Welcome to your summer vacation through space and time, all from the comfort of your couch and TV. We’re spending our COVID-19 summer winding our way through Doctor Who history, focusing on one episode from each Doctor’s tenure through to the Capaldi era. (Want to know what we’re watching? Here’s the schedule!)
Before he was the wizard Radagast, he was a Doctor. We’ve reached the final Doctor of the show’s first era of broadcast, Sylvester McCoy. Dust off your safari jacket and Panama hat and settle in for a wartime adventure with “The Curse of Fenric,” broadcast in four parts from October 25 to November 15, 1989. It’s over 30 years old, but you know the warning: Spoilers!
1. Beachfront Bletchley Park
The stories we’ve covered thus far really haven’t touched too much on travel to the past (“Horror of Fang Rock” was implied to take place at the turn of the 20th century and our very first episode, “An Unearthly Child” takes us to prehistoric times) but for this one we’re on the northern English coast during World War II where a Turing-like machine is under development to break German code. But the scientist in charge of this machine, Dr. Judson, wants to also use it to translate some ancient runes at a nearby church . . . which you know is just going to cause some very supernatural trouble. The church lays on land that was Viking graves, and as the local vicar says, “Evil was once buried here.”
I’m a sucker for a period piece, and “The Curse of Fenric” fits this beautifully. It also introduced me to the world of early computing and the role of code-breakers in World War II, long before Benedict Cumberbatch brought Alan Turing to life on the screen in The Imitation Game.
But there’s also brilliant use of continuity in this four parter that sets the stage for modern Doctor Who storytelling. We’ll get to that later.
2. Ace and the Professor
After Peri’s grumpy, whiny nature, companion Ace’s curiosity is quite refreshing. She’s pure teenager, just a little bit headstrong and sometimes not always thinking clearly. It’s her impetuous nature and love of solving puzzles that puts her and the Doctor in jeopardy not once, but twice.
It’s also fun seeing her show off a thirst for knowledge to Dr. Judson, ask questions of the Doctor in their travels in town, and watch the two of them work together to solve some of the mysteries. The relationship between the two is a bit like the Holmes and Watson we saw in the early seasons of the CBS show Elementary, where Jonny Lee Miller’s Holmes trains Lucy Liu’s Watson in the art of detective work.
But while she treats the Doctor like a father figure, even calling him “professor,” there’s still tension. He holds information back from her, and it takes an angry confrontation in Part 3 for her to understand their evil threat. And she doesn’t hesitate to remind the Doctor she is still a woman, which she uses to their advantage later on in their plan.
3. Read a Damn Book
Between the code breaking and the Viking lore, there’s a lot of exposition and explaining. (In fact, during the production of this story, there was discussion of making it five parts instead of four.) And with both plot threads as intricately connected as they are, leave out something small and the viewer could end up rather lost. With the use of secondary characters, such as the priest in the local church reading from local books to explain the Viking legend, all these intricacies get explained beautifully.
The use of flash cuts to move from scene to scene helps keep things moving and tension building without overburdening you with information. More than once I would look at the time left on the episode and say to myself, “that went fast, but it didn’t feel fast.”
4. Back to the Future
Throughout the Doctor and Ace’s time on the coast, Ace gets to know one of the women in the WRNS (Women’s Royal Naval Service), Kathleen, becoming rather fond of her and her baby daughter Audrey. This is all in spite of the name Audrey leaving a bad taste in Ace’s mouth: her despised mother was also named Audrey.
Continued belowWhen she saves Kathleen and little Audrey from Fenric and the vampiric Haemovores invading the base, she ends up saving her own grandmother and mother – – that mother she hates. She’s created her own future.
No doubt viewers saw this coming (it’s too much of a coincidence that the baby shared the same name as Ace’s mother) but it’s also a character thread I would have loved to see explored on screen had the show continued after this season.
5. “I Knew.”
Fenric not only reveals his manipulation of Ace’s life, but also the Doctor’s. His hand was all over Iceworld, where the Doctor first met Ace – – and perhaps even farther back, as Fenric alludes to being present “before the Cybermen.” The Doctor volleys back with skill, indicating that he knew the entire time of all these things and then some, and even lays into Ace’s character, calling her a social misfit with little intelligence.
In the moment, it’s a means to an end. By breaking Ace’s faith in the Doctor, the leader of the Haemovores, called the Ancient One (summoned by Fenric), turns on his master and kills him.
In larger terms, it ties together the entirety of the Seventh Doctor’s tenure. And while this isn’t the first time that this happened in the classic series (Fourth Doctor serial “Logopolis” provides an explanation for some of the events of “Full Circle”), this is the first time this linking is done on a such a major level. This is storytelling that is a hallmark of the revival series today, and what makes it such compelling (and occasionally frustrating) television.
And as this was the next to last episode of classic Doctor Who to air, it’s a bittersweet reminder of the potential that might have been.
TARDIS Trivia (our Afterthoughts section)
- Two of the Haemovores are Sylvester McCoy’s sons.
- Although this was one of the first episodes filmed, it was held until later in transmission as the horror themes felt more at home in October. Ace’s reference to an old house in Perivale was meant to foreshadow the series “Ghost Light” – – which ended up airing right before this one.
- Ace’s remark to the Doctor about not being a little girl is perhaps the watered down version of one reference in the original script: the loss of her virginity (which prose novels later reveal took place on Iceworld).
Love it or hate it, next week we’re off to the cinema (perfect for the long holiday weekend here in the United States) for the Eighth Doctor TV movie that attempted to reboot the series in 1996.
If you want more classic Doctor Who, you can check out the streaming subscription service Britbox (available in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. at the time of this writing). If you’re in the U.S., Latin America, Puerto Rico, and Europe, you can also get your classic Who fix via the free streaming service Pluto TV, which has its own Doctor Who channel!
