Doctor Who - The Curse Of Fenric (DVD)

I know we Doctor Who fans can often be a tiresome bunch, claiming that our favourite show invented just about every entertainment innovation of the late twentieth century. Sometimes we're only kidding (the Internet was probably not inspired by Ian Stuart Black's Terminatoresque serial The War Machines, despite its vision of a future full of computers sharing knowledge via the phone network). Sometimes we're speculating (Ridley Scott might have watched ...
...Vampire Slayer, is a self-confessed Doctor Who fan. This is a review of the Doctor Who serial which can be most clearly identified as Buffy's direct ancestor. Why? Er... because it's got vampires in it, of course.

The Curse of Fenric

Sylvester McCoy's Doctor lands the TARDIS (his multi-dimensional craft disguised as a police telephone box) in a British naval camp during the Second World War. The camp houses a crippled ... more

I know we Doctor Who fans can often be a tiresome bunch, claiming that our favourite show invented just about every entertainment innovation of the late twentieth century. Sometimes we're only kidding (the Internet was probably not inspired by Ian Stuart Black's Terminatoresque serial The War Machines, despite its vision of a future full of computers sharing knowledge via the phone network). Sometimes we're speculating (Ridley Scott might have watched early Tom Baker serial The Ark in Space before approving designs for Alien). Sometimes we're just bitter that a later franchise has come along and won popular acclaim despite using the same basic ideas (Doctor Who's Cybermen did exactly the same job as the Borg for a fraction of the special effects budget).

But sometimes we're right.

Joss Whedon, the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, is a self-confessed Doctor Who fan. This is a review of the Doctor Who serial which can be most clearly identified as Buffy's direct ancestor. Why? Er... because it's got vampires in it, of course.

The Curse of Fenric

Sylvester McCoy's Doctor lands the TARDIS (his multi-dimensional craft disguised as a police telephone box) in a British naval camp during the Second World War. The camp houses a crippled scientist whose [fictional] early computer is putting Alan Turing's [real] work to shame. A squad of Russian commandos is trying to break into the camp to steal the computer, for unknown reasons. The Doctor's assistant, Ace (real name Dorothy), is mooning around making friends and cooing over a baby that's so blatantly going to turn out to be her future mother that it's barely worth mentioning. Dr Judson's supervising naval officer is a freaky Hitler lookalike obsessed with obscure Norse mythology. He's already looking to bring about World War III before the second one's finished (talk about planning ahead), while he investigates a promising natural source of toxic chemicals under the nearby church.

And in the middle of all this politics, a bunch of vampires are just gagging to get in and massacre everybody.

The common denominator that links all these disparate plot threads is an entity described as an 'Evil from the dawn of Time' which Commander Millington has dubbed Fenric. Fenric has a score to settle with the Doctor, who in an unseen earlier confrontation trapped the demon in a flask using an apparently insoluble chess problem. From within his prison, Fenric has subtly manipulated his pawns through history to converge at the naval camp sometime during 1943...

Although no one really realised there were any loose ends to be tied up at the time, The Curse of Fenric resolved ongoing plot issues from a couple of seasons of Doctor Who. Ace's unlikely transportation from South London to the other side of the galaxy was finally clarified, as was the bizarre focus on a chess set in the anniversary story. But this sense of resolution is almost inconsequential next to the magnificence of this story.

Where to start singing its praises? For a start, all the Norse mythology and Viking rune material has clearly been researched pretty closely, adding a huge sense of depth to the script.

Then there's the music. Despite working with a budget of - ooh - pennies, Mark Ayres succeeded in creating a memorable score of chilling themes and synthesised interpretations of forties dance music, helping to capture the period setting from the outset.

Then there's the monsters. Elderly fans talk with reverence of a Jon Pertwee serial in which Sea Devils rose from the waves. In a nod to enthusiasts, the vampires (or Haemovores) do much the same thing towards the serial's halfway point. And they look great. The vampires are supposed to have been turned over the centuries since Viking raiders were first caught with the flask containing Fenric. So instead of the normal homogenous mass of uniformed monsters, each Haemovore is radically different in shape, size, costume design and mutation. The most recent vampires merely have Goth make-up and long nails, while the original Vikings have blue, bloated, crusty faces covered in ick. A friend of mine reckons you can occasionally glimpse the actor's skin beneath the costume, but so what? If you're looking that hard, I suggest you might have missed the point.

The only negative point with the Haemovores is that their patriarch, the Ancient Haemovore, is woefully underused in the finished serial. The script editor Andrew Cartmel once explained that this was because at the scripting stage he was never sure whether the visual effects department woul come up with a decent-looking monster, so he preferred to keep them out of the action to avoid potential embarrassment. In this case, it's a shame he played safe.

The acting is almost faultless. Sylvester McCoy is his usual quiet self, his portrayal of the Doctor reaching perhaps its darkest point in this serial. Seemingly frivolous one minute, and then projecting unimaginable power the next. The moment where the Doctor scares off two newborn vampires is particularly striking. His callous behaviour at the end provided the show's biggest shock moment since the Daleks learned to climb stairs.

