Doctor Who: The Curse of Fenric
(4 episodes, s26e08-e11, 1989)

Barkeep, a round of your deepest franchise mythology, if you please.

Two inflatable dinghies are rowed to shore by a detachment of soldiers. By their uniforms, they look like Soviet soldiers. Between them and the talk of Germans, we must be in the midst of World War II.

Elsewhere, Ace and the Doctor stroll in to a top secret naval facility and are soon captured at gunpoint by the Royal Marines. They talk their way out of the confrontation and continue on, arriving at the office of Dr. Judson. The Doctor ingratiates himself by noticing the Prisoner’s Dilemma on the board, and while Ace distracts him with an understanding of logic puzzles, the Doctor forges two letters from the Prime Minister and the Head of the Secret Service authorizing their presence on the base. They find an empty set of bunks and Ace goes to sleep.

The Soviet soldiers wash ashore but cannot find their sealed orders. Meanwhile, the camera is focused on an underwater dragon statue with a great sense of foreboding, and the Doctor is wary of eyes watching the base from the darkness. A Soviet soldier finds the orders, which contain Judson’s photograph, but he’s soon killed.

As morning dawns, the Doctor and Ace arrive at the local church as Reverend Wainwright finishes his sermon and talks with Miss Hardaker and her two charges. Ace talks to the girls, evacuees from London’s East End, but later joins the Doctor as he and the reverend seek out Judson. Ace notes the lack of security surrounding the church’s silver, but the reverend is unafraid based on the Viking superstitions. Judson is studying Viking inscriptions using the ULTIMA machine. Presumably, such a machine must be similar to the Enigma of our reality. Ace hears a mechanical sound, but the Doctor dismisses it as organ bellows before they leave Judson to his work.

Elsewhere, Base Commander A. H. Millington (surrounded by Nazi paraphernalia!) analyses some super secret documents before staring curiously at a chess board. The last time we saw a chess board was in Silver Nemesis.

The Doctor and Ace spot a headstone in the Viking graveyard that is sinking, and the pair decide to walk at Maiden’s Point, the same place where Ace was to meet her new friends. Miss Hardaker forbids her charges from visiting the site due to local superstition, and the Doctor and Ace find the (previously) sealed orders packet. The Doctor takes them to the base while Ace remains behind with a warning to stay out of the water. The girls arrive anyway and go for a swim, but Ace does not join them. The girls later find a strange treasure on the beach but reject it when it tingles in their hands. As they leave for home, a sniper nearly kills them but holds his fire when they veer away.

The Doctor finds Wainwright in the church and shares his hunch that some of the transcriptions have already been translated. Sure enough, the reverend’s grandfather did translate some of them, but Wainwright regrets it. The inscription speaks of a dragon ship, stolen treasure, and the curse at Maiden’s Point. The Doctor worries about Ace, but that worry recedes when she arrives. They head for Judson’s lab and show him the translation – on the beach, the sniper throws the tingly treasure into the ocean where it is caught by a mysterious hand – then peek in on the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS) listening station.

Ace meets a baby named Audrey: She’s in love with the baby, but is turned off by the name since Audrey was her mother’s name too. Millington arrives and orders Kathleen (the baby’s mother) to remove Audrey within 24 hours or be dismissed from the service. The Doctor and an angry Ace leave and stumble into Millington’s office, which is a perfect replica of a Nazi cipher room. The Doctor notes that Judson and Millington were classmates before noticing the chessboard with intrigue.

There’s so much foreshadowing in this section of the episode, but it’s done so well.

Millington discusses the Viking translations with Judson, revealing the “Curse of Fenric” – *ding* – which he believes to be nigh. On the beach, the Doctor and Ace find a piece of treasure, a Soviet corpse, and a whole lot of rifles pointed right at them. The soldiers take the travelers to their commander, Captain Sorin. The Doctor tends to another soldier who touched the treasures and is delirious before leaving. The Soviets ambush a British patrol soon after.

