instead, she hangs around for millennia pretending to be a goddess, presumably popping back to the ship occasionally to check it's still in the same state, acquiring a stately home and various minor positions of power over the years, and having herself immortalised in oils for a portrait every so often.

The three missing portraits clue is another case in point; it's a lovely moment when the Doctor investigates this Scooby Doo style clue, but the slightest scrutiny shows it to be absurd. If Cessair is trying to protect a secret identity and not draw attention to her superhuman longevity, why would she have commissioned three separate portraits of her unchanged mug over the decades, why would she exhibit them side by side in her house, and why would she only recently have thought to hide them, leaving very obvious gaps? It's similar to the investigation later when Romana finds out from cookbooks in the cottage that Vivien / Cessair is allergic to lemon juice; this fictional information only helps Romana and K9 to find a fictional planet of origin, through a fictional process of elimination, so could have been literally anything; she could be allergic to Bath Olivers or jelly or Sondheim musicals: go nuts, it's all made-up! The characters don't even use that piece of information in any way, so it was pretty pointless. Still fun, though. If one accepts that there must be some good reason why Cessair needs to continue - or at least enjoys - playing the fearsome beaked deity, her methods still don't add up. If she has the ability to transform into other things, why does she need to dress up (having said that, the feathered all-over number with plague mask is wonderfully scary and memorable). Can she also commune with the birds that seem to frighten De Vries so much? It's not mentioned as a power of the Key to Time nor the Guardians (though they do start wearing dead birds stuck to their heads in later stories, so who knows). Perhaps she has used the power of the seal to turn into the raven, but if so she appears to be in two places at the same time during the early parts of the narrative. How else though would De Vries know that his visitor is called the Doctor if  'the Cailleach' hadn't somehow told him? It's not clear and never explained.

None of this matters much, though: The Stones of Blood moves on to its next nice moment, fleet of foot, and gets to the end with the whole house of cards just about intact, held together by charm rather than logic. This story is perhaps the best use of the Key to Time arc plot in the stories before the season finale - giving the segment some powers that the villain can harness is an interesting twist on the established format, and also serves as a reminder to the audience half way through the quest of what it's all about. Behind the scenes there's a minor innovation too, with Outside Broadcast video rather than film used for the location footage, which happened very rarely in the 1970s. In general, the story is shot well - there's a beautiful low angle scene of K9 at dawn in the third episode. Well, I assume it's dawn. The story's notable for the use of a 'day for night' filter on some of the exterior scenes that doesn't quite work; unfortunately, the night-time lighting of outdoor set scenes that were staged in the studio is much darker, so there's still a visual bump between studio and location even though both are shot on video. The images on location seem a bit soft focus occasionally too, which may have been deliberate, but it's hard to be sure. The humour in the show, which is always to the fore in this period, is just the right side of taking the mickey. The scene where the Doctor takes on an Ogri like a matador, swirling his coat around Paso Doble-style, and tempting the poor stone creature towards the cliff edge, does go over the top (as indeed does the Ogri), but the rest is just slightly more restrained. There's much wit and wisdom, and some wonderful lines, like the Rumford / Doctor exchange: "Are you from outer space? / No. / Oh. / I'm more from what you'd call inner time".

Halfway in, the genre of the story abruptly changes. It's two for the price of one: the horror of the Ogri with their omnipresent heartbeat gives way to some harder science fiction of the hyperspace ship, and then a battle of wits in a (sort-of) courtroom drama.  Again, The Stones of Blood somehow gets away with side-stepping the genre promise of its earlier episodes. Lip service is paid with the occasional cutaway to the stone circle and the Ogri during the second half. One of these cutaways is a very well directed moment: most Ogri scenes see a septuagenarian leaving them behind at a slow walking pace, but the scene of K9 narrating them getting closer and closer to the circle as Rumford operates the hyperspace machine is tense and exciting. The main part of Dudley Simpson's score is good but not distinguished, but the cues accompanying the hyperspace scenes are much more distinctive and give it a lift in the second half. The Megara, flashing blobs vision-mixed into the main action, aren't that bad an effect. The story seems curiously underpopulated; apart from the cameoing campers and the Megara voice-only parts, there's only four speaking roles in the guest cast, and half of them are characters that are barely in any scenes and are dispatched early. The reason this doesn't matter is the other half of that quartet: this story stands or falls on the quality of two performances, Susan Engel as Vivien / Cessair and Beatrix Lehmann as Professor Rumford. Thankfully, they are both superb. Lehmann gives one of the best dotty scientists in the whole of Doctor Who's long history (and that's a crowded field). Engel's restrained and smooth criminality is a joy to watch. The queer coding of the couple gives an interesting subtext too (but its subtle enough to ignore it if you're not convinced and think I'm seeing something that isn't there). This is a female-led guest cast, with a token bloke and a couple of male voice artists; this was rare for Doctor Who in the 1970s. I haven't the time to be exhaustive searching back, but four guest speaking parts for women is probably a record for this era, if not for the whole of classic Who. They should have tried it more often. 

