The Silver Wolves Return: A Quick(ish) Look at The Curse Of Fenric

Good evening, Lunies! It’s nearing the end of our second week of spooky happenings, and I decided, hey, it’d be nice if I did a proper article this time instead of just mixing songs together! And I have the perfect little slice of horror to talk about.

So, this might come as a surprise to you; I like Doctor Who. Specifically, Classic Doctor Who. Don’t get me wrong, for it’s many faults the new show does entertain (and while we’re at it, Peter Capaldi is a godsend and the new rendition of the theme; AWESOME), but I openly admit there’s a charm the older series, with its lower budget, sometimes ropey acting, sometimes weak stories, and general overall “oldness” that encompasses a lot of the show and firmly gives each era a feeling that captures the time in which it was made (for better or for worse). Plus, something a lot of the old shows naysayers often overlook is that when the writing was on point, it was on point; scathing social commentary painted with Sci Fi day-glo, fantastical tales of places far far away and a long time ago (or lightyears ahead), and, most relevant to this article, some damn good horror when and where required. And today, I’d like to take you through one such example; The Curse Of Fenric. Fenric was part of the very last season of the old show, and is one of only four stories from that season, but mention the name among die hard fans, and you’ll often hear it lauded as one of the best serials in the shows history. Hell, some people will even flat out call it a masterpiece. Does it deserve the title? Well, we’ll see~

The story starts pretty innocuously enough; The Doctor- here in his Seventh Incarnation, played by Sylvester McCoy- and his spunky companion Ace pimp their way into a British naval base at Maiden’s Point in Northumbria- at the height of World War II no less- literally signing their own permission slips and charming the soldiers and support staff. But this is, of course, no random naval outpost; it’s a naval outpost that serves as a listening post intercepting coded German messages using the ULTIMA machine- a for-the-time highly advanced computer- as the pair learn after quickly befriending the man in charge of operating the machine, Doctor Judson. In their moseying around both the base and the nearby village, meeting the local inhabitants leads to the gaining of new friends in the form of a friendly Priest who is waging an internal battle against his slipping faith in the good of humanity and a couple of out-of-town evacuees that aren’t best impressed with the humble surroundings (or their borderline anti-religion PSA caricature of a caretaker), and also reveals the existence of a rich Viking Heritage in the area, which in reality would be cause for great splurging on behalf of any history buff, but as this is Doctor Who, it of course is the signal of something deeply, deeply wrong.

After more poking and nosing around, the Doctor learns that the ULTIMA Machine, under the wish of base commander Millington, is also being used to de

Fenric figure specifically, and stockpiling plans upon plans, has been working to bring about this destructive figure by allowing the translation of the ancient texts with the machine, and in doing so, has revealed that the magic words did not die with the last of the pirates; the mad commanders machinations cause storms to form, bloodthirsty creatures to rise from the sea, leads to conflict and betrayal between the two forces, death, destruction, and, ultimately, the arrival of the Ragged King himself; the unspeakable evil known only as Fenric.I admit I’m a tease not doing a full episode breakdown, but I feel this story is best watched when you don’t know every single second of the piece before going into it. The question remains however; is the episode worth all the praise? That I can answer without much spoiling. First things first, a little bit of context; the 80s was a particularly difficult time for Doctor Who. The budget continued to get slashed as the decade went on, the BBC controller at the time (the only one not to be Knighted by ol’ queenie, by the way) was very vocal about how much he detested the show, and weak stories and serials didn’t do much to sway the public on the shows side when it needed it the most. In fact, the show actually wound up on a 18 months hiatus during the mid 80s in which was originally a cancellation attempt, due to lack of faith in the shows ability to pull in viewers or keep up quality. Add in that show producer John Nathan Turner was more or less tied to the show by lawful contract despite at this point wanting nothing to do with it, and it’s a wonder the show managed to make it passed that hiatus at all, especially given the much maligned and plagued Sixth Doctor era and the incredibly uneven beginning of the Seventh Doctor era. But then, during the final two years of the show, 1988 to 1989, something happened.The show started to improve.A vital ingredient of this was the showrunner at the time, Andrew Cartmel, instigating what has become known as The Cartmel Masterplan; the idea was that a lot of the mystery of The Doctor had been taken away by delving deeper into Time Lord life and indeed a lot of The Doctor’s own personal history, but now, steps would be taken to pull back a bit; hint at things that were to be, things that may have been, and things that might never be, but could be. Imply that The Doctor is much older and far more powerful then he’d been letting on previously; bring back old foes (both solely from the characters’ perspective and that of longtime viewers) that could match the Time Lord’s wit and mystique. On top of that, the quality of the scripts and some of the ideas going into them had improved immensely; in the final season alone, we had a story that is still considered difficult to follow due to it’s complexity, that deals with the nature of evolution and change. But the quality of the writing wasn’t just restricted the Mystique Factor or the ideas, but the