Judson continues to decipher the inscriptions, an act that causes more to spontaneously write themselves on the crypt walls and awaken the corpses in the deep. The Doctor and Ace return to the crypt as Judson reports to Millington and receives orders to use the ULTIMA to work on the walls (despite it being needed for the war effort). The travelers investigate the new inscription, then discover a hidden passage and Millington. The commander shows them a natural source of lethal poison, a chemical weapon that could end the war. The Doctor waxes philosophically about the well of Hvergelmir, a place in Norse mythology where serpents spew their venom over the roots of Yggdrasil. Millington is impressed by the Doctor’s knowledge and offers to show him all the rest of the caverns. The Doctor accompanies Millington, but Ace stays behind with a distraught Wainwright. The reverend is having a crisis of faith.

Millington and the Doctor arrive at ULTIMA, where the commander and Judson reveal that (1) they intend to let the Soviets steal the machine because (2) it is carrying a load of the poison. The Doctor then tours the chemical weapons facility and watches a demonstration where only a few drops kill a cage of doves. To his horror, Millington intends to use the contents of the ULTIMA as a time bomb, set to go off when the Soviets decrypt the word love in a coded message.

In the crypt, a wall shakes loose of its own accord and reveals an urn. The soldiers working there ignore it and seal off the room. On the beach, the girls run into the ocean fully clothed – Miss Hardaker took their bathing suits during a hellfire and brimstone sermon about disobeying her – and are swallowed by a mist.

Nothing good can come of either event.

Millington (mindlessly sketching the mysterious urn) orders the base communications cut off from the outside world – an odd move, to be sure – and that all chess sets are burned. It seems that the latter are quite significant. The Doctor questions the chess set order as the soldiers remove them from the women’s bunkroom, and Kathleen asks the Doctor about his family. The Doctor replies that he doesn’t know, and Kathleen presumes that the war is to blame. She says it must be terrible, and the Doctor apprehensively agrees.

Curiouser and curiouser.

On the beach, the girls emerge as pale creatures with claws who lure a Soviet soldier to his death, then return to Miss Hardaker’s residence and kill her. The Doctor returns to Judson’s lab to find the researcher obsessed by the carvings. The Doctor leaves to talk to the girls as Ace helps Judson unlock the inscription using a logic diagram. The Doctor and Ace find Miss Hardaker’s corpse as the girls move on to Reverend Wainwright, who tries to dissuade the girls (who he believes to be vampires) before the Doctor and Ace interfere. The trio race back to Judson’s lab to stop him from decrypting the inscriptions, but they are too late. The vampire creatures rise from the ocean as Millington revels in his victory. He believes that when the chains of Fenric are shattered all of its power will be his.

He’s a bit verkelmpt when he realizes what he’s done, but I can’t tell if it’s regret or joy.

The Doctor explains that the creatures are Haemovores, mutations from humanity’s far future. Ace rushes off to check on Audrey and Kathleen while the Doctor puts plans into motion. The Doctor, Ace, and Wainwright retreat to the church and research. Ace finds the abandoned urn while Wainwright discovers the descendants of the Viking settlers, linking it to the curse of Fenric making its way through the generations. The Haemovores attack the church, and Ace tries to escape but is cut off. Luckily, the Soviet soldiers come to her aid, but their bullets only slow the creatures instead of killing them. Inside the church, the Doctor is able to drive them off by the power of his faith: He recites the names of his former companions, projecting a psychic power through his his faith in their love for his quest.

Everyone but Sorin retreats to the crypt – the captain needs to tend to his troops – and blow their way into the toxin facility. Ace reveals the urn as she tries to mix up more explosives, but the Doctor recognizes it as the treasure at the source of the curse. They are intercepted by Millington at the end of the tunnel and the commander leaves the Soviet allies for dead, much to the Doctor’s dismay. Millington takes the urn and the research to Judson, then confronts and arrests Sorin when the Soviet captain arrives to negotiate.

Oh, it was joy that overwhelmed Millington earlier. Definitely joy.

Ace returns to Kathleen, consoling the woman when she receives word of her husband’s death. She then confronts the Doctor, understanding that the Doctor knows all of the secrets behind this threat. The Doctor speaks of an ancient evil that has existed since the birth of the universe, one that has gone by many names, but this time it is called Fenric and trapped in the urn. His darkness is on full display here.

