NOTE: there are spoilers about the ending of the story in the review below. Exercise caution if you haven’t watched it yet, but plan to.
The TARDIS doesn’t travel far from its last stop: ahead in time from the Victorian to the Edwardian era, and a little ways in space from London to the tiny offshore island of Fang Rock, where a lone lighthouse stands to warn ships off its dangerous shores— and where an alien spaceship has crashed in the waters nearby, releasing a creature determined to kill everyone on the little island.
This episode presents an especially claustrophobic example of Dr Who’s classic “Base Under Siege” format, with a small cast of characters and action taking place almost entirely within the tiny rooms of the lighthouse. It fits right into the style and tone we’ve had in Dr Who over the last couple of seasons, a suspenseful horror story in a spooky, atmospheric setting. This time the source material is any classic monster movie (“The Thing From Another World” comes especially to mind) and it’s another good outing for behind-the-sofa, “Gothic Horror” Dr Who.
Details
- New producer Graham Williams hasn’t had a chance to make his mark on the show yet. As with previous turnovers, he begins his tenure working with stories commissioned by his predecessor, and that’s particularly true because the turnover was so abrupt this time (see last week’s post). Robert Holmes is still credited as script editor, and will be until the middle of the season, since all the work on the early scripts for season 15 was done before the new editor, Anthony Read, came on board. So it’s no surprise this story fits right into the Hinchcliffe/Holmes era (and reflects Hinchcliffe’s plan to have a series of stories all set in the Victorian/Edwardian eras). That being the case, it’s probably only confirmation bias that makes me look for ways to say it’s not as good as previous episodes— the truth is that Horror of Fang Rock measures up to the standard.
- The story was written by Pertwee-era script editor Terrance Dicks and began with a writing challenge issued to Dicks by his friend Robert Holmes: could he write an entire Dr Who episode set inside a lighthouse? Dicks rose to the challenge, although he did include a few scenes on the rocky island outside.
- Very unusually for a Dr Who story, this episode ends with the Doctor and Leela as the only survivors from the entire cast of characters, leaving behind a probably-insoluble mystery for whatever human authorities eventually come along. While it fits the classic monster genre for only the main protagonist to escape in the end, it’s fair to ask if the Doctor actually managed to do any good here, since in the end he wasn’t able to save anyone (except for himself and Leela, who to be fair were as much in danger as anyone else). A final climax that comes largely out of nowhere has the Doctor destroying the alien spacecraft in order to head off a full invasion of the Earth, but it’s such a small part of the actual story (compared to defeating the monster itself) you have to wonder if Dicks only added it so that it would at least make some difference that the Doctor was ever there.
- Speaking of destroying the alien spacecraft, it’s usually said that the Doctor uses a diamond to convert the lighthouse lamp into a laser beam, and some fans have complained about the fact that this wouldn’t work. To which I answer: 1) you already don’t know what program you’re watching if you complain that Dr Who fails as “hard SF” and 2) it’s not a laser beam anyway. It is an energy weapon, but the Doctor contrasts it with a laser beam: when asked what he’s doing, he says, “It’s like a laser beam, but far more destructive.” He also says it’s something that will specifically react with the alien ship’s power systems. The defense rests.
- Mind you, he gives that explanation to two people who have never heard the word “laser” before, so it probably didn’t help them any.
- Speaking again of destroying the alien spaceship, despite being warned against it by the Doctor, Leela looks back when the weapon fires and is temporarily blinded. At first she asks the Doctor to kill her (“It is the fate of the old and crippled”) but the Doctor reassures her that her eyesight will be fine once the spots clear. He does note, however, that “pigmentation dispersal caused by the flash” has made her eyes change color: they’re now blue. The scene was added because actress Louise Jameson found the brown contact lenses she wore as Leela last season caused her a lot of discomfort, and she’d asked if they could write a way for her to get rid of them. This just raises the question of why she had to wear them in the first place. If Louise Jameson can have brown hair and blue eyes (as she does), then why shouldn’t Leela? Anyway, from now on Leela has Jameson’s natural blue eyes.
- Speaking of Leela again: one minor complaint about this episode, that I probably wouldn’t notice if hindsight did tell me it’s going to get worse in coming stories: she starts to suffer an intelligence downgrade. In previous stories, the writers have done a great job in knowing the distinction between ignorant and stupid when it comes to Leela. She has no knowledge to help her understand what she’s seen since boarding the TARDIS, but when the Doctor explains something, she gets it— and by translating things into terms she knows, she’s shown herself quick to understand the situation and what she has to do about it (although her solution is usually too violent for the Doctor’s taste). Starting in this episode, that begins to slip. It’s not too bad in this story, but in episodes to come her lack of knowledge will start getting treated more and more as a lack of intelligence. Which really undermines the character, and is too bad.
Next week:
“The Invisible Enemy,” 4 episodes.