As for the others, the whole cast is fantastic, with the casting people hitting on the great idea of actually casting East Europeans to play Russians, thus avoiding the normal embarrassing accent problems. The only two that fail to convince are Jean and Phyllis, two London evacuees who might as well have VAMPIRE FODDER stamped on their necks. The world needs less cockney vampires, of this I am sure, and their woeful delivery of the line,

'Yer should of come inna watah...'

...When trying to seduce Ace is easily one of the most forgettable moments in the history of the programme. Light entertainment star Nicholas Parsons took it upon himself to play a faithless vicar for some reason, but he's not too bad, and the cockney vamps get to redeem themselves in an utterly gripping scene where they break his faith.

The serial is also full of set-piece action scenes which approach cinematic quality. The Haemovores' initial attack on the church is shocking in its sudden violence and excitement, and the shot of the Doctor and co. pushing desperately against a door as vampiric hands reach around it was ripped off directly by Buffy in its first season. Ace's subsequent decision to run up to the roof to get into another fight is bizarre, but leads to a bit of fisticuffs that would make Ms B. Summers proud.

But the main things that make this such an obvious ancestor of Buffy are:

1) Wolves. Throughout, Fenric's pawns are referred to as the Wolves of Fenric, and Buffy is notable for its preference for associating vampires with wolves rather than the sad bat thing (shown by the vampires' guttural snarls while in their natural form). Also, Fenric uses his vampires as pawns rather as Buffy's central villains use the vamps - as foot soldiers to provide interesting fight scenes and make himself appear even more dangerous by association.

2) Into every generation a Slayer is born. Ace discovers towards the end that she has had her destiny interfered with by Fenric. And she's not happy with the news, just as Buffy initially spends whole episodes moaning about her lot in life.

3) Sex is evil. A good friend of mine wrote an article about how Buffy demonises sex. I shan't repeat her work, as I don't think it's yet been published. But I'm sure you'll get the gist if I just remind you about Angel's curse. Matt Jones wrote a much earlier article in which he stated quite bluntly that, in Doctor Who, people who express an interest in sex end up dead. Nowhere is that clearer than here, as Cockney slappers Jean and Phyllis get a permanent Goth makeover.

4) The whole concept of the Establishment being infiltrated and overrun by demons and madmen. Buffy it's the school and the Mayor's office, here it's the Church and the Marines. The message is the same: society can not protect you.

It was the idea that nowhere was safe that scared me when this serial was first broadcast in 1989. In fact, it terrified me for several days. My terror was not helped by the fact that all the coastal scenes were filmed at Lulworth Cove, a beach not far from my home which we had often visited. And the atmospheric sea mists that roll in during the story are very much the norm at Lulworth.

So, if you like Buffy, you will almost certainly love this serial, despite the lower production values.

All the actors play it straight from the first episode, and become ever more earnest as events accelerate towards the end. The story is elegantly structured. Each twenty-five minute episode ends with a fresh revelation of danger. And each cliffhanger is marked, not by visual spectacle, but by psychological shock value. The first is unremarkable enough (the Doctor held at gunpoint while a Russian officer orders his execution), but the second and third cliffhangers are magnificent enough to detail.

At the end of the second episode, the situation in the camp and village is starting to slip out of control. Vampires are rising from the sea, everyone seems to know that the Russians are invading, people are being attacked all over the place and Ace's interference has placed events beyond even the Doctor's control. And so our heroes rush into the computer room to find Commander Millington cackling with insane joy as the Ultima machine runs a thousand year computer program to release Armageddon. The final moment is not the iconic image of vampires rising from the waves, it is the Doctor staring in pity and fear at the authority figure who has clearly lost all grasp on reality as he hollers, 'You're too late, Doctor!' in best BBC melodrama style.

Similarly, the cliffhanger ending as Fenric is released, in the same computer room, does not end with Fenric's victim's spectacular death. It does not even end as the victim rises silently, clearly possessed by Fenric with glowing eyes. It ends with Fenric saying calmly:

'We play the contest again, Time Lord,' to the Doctor. Shock horror! This chaotic state of affairs has been the aim all along, and now the viewer spends the week before the final episode wondering exactly how much the Doctor has done to actually ensure Fenric's release so he can kill him properly.

Critics of the serial will say these episodes are highly pretentious, as characters wander around manically spouting huge chunks of Norse mythology and chess metaphors and all sorts of bollocks about wolves. In a way, they're right, the dialogue is hugely melodramatic and portentous, but it's also very atmospheric and, thanks to slick direction, utterly plausible. Even the weather's on the side of the production team as our heroes face the firing squad in torrential rain.

Oh, just forget the analysis. Curse of Fenric is just utterly, unbeatably cool. It's the desperately grown-up 'original series' Doctor Who story you can show to your mates without them laughing. It's got guns, mud and vampires, and an intelligent and highly literate script.

It's the business.  

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