The third episode ends in rapid fire: Ace distracts the guards while the Doctor frees Sorin; Wainwright faces off against the girls, but his faith is too shaky and he is killed; and Judson is hit by an energy bolt from the ULTIMA as lightning strikes the dragon ship. The crippled scientist rises on his own legs with a declaration: “We play the contest again, Time Lord.”

The Doctor faced off against this evil before, trapping it in the shadow dimension for seventeen centuries by pulling bones from the desert, carving them into pieces, and posing a challenge that it failed. It teleports away and meets with the Haemovores while Millington has the Doctor and Ace taken before a firing squad. They’re freed by a sudden Soviet assault as Millington revels in the prophecy over a chess board. The Doctor says that he needs a chess set of his own to stop the threat, so he and Ace make their way to the commander’s office. Meanwhile, the girls summon the Ancient One from the depths.

Probably not that Ancient One, but similar in appearance nonetheless.

Ace and the Doctor find the chess set, but it’s rigged with poison gas and explosives. They dive into a bunker as the building explodes (and hits the camera in the process). Luckily, they save the genealogical research, which jogs Ace’s memory: Kathleen has a chess set. As the bullets fly and the Soviets discover the chemical weapons, the travelers make their way to the bunk rooms. The Soviet and British soldiers join forces to stop the chemical threat, and the Doctor secures the chess set and takes it to the chemical weapons bunker while Ace guards Kathleen and Audrey, discussing the spooky house in Perivale.

Fenric has his nurse killed as the remnants of the WRNS detachment are turned into Haemovores. He then orders the Ancient One to deliver the poison into the ocean and kill the rest of the Haemovores. More of the creatures break into the bunkroom, causing Ace and Kathleen to flee to a nearby car. Ace tells Kathleen to take Audrey to 17 Old Terrace in London, home to Ace’s family in this time. Kathleen drives off, offering Ace a photo of Audrey in parting. Ace turns to face the girls, who then melt away.

Body count: A lot.

Fenric finds the Doctor and challenges him to the contest. One move on the chess board will win. In the ULTIMA lab, Millington faces off against the remaining Soviet soldiers and loses, taking a fatal shot. The Doctor confers with the Ancient One, persuading him that Fenric’s plan to poison the ocean will only destroy the Haemovore future. Sorin arrives to kill Judson, but since the captain’s lineage descends from the Vikings, he is touched by the curse. Fenric jumps into Sorin.

Unfortunately, Ace figures out the winning move but doesn’t know that Fenric has taken over Sorin, so she unwittingly shares the solution with the enemy. Fenric wins the game and turns on Ace, revealing that baby Audrey is Ace’s mother, and Ace is touched by the curse. Ace’s faith in the Doctor stops Fenric and the Ancient One, so Fenric gives the Doctor a choice: Surrender or he will kill Ace with the poison gas. The Doctor tells Fenric to kill Ace.

What?

The Doctor reveals that he knew that Fenric was coming back when he saw the chess set in Silver Nemesis. Fenric says it was even before that, all the way back to Dragonfire and the time storm that took Ace from her home, but the Doctor knew even then how important she was. In a twist, the Ancient One takes Fenric to the poison testing chamber and unleashes the gas, forcing the Doctor to run with Ace. As the evil threat goes boom, he apologizes profusely to Ace, explaining that he had to break her faith in order to free the Ancient One and end Fenric’s curse.

Diabolical but clever.

Ace and the Doctor return to the beach where she faces her emotions by jumping into the water. When she emerges, effectively baptized and renewed, her fear and anger are gone. The travelers embrace, their wounds and rift healed, and head off to their next adventure.

That was a gorgeous story. It opened a ton of space and let Ace and the Doctor – as well as Sophie Aldred and Sylvester McCoy – spread their wings. It was also tightly crafted and flowed well, expertly employed vampire and religious mythos without being trite, and capitalized on franchise seeds sown since Dragonfire. The body count was high (typical of the era), but if this had been the classic finale, it would have been a good place to end the journey.

