Day 691: The Curse of Fenric Part 3

The major action scene for the Curse of Fenric is the Battle of St. Judes, where the Haemovores attack the church at the centre of the town. It's the scene that stuck with me throughout every viewing that I've had of it, and I even recall writing an assignment examining the music cues in the scene in Year 8. So what does the scene mean in the context of the fuller story?

For a start, it introduces the Haemovores as a threat. We see them as unstoppable monsters, immune to bullets and clearly very strong. This helps to cement them as memorable creatures, and a tangible threat within the story. But what's also interesting about them is their lack of voice. We only see their simple actions, and not the intent present behind them. Even those who can speak, being the vampiric Jean and Phyllis, focus more on attacking the innocents than actually developing some sort of concrete plan. This hints at a stronger force behind them, which we shall look at tomorrow.

There's also the weakness for the Haemovores revealed. They are particularly susceptible to faith, or as I would rather put it, a belief in good, for reasons that will become obvious later. After a long struggle, they finally burst into the room where the Doctor and the Vicar are defending in the church. In a moment of concentrated panic, the Doctor quietly starts reciting some words, which creates a beautiful aural effect forcing the Haemovores away in horror. The words are not meaningless, and are transcribed thusly: "Susan, Ian, Barbara, Vicki, Steven...". These words are the names of his companions, the people that the Doctor has faith in. They are the people who the Doctor knows will always do the best thing, that he trusts, that remind him that there is always good in the Universe. It's an incredibly subtle moment, but it reveals a massive amount about the Doctor and his trust in his companions. Tomorrow, then, we'll see how far that trust can be pushed...

Day 690: The Curse of Fenric Part 2

As Fenric continues, more themes emerge that are dealt with with a certain intelligence and adult viewpoint that wouldn't really have been possible previously in Doctor Who.

Take, for instance, the two young evacuee teenagers, Jean and Phyllis. They're young, rebellious, and similar to Ace, and in any other story, one might expect that they would end up as Ace's close allies throughout the entire piece. But instead, they are consumed with a desire for lust. They spend their days breaking rules and going down to Maiden's Point, the nearby beach, which is clearly meant to be a metaphor for having sex. As they cavort in these waters, they are dragged down and turned into vampires, representing creatures of evil, a natural progression from the darkness and lust already present within their hearts. And their first act as vampires is to lure a Soviet soldier to his death, coaxing him into the water with promises that it will be nice and lovely, only for it to backfire horribly on him, with deadly results.

So one could read this as just simply being that lust and sex are bad things. But that's not the full story here. There's a scene with Miss Hardaker, the woman who looks after Jean and Phyllis, where she has her house broken into by the two young women, now vampires. Her primary character motivation so far in the serial has been to be a Mary Whitehouse figure, shouting that they shouldn't go down to Maiden's Point, and that they'll be damned forever. She sees herself as some kind of moral guardian, saying to the local vicar that the war is clearly being fought for all the right reasons and they must win it as God is on their side, to the protests of the vicar who says that God is not on anyone's side during a war. This forthright attitude all ends up getting her killed as Jean and Phyllis seek revenge in their vampire form. But my theory is that she wasn't just killed because of that, but because there was a belief in evil in her heart. She saw only the worst in people, and never felt that there was good in humanity, which, as shall be discussed tomorrow, is one of the vampire's weaknesses, where hopefully this argument will make a lot more sense.

Day 689: The Curse of Fenric Part 1

The Curse of Fenric is an interesting story from my perspective. We got a copy of it on DVD as I was getting interested in Doctor Who, so I used to watch it on fairly high rotation. And at that age of around 10 years old, I only really saw it as a fun Doctor Who story set in World War 2 England with Vikings. But, as I grew older, I began to see that it was more than just a fun story, and that there were hidden depths to the characters and the plot, creating one of the best Doctor Who stories of all time.

So, to begin, first there's the fact that, as this episode is set-up for the story ahead, there's an awful lot that works a lot better on repeated viewings, once the events that are being set-up are seen. An example is the use of the Russian soldiers. We see them be young men, afraid of what they are doing, such as the scene where one of the soldiers is holding guard and sees some teenage girls begin to walk towards him. He desperately hopes that they turn away, not because he doesn't want to be discovered, but because he doesn't want to be forced to shoot them. This plays into the future of the story, as the Russians become more and more sympathetic characters, a major point in the climax.

There's also Ace, who meets a woman with a baby. She plays with the baby, and asks for its name. Upon learning it, she's disgusted, and gives the baby back, claiming that it was her mother's name. And as we shall see as the story progresses, this hatred of her mother forms one of the major character arcs for the character. But, we'll see all of that play out as the story progresses and we learn more about The Curse of Fenric.

Day 688: Ghost Light Part 3

So what is Ghost Light about really? Well, there exists a creature named Light, who travelled around various planets, cataloguing all the various life forms that existed. There existed others who worked with him, such as Josiah, whose role on the ship was that, for each planet that they landed on, he took the form of the dominant species. This was in contrast to Control, whose job it was to remain in isolation and be the experimental control to Josiah's evolution. One day, Josiah decided to hijack the ship, and take it to Earth, where he would hopefully evolve to become head of the British Empire, through instigating a plot to assassinate Queen Victoria. So we've got this idea of evolution present in the story, as characters change their appearances to reflect changes in society. Control, who is locked up in the ship for much of the story, is almost always kept as a woman in rags, but slowly she forms herself into a proper Victorian lady, or ladylike as she refers to herself as.