Connectivity: 

Both The Stones of Blood and The Curse of the Black Spot feature a space ship, its original crew dead for many years to the point that their bodies are desiccated, occupying the same place as an area on the planet Earth that is blissfully unaware that the ship is also there, but on another plane or dimension or some such nonsense; in both stories, the initial impact of an alien force on a character is shown by something happening to that character's hand (though it's a lot more grisly in the 1970s story).

Deeper Thoughts:

Target Acquisition - part 1 of 2. In 2021, I completed my collection of at least one copy of every Doctor Who novel and novelisation on the Target imprint, which I blogged about on occasion throughout the year. My collection stayed complete for - ooh - all of seven months. Now, for the third time in recent years, a batch of new novelisations has been published with the usual lovely retro covers; again, there's a mixture of classic and new series stories novelised. The latter category still provides ample scope for new releases, with only a handful of the many stories shown from 2005 onwards having been adapted into books; the former category meanwhile is close to done. With all the classic series stories completed in Target versions last year, the only couple left are two new versions of The Stones of Blood and The Androids of Tara, the prose written by original author David Fisher. These versions were made for alternate talking book versions, the original novelisations having been penned by Terrance Dicks soon after the television broadcasts; Fisher's versions are now printed on paper for the very first time. The Stones of Blood starts with a foreword by the author's son, Nick Fisher, also a writer, that's a heartfelt tribute to David, who's passed away since writing the adaptations. Another tribute, this time from a colleague, comes in the afterword, where Michael Stevens, the commissioning editor for the audio range, explains how this version originally came about: Dicks's novelisation was during the years where he was working on many titles, and therefore the books were very lean; Stevens wanted something more substantial for audio, and wanted to do something a bit different.

Fisher's prose is a solid and unpretentious as Dicks's work, and he does not deviate much from the story as broadcast except to smooth out some of the lumpier bits of plotting. For example, Cessair is shown to have mental powers from the seal that allow her some control over her acolytes, which she uses to get the original stone circle built. The book explicitly confirms that this also allows her to control the raven, rather than her transforming herself into one. This doesn't explain how De Vries knows the curly haired fellow in his manor is called the Doctor, though; a little bird couldn't have literally told him, could it? Because logistics and budget are no issue in a novelisation, there are many more birds in the narrative, including some gulls that try to push Romana off the cliff during the material that represents the episode one cliffhanger. The discrepancies in the number of stones can be more definite too, without having to adjust to a real world location: in the book, it's been surveyed as having either six or nine stones, depending on whether the three Ogri are on walkabout or not. Fisher returns the Megara to being the floating balls they were in his original script, rather than the sparkling lights of the TV production. There are a few extra lines and gags here and there, and sometimes dialogue is turned into character thoughts. There's not much of the inner life of the characters, though there's a nice couple of pages of Rumford using her archaeological skills to find where the crystals to power the Doctor's hyperspace gizmo might be hidden in Vivien's cottage. Something of a motivation is given for Cessair's actions, but I don't really buy it. She stays near the hyperspace ship in case she can work out a way to pilot it and escape Earth, and has to keep sacrificing people to the Ogri or she'll lose control of them. It's better than nothing, I suppose.

In a note on the text at the end of The Androids of Tara novelisation, Steve Cole, project editor of the Target range, explains that both Fisher and Stevens were keen to do another audio book after the first proved successful, so Fisher was commissioned in June 2011 to create a new version of the story that was broadcast directly after The Stones of Blood. My blog post on the TV version of the Tara adventure can be read here, and it gives away instantly to the reader that this is one of my favourites from the classic years of Doctor Who. Would the prose version meet such a high level of expectation? Not quite, alas. The prose style is the same, and again dialogue exchanges are simplified by being turned into character thoughts or reported speech where possible. More than in The Stones of Blood book, Fisher provides chunks of backstory. The problem is that the Tara story doesn't need it. In a way these two stories are polar opposites; Stones is a very simple plot based on some complicated and sometimes nonsensical backstory; tidying up that backstory in the book is therefore useful. Androids, on the other hand, though the plot is slightly more involved with its doubles and double-crossing, results from very straightforward motivations for all concerned that don't need fleshing out. It's all just about who becomes king of the planet. So, the additional material tends to go into detail about people's family trees and history, and is not so essential.

Like the previous book, The Androids of Tara is robbed of the wonderful performances from the TV, but this seems to hurt it more than its predecessor. It's a souffle of a show, the rise coming from some wonderful actors creating little moments that can't be captured on the page. For example, Simon Lack and Paul Lavers make a lot from facial expressions and tones of voice to create fun and laughter watching them, but the characters on the page are just a couple of dull soldiers. Peter Jeffrey's sly and witty performance as Count Grendel lifts what in prose form is a very stereotypical tyrant. I'm glad this version exists, but it'll never become my go-to version over the TV story; to be honest, though, that was never a likely outcome. Two new series stories came out alongside the two Fisher books in this batch (and I'll review them next time); there was to be a third, Peter Harness's book of his scripts with Steven Moffat, titled The Zygon Invasion, which was announced but then delayed until next year. The rumour, though, is that it will be part of a larger batch planned to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Doctor Who. I look forward to it.

In Summary:

Not quite a stone-cold classic, but very enjoyable (almost despite itself).