Rating: 5/5 – “Fantastic!”

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: Survival

The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.

Doctor Who: Ghost Light
(3 episodes, s26e05-e07, 1989)

Welcome to Gabriel Chase.

In the depths of a gothic manor’s basement, a mysterious figure in a solid cage is fed dinner and the Times. The Reverend Ernest Matthews arrives, as does the TARDIS. Ace emerges from the bad parking job into a laboratory (or a nursery), and the Doctor refuses to tell her where they’ve landed. The house staff leaves – “Heaven help anyone who’s still here.” – and locks the door behind them. The clock strikes six and the spookiness ramps up with new servants emerging from the walls.

The Doctor and Ace explore, finding a radioactive snuff box with the initials RFC engraved upon it. Its owner, Redvers Finn-Cooper, is missing in the house, but another explorer is here to find him. This new player pulls an elephant rifle on the Doctor, but seeing his own reflection reveals him to be Finn-Cooper, driven insane. Elsewhere, head housekeeper Lady Pritchard and the owner’s ward Gwendoline encounter the ornery reverend, then retrieve the explorer as the butler Nimrod (a literal Neanderthal) invites the Doctor and Ace to meet with the reverend and Josiah Samuel Smith, the owner of the house.

This story is all over the place. It’s goofy. It’s wacky. It’s chaotic.

It’s frustrating.

Everyone’s going crazy over Ace’s late 1980s fashion, so she is taken away for proper period clothing. Locked in a room, a straight-jacketed Finn-Cooper is exposed to his glowing snuff box, but everyone is driven away from the scene by the occupants of the house. Everyone gathers for dinner as Nimrod opens some kind of control room and is subsequently stricken down by an unseen force.

Ace (looking good in her new fancy duds) figures out that she knows Gabriel Chase from her time in Perivale. It is the house that she burned to the ground in 1983 after sensing a dangerous evil presence. The Doctor brought her here, much to her anger, to understand the horrors that she sensed. As the Doctor presses, Ace runs for the cellar.

Lady Pritchard knocks out the reverend as Smith solicits the Doctor for help in ridding the house of the evil. In the cellar, Ace finds the control room and the incapacitated Nimrod before being attacked by two zombie-like husks, and as the first episode ends I still have no idea what in the world I am even watching.

The Doctor discovers a human in suspended animation, nestled among the insect collection. In the cellar, Nimrod comes to Ace’s defense as the mysterious cell is being opened. In the battle, Ace and Nimrod end up facing off and breaking the light in the wall. The Doctor escapes from the house staff by using his radiation monitor as a mock gun and taking the lift to the cellar with Smith as a captive. Once there, the Doctor figures out that the cellar is a stone spaceship and Smith is an alien of some sort. The Doctor turns the table on Smith and inadvertently frees Control, the being in the cell. As daylight breaks, Smith and the house staff retreat upstairs with the reverend as the master of the house evolves into another husk,

Oh, and Smith transforms the reverend into an ape and places him on display.

The Doctor revives the suspended human, Inspector Mackenzie, while Ace gets some sleep and breakfast before joining the Doctor and Mackenzie just before dark. Nimrod tells a a tale of worship and the light as Control skulks about the house The Doctor puts all the pieces together as the light in the cellar wall, an egg of some sort, hatches. Ace and the inspector explore the attic, finding Smith, Pritchard, and Gwendoline frozen as statues. As the Doctor moves the clock to six, the statues and house awaken, and Control exits the lift followed by a bright burst of light.

The light belongs to an alien surveyor who came to Earth thousands of years before to catalog all life on the planet. It completed its task and collected samples (incluiding Nimrod), it went into hibernation. While Light hibernated and Control was imprisoned to serve as the “control” subject in the scientific observation, Smith mutinied against Light, trapping the surveyor and evolving into a Victorian gentleman. He intended on using Finn-Cooper’s relationship with Queen Victoria to assassinate the monarch and take control of the monarchy.