But then, when Light awakens, he is rather cross. Firstly, at the fact that he's been left alone for all of that time, but also because, in his absence, Earth has evolved. Creatures such as humans have been able to change and adapt to their surroundings, while others such as the Neanderthal have been left to die out. Light decides to ensure that humans can never evolve again, by deciding to destroy all organic life on Earth, such that then nothing will evolve and everything will stay the same for his catalogue. But he's ignoring the very beauty that nature is. It changes as time changes, evolving and developing into new forms of life. It is a pointless exercise to catalogue and write down everything, instead it is far better to learn and understand what is going on, and to evolve as these notions evolve.

This is all a really interesting concept to base the story around, and there's plenty more within it that's hidden away in the depths of the adventure. But there is a massive problem with it. Almost all of this only really becomes apparent within the last third of the story, and even then, a fair portion is only accessible if close attention is being paid to what is going on. There's no scene where everybody sits down and explains the plot, instead we all are expected to pick it up as we go along and hope for the best, and that all will become clear by the time of the final act. It's why I've been avoiding talking about the story for the past few blog entries, because it's difficult to talk about something when it hasn't been made clear yet. One can only imagine having to watch this weeks apart, as it was originally transmitted, instead of watching it days apart for the purposes of the blog.

So we end up with a noble failure, something which reaches for the heavens, but doesn't quite get there because of the nature of the programme (it would probably work far better as one 75 minute story, or when everything is viewed in bulk). But in the undercurrents of this story, there's something very intriguing happening. We delve into Ace's past. A haunted house that she destroyed because she sensed something evil. But the Doctor is explicitly testing her, using her and traumatising her. A darker Doctor who plays and tests his companions. The next story in particular will look at this, and how Ace feels about it. And it's a story that I've been looking forward to for a while...

Day 687: Ghost Light Part 2

The next step in my understanding of Ghost Light came when I was around 14 or 15. My grandparents, out of nowhere, gave me a book that they'd found in a local bookstore about Doctor Who called Through Time: An Unofficial and Unauthorised History of Doctor Who. Written by Andrew Cartmel, script editor for the Sylvester McCoy era of the programme, it purported to be a potted history of the series, dipping into various stories throughout the years that Doctor Who had been on television. I began reading it, and it began a slow process in my mind of widening my horizons to the world of Doctor Who.

The book itself provided an in depth analysis of individual stories, examining their strengths and weaknesses as well as what the stories were ultimately about. I found this to be interesting, because I'd previously only engaged with Doctor Who as a viewer, getting excited about things appearing on screen but never really engaging with the text on a deeper level. So I guess that that book was a sort of catalyst for me starting to write this blog, trying to engage with stories and see why they are so good or so bad, or what is inherently interesting within them.

Now, the book wasn't perfect. I don't recall much from it, but I seem to think that Cartmel looked down on The Ribos Operation, which is something that I fundamentally disagree with. He also spent the chapter of the book dealing with his own time on the series in an unnecessarily fawning way, describing almost everything he did as some sort of masterpiece, which jarred with me at the time. But, he did spend some time on Ghost Light, where he examined the story and explained it. It was all about evolution, he said, and he doesn't see why this story is so hard to understand. And, once you know that, you can agree with him. I now watch this story with a degree of interest that I didn't have when I was 11 and first watching it, because I can see the hidden meanings in the story. But this doesn't necessarily mean that the story is good, nor does it mean that I would recommend it...

Day 686: Ghost Light Part 1

I have almost no doubt that I am the only person who got to watch Ghost Light thanks to Woman's Day magazine. You see, my mum was friends in high school with someone who would later go on to become editor of said magazine. Clearly, whilst they were having a catch-up session, my mum must have mentioned that I was interested in Doctor Who, and so I received some old review copies of Doctor Who DVDs that they clearly had lying around the office. All of this led to an interesting relationship with an interesting story.

My memories of watching this episode for the first time at the age of 11 or 12 are vague. A few shots here and there, a line of dialogue maybe, the excellent score by Mark Ayres, small things that stick in your mind after the adventure is over. Which leads me to have to fill in the gaps in my memory, to try and figure out what I thought of this episode. All I can come up with is that I was completely apathetic to this episode. I probably watched it, but it was all white noise, in one ear and out the other. It's because this story is not very good at enticing young kids into the world of Doctor Who, particularly after the rip-roaring adventure that was Battlefield. It's all a little bit too odd, and there's not quite enough that's being explained to really entice you into the story at large. But as I grew older, I began to understand...

Day 685: Battlefield Part 4

I think that the reason why I got so much out of this story is that it's unabashedly just a fun story. Looking ahead to the next few stories, the series will be going to some dark places, so Battlefield ends up giving off the impression that they got all of their frivolous and funny moments out of the way in one little package.

And there are plenty of fun moments, like Mordred's penchant for laughing, as seen in the video above. This gives the feeling that the people involved were having fun with the adventure, and allowing things to be a bit lighter than usual, whether it be through writing, directing or acting their roles. This can also be seen in such things as the relationship between Ancelyn and Brigadier Bambera, who gently flirt with one another whilst fighting and generally being awesome, which not only helps to endear the characters to the audience, but also lightens the mood of the whole adventure.

But it wouldn't be worth anything were it not for the fact that the story will allow itself to be serious every once in a while. There's a scene, for instance, where the Doctor talks Morgaine Le Fay from setting off a nuclear missile is played well, and we feel Morgaine's sadness when she discovers that her long time foe: Arthur, King of the Britons, is dead, and she didn't get to have one final battle with him. These moments of contrast not only allow for the lighter scenes to appear just that bit more joyful, but also lend the story an air of respectability that keeps it from falling into the trap of just being a generic action-adventure story. And if there's anything that I've learnt over the past 685 days, Doctor Who is generally at its best when it's not a generic action adventure story.