Doctor Who: The Horror of Fang Rock

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Doctor Who
The Horror of Fang Rock
Season 15, Story 92

The Doctor (Tom Baker) and Leela (Louise Jameson) accidentally land the TARDIS on Fang Rock, a small island off the southern coast of England. When The Doctor notices that the lighthouse is without a light, they go and investigate. Inside the lighthouse they discover a dead guy and two still living lighthouse keepers – Reuben (Colin Douglas) and Vince (John Abbott). They explain that just before The Doctor arrived, they saw a strange light crash into the sea, and ever since the power has been fluctuating as the temperature keeps dropping.

While The Doctor and Leela are investigating the rest of the lighthouse, someone or something moves the corpse. Then, because the lighthouse light keeps going out, a pleasure boat crashes into the rocks. It is owned by a snooty lord, and with him are a lady and two other men.

Legend has it many years ago a monster came to Fang Rock and killed two of the keepers and drove one mad. Now a new creature has arrived, but this time it is from outer space. It is known as a Ruton, and it thinks Earth might be a good strategic place to fight the Sontarans.

The Ruton is a round, blobby thing that looks a bit like an egg yolk with some streamers hanging off of it. Tis not the greatest of Classic Who monsters, I tell you that. The production team made the smart decision to keep it off-screen for the most part, and they made it a shape-shifter so sometimes it appears as the dead keeper.

I am a big fan of base-under-siege stories, and the lighthouse makes for a great setting. The Ruton is not a great villain, but for most of this series four parts, it is off base trying to get in. The addition of the rich, snobby people adds a nice touch of fear and hysteria to the proceedings, while the lighthouse keepers mostly keep it together.

It is a pretty dark story, and Tom Baker eases into that side of the character, showing very little concern for the other characters who keep getting themselves killed. It has been a while since I’ve seen any of the other Leela stories, but she does seem to be transitioning nicely from the “noble savage” she was when she first joined the Doctor to someone who relies a little more on her intelligence than her strength (though she still throws a knife nicely and wields an axe at one point during this story.)

I’ve seen this one many times. It has become one of my go-to Classic Doctor Who stories as it moves at a brisk pace, has a terrific little story, and finds Tom Baker in fine form.

Doctor Who: The Chase

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One of the things I’ve been meaning to do with this blog, but I never seem to remember to actually do is to write about movies, TV shows, books, and music that I enjoy, but in smaller ways. Instead of doing full-on reviews, just write a couple of paragraphs about something I found interesting.

For a couple of years, I wrote a little thing for Cinema Sentries called Five Cool Things. Every week I’d write about five things (well, technically six as there was always an “and…”) I enjoyed that week in the way that I’m talking about. I’d just do a couple of three paragraphs about whatever it was I enjoyed and not worry about digging in too deep.

With that in mind, I’m gonna try to do more of that type of thing. First up is the Doctor Who story “The Chase.”

The wife and I have been chronologically working our way through Classic Doctor Who. The Chase was the Eighth and penultimate story of the second season. It stars William Hartnell as The Doctor, and William Russell, Jaqueline Hill, and Maureen O’Brien as his companions, Ian, Barbara, and Vicki.

I am a fan of Hartnell’s version of The Doctor and I do like a great man of his stories, while also admitting that I often find them dull. Classic Doctor Who episodes were 25 minutes in length. A single story might last anywhere from two episodes to eight. The long ones often feel like the writers had to pad things out in order to fulfill the set number of episodes for their stories. Hence my boredom.

“The Chase” gets around this by basically creating a bunch of mini-stories inside the main one. The Daleks have built a ship that can travel through space and time much like the Tardis, and it has a way of following the Tardis anywhere it goes. This leads to a series of adventures as the Tardis crew tries to flee the Daleks, zipping from place to place and all over history.

In one episode they land on the top of the Empire State Building and then on a ship at sea (the Mary Celeste, a famous ship that was discovered completely without a crew, no one ever found out what happened to them). In another episode, they land inside a haunted house where they meet Frankenstein’s monster and Dracula (and Frankenstein’s monster body slams a Dalek!) Then they land on a planet full of giant, monstrous fungi. The Daleks build a robot Doctor and nearly kill Vicky with it.

It is all quite silly. But then again I tend to prefer my classic Doctor Who stories to be silly. When they get too serious they tend to feel ponderous and I tend to get bored.

I quite liked this one.