Light is angry that his catalog is incomplete due to evolution over the millennia, so he decides to eradicate all life on the planet. He kills off a maid, Gwendoline, Pritchard (Gwendoline’s missing mother), and the inspector while Ace fights for her life several times over and Control evolves into a Victorian woman.

The Doctor maneuvers Light into a logic trap, suggesting that the surveyor has not only evolved, but also missed several creatures of myth in his audit. In the end, Smith is imprisoned as the new “control” while Control, Fenn-Cooper, and Nimrod take the alien spacecraft on an exploration of the universe. Light, on the other hand, is dispersed into the house itself, becoming the evil presence that Ace encountered in 1983. When the Doctor asks if she has any regrets, Ace says she should have blown the house up instead.

“Wicked,” the Doctor says, drawing this house of horrors to a close.

There is a good story buried in this serial, but the plot is so convoluted and twisted that the narrative path is lost in the weeds. It sheds light on Ace’s character and backstory, and it builds on the Doctor’s mystery and simmering darkness. There’s also a lot to be said for a story that dumps the viewer into the narrative world without guidance, but the good ones guide the audience to understanding and resolution. This one capitalized on frustration in chaos, and that hurt my experience.

Rating: 2/5 – “Mm? What’s that, my boy?”

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: The Curse of Fenric

The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.

Doctor Who: The Greatest Show in the Galaxy
(4 episodes, s25e11-e14, 1988-1989)

It’s an awfully meta moment in the late 1980s: The Greatest Show in the Galaxy gets rhythm, and we “ain’t seen nothing yet.”

On the TARDIS, the Doctor is trying to learn how to juggle while Ace (clad in the Fourth Doctor‘s pre-burgundy scarf) looks for her rucksack and Nitro-9. An automated probe materializes in the console room and delivers junk mail: an advertisement for the psychic circus. The Doctor wants to go and the advertising drone goads Ace (who is obviously scared of something) into joining him.

Something sinister is afoot at the circus: Two performers (Flowerchild and Bellboy) are on the run from a clown in a hearse. A rude sandwich eating biker named Nord and our heroes join the mix as well, and the Doctor and Ace are warned away from the circus by a roadside saleswoman. Flowerbell and Bellboy split up, and Flowerbell ends up at an abandoned bus and killed by the robotic conductor. Bellboy is found by the clowns are returned to the circus.

Nord turns down the Doctor’s request to join him, and the travelers are nearly run down by the clown on the road. They encounter Captain Cook and Mags, two more intergalactic travelers questing for the circus, and join them for tea. Ace and Mags find a buried robot, which comes to life and attacks the party, but is defeated by Ace. They carry on to the bus and are attacked by the conductor robot. The Doctor defeats the robot and parts company with the other travelers, disgusted by the captain’s cowardice.

A new player joins the mix: A well-dressed young man on a bicycle.

Nord, Captain Cook and Mags, and the Doctor and Ace arrive at the circus. Mags witnesses Bellboy being punished for his treachery, but her screams are electronically silenced by the ringmaster. Ace can still hear the screams and is hesitant about entering the tent, but the Doctor presses on. Ace’s fear is revealed: She suffers from coulrophobia, the fear of clowns. Based on the ticket-taker’s reaction to the clowns, Ace’s fear may be well-founded.

The Doctor and Ace find a seat in the darkened attraction, which isn’t hard since the place is nearly deserted: The only other party is a family of parents and a single child. The Doctor tries to engage them in small talk, but they’re almost robotic. The show starts with nearly the same rap as before, but one change is that the Ringmaster selects the Doctor to join as a volunteer performer. The Doctor rushes forward in glee and Ace gets trapped by clowns, and the lead clown is intrigued by Flowerbell’s earring, which Ace found at the bus. Ace runs and is pursued by this insane clown posse.

The Doctor is reunited with Captain Cook, Mags, and Nord, but soon realizes that this is a trap and he’s fallen right into it. Captain Cook tricks Nord into performing next. Meanwhile, Ace sneaks back into the circus tent and eavesdrops on the fortune teller and ringmaster talk about the state of the circus. She is given away by the chirping of drone kites and runs from the clowns, encountering a captive Bellboy. It’s revealed that Bellboy built the robotic clowns and only he can repair them. Ace is soon captured again and imprisoned in the clown repair facility.