way they were handled and the characterisation; the show got darker and the Seventh Doctor (who started out as a bumbling goof/rehash of the Second with a love of Malapropisms) became something of a chessmaster and a darker authority figure, but the pursuit of justice on behalf of the good guys was never seen as naive or weak willed, and there was always a distinction between doing difficult things for the greater good, and thinking you’re doing bad things for the greater good but are, in fact, misguided. And when the Doctor had to make difficult choices or let his manipulative traits immerse him too greatly in the “game”, he always had someone to pull him back in line and remind him that he was on the side of the angels. Add in some incredible chemistry and acting between Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred (Ace’s actress) and the awesome character dynamic between the two, and you’ve got a winning formula.I bring all that up because a lot of that is vital to Curse Of Fenric and part of what makes the stakes of it so frightening; Fenric is one such old foe of the Doctor (and as the expanded universe later showed, so much more then just that), and the episode itself is not only effectively one multi-layered game of strategy across countries, politics, and even time and space, but the episode reveals that Fenric had been playing his winning hand since all the way back in Season 24. He has had his fingers in many pies to assure the events of this episode happen just so, and it’s not immediately aware of how much The Doctor was aware of until the events at the naval base, and the Doctor does have to make a difficult choice to ensure his victory, but not the kind of choice you’d expect; it’s not a loss of life, it’s the loss of something else. Something much more valuable, you could argue. And though he doesn’t want to do it, he has to, and he does it with firm conviction knowing that he will have to accept responsibility for the fallout and that it was, ultimately, to save lives and prove the monster that is Fenric wrong.And a monster he is indeed; it’s implied that Fenric has been corrupting the area for centuries, infesting the local waters with Haemovores, the requisite Creature Of The Episode™; effectively vampires in method and sort-of zombies in movement and appearance that leave their victims drained of blood, and are repelled not by holy objects, but faith. Faith in anything, from God, the good of humanity, the revolution, even the people you’ve met on your travels, it all works. Fenric didn’t create the Haemovores (they are the result of a possible future evolutionary chain of Homosapiens), he merely ripped a few from time, who then spread the infection among locales throughout history. He ensured that his curse was carried from the past through the bond that ties closest; blood. Countless innocent life fell over thousands of years, past and present, in the name of the Unspeakable One. And the reason he did all of this? Oh, that’d be telling, dear readers.

so have some vague implying instead

Further serving the episodes favour are the technical details; the writing is as strong as late 80s Who was known for, with excellent characterisation on part of the major players and the minor ones, with tons of information about them gleamed from only a few moments of interaction and smaller, candid glimpses into their lives; the acting on the part of every character is also absolutely stellar, from the egocentric Dr. Judson to the mad and desperate Commander Millington, the suave and cool Captain Sorin to the chatty and bratty evacuees Jean and Phyllis, and the helpless and faith challenged Reverend Wainwright and the truly creepy and menacing Fenric, the latter of whom was portrayed by two actors who played prominent roles as other characters earlier in the story; it goes without saying that McCoy and Aldred's legendary chemistry was put through it's paces in this episode, as the seemingly unbreakable bond between The Doctor and Ace was pushed to breaking point. The general lo-fi look of the video filming gives the serial a wonderfully unsettling look when combined with the muted colours of most of the costumes and setpieces, all of which manage to look fairly cosy before the action starts, and positively blood curdling once the rain rolls in and the bloodsuckers come ashore. Speaking of, the Haemovores; Classic Who (and even New Who) has had some struggles with costuming and makeup of its various nasties over the years, and while the Haemovores might not stack up to what can be achieved today on raw technical prowess alone, they stack up very well and even today look positively creepy, very much appearing bloated and warped (as things that lurked under the ocean for hundreds of years should), covered in little suckers in places where there should not be and coloured a mixture of bright blue and grey; it also helps that they mix the look with slow, lumbering, deliberate movements,

almost zombie like, but swapping outstretched arms with arms raised at the elbow, clawed fingers wiggling menacingly the whole time. The sound design and music are very much late 80s Who, with even the “natural” instruments provided by synthesizer patches for the sake of cost, but that is by no means a detrimental statement; the composition of the pieces mixes driving marching snare rhythms, pounding timpanis, menacing strings, and of course alien sounding and deliberately synthetic sounds, and the prevailing use of minor chords and sounds across the whole thing only add to the thick and creepy atmosphere. It’s also a very well researched and constructed story, with plenty of ties to Norse mythology (as the name itself gives away) and a pretty damned accurate understanding of computer science in the 1940s. It does get the Prisoner’s Dilemma mixed up with something else, but hey, it’s pretty on the ball otherwise.Make no mistake, it might be Doctor Who, but this is also very much a cosmic horror story (and as my subtle hints may have shown, one with ties to a certain mythos), and it is a very good one at that, filled with both good scares and original ideas- I mean, psychic future aqua vampires that can only be beaten by the concept of faith in general? That’s pretty damn cool. It is, however, not perfect; some of the editing choices, particularly the way scenes are strung together and the structuring of various scenes can feel a bit chaotic, especially in the early parts of the first episode of the four-part serial, where some cutaways seem almost randomly inserted on a whim rather then for any actual narrative reasoning. Part of this can be blamed on the fact that around six minutes of material was cut, and the transmission edit has become a bit notorious for being strung together a bit strangely to compensate for the changes. However, in an interesting happenstance, those six minutes wound up put back in on the original VHS release of the episode, and fans have agreed that that the VHS copy is actually the better version of the story as a result. It says a lot about how strong the better elements of the episode are, though, that even the transmission edit is considered to be one of the better stories in the show's long history.

If you can track down the DVD release of the serial, which comes literally packed with extras (commentary tracks, an isolated music track, behind the scenes guff, a special edition “Movie Edit” that consolidates the whole thing into a feature length experience with redone special effects and even a bit of new footage, plus a heaping shitton more), then it’s well worth springing for; otherwise, you can view the episode here on Dailymotion.

~ Decon Theed (10/9/14)

images sourced from popculture-y.com, tardis.wikia, docohobigfinish.blogspot, loveandliberty.blogspot, and news.bbc.co.uk