Nord goes on stage and his performances are judged by the family. When he fails, he is disintegrated, an act that is witnessed by Mags and the Doctor. As the BMX rider, Whizz Kid, is selected to join the captives, the Doctor and Mags escape and find a series of catacombs to explore. They find a deep pit with a large eye (the same eye on the kite drones) at the bottom, but they are captured by the clowns and Captain Cook. Mags notices a symbol that resembles the phases of the moon, and the her reaction provides a distraction for the Doctor to escape.

When the clowns in the repair trailer attack, Ace defends herself until they stop and collapse. Bellboy emerges from the shadows and, noting the earring, learns of Flowerchild’s fate. He tells Ace that Flowerchild made the kites, something of beauty perverted into something sinister, and gives Ace the controller for the robot she defeated earlier. Elsewhere, the Doctor continues to unravel the mystery behind the circus and frees Ace and Bellboy from the trailer. We also discover that Deadbeat, the street sweeper, was once someone named Kingpin.

The clowns return Captain Cook and Mags to their cage, and Captain Cook snaps at Whizz Kid’s admiration of his exploits. He soon turns about and exploits the kid, moving him up in the queue to save the explorer’s own skin. The kid is soon killed for his failure, and the captain is a truly despicable man.

The Doctor, Ace, and Kingpin set out for the pit while Bellboy stays behind the distract the chief clown. Meanwhile, the fortune teller communicates with the eye through her crystal ball, telling it that more will come to feed it and they’ll keep everyone away from the bus. At the pit, the Doctor’s party uncovers the same link. The Doctor sends Ace and Kingpin to investigate the bus while he distracts the circus in the ring. The Doctor suggests that he, the captain, and Mags work together to upset the balance of the game, and Mags coerces the captain into agreeing.

Once in the room, Captain Cook turns the tables by ordering the crew to shine “moonlight” on Mags. The woman transforms into a werewolf, weirdly explaining her reaction to the moon symbols earlier. After a brief show by Cook, during which the Doctor discovers that the audience members are avatars of the eye in the pit, Mags turns on the captain and kills him. Mags and the Doctor are removed from the ring, but as the family demands more entertainment, the ringmaster and fortune teller are forced to perform. They fail and are consumed.

Ace and Kingpin search the bus, not knowing that the clowns have repaired the conductor. Ace tries to open a lockbox and is ambushed by the robot. During the scuffle, the box is broken open and Kingpin finds the rest of his eye pendant inside. His mind restored, he helps Ace defeat the conductor. Together, they head back to the Doctor.

Mags runs off to meet Ace and Kingpin as the Doctor confronts the eye in a psychedelic sequence. He ends up back in the ring, but now it is an ancient arena. The Doctor greets the family as the Gods of Ragnarok, a force he has fought for some time, and the trio demand more entertainment from their captive. The Doctor runs through a series of conjuring tricks to distract them.

Ace, Kingpin, and Mags end up the massive robot and use it to defeat the clowns. They return to the pit as the Doctor continues his performance, pursued by a reanimated Captain Cook. Cook steals the medallion and Ace knocks it into the pit, forcing it to materialize at the Doctor’s feet. The Doctor uses it to deflect attacks from the gods and destroy the arena around them. The Doctor doffs his hat in salute and returns to the circus, calmly strolling out of the tent as it explodes behind him.

He reunites with Ace, leaving Kingpin and Mags to start a new entertainment venture. He politely declines the offer to join them, citing the adventures that ahead. Besides, in a clever plot twist, he finds circuses to be rather sinister.

It was a decent adventure, and while the Doctor’s feelings about circuses are awfully convenient, I did enjoy watching Ace confront her fears to save the day. The werewolf subplot was kind of crazy, as was the Gods of Ragnarok twist, but they both did away with the treacherous Captain Cook. That guy was one of the first characters in this franchise that I have actively despised in a long time.

Rating: 3/5 – “Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow.”

UP NEXT – Twenty-Fifth Series Summary

The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.