Doctor Who - Image Of The Fendahl (1977).
Great year, great vintage. A Tom Baker era Gothic Hammer-style Horror! Except, this wasn't during the right period!
"The elemental power that brought you to my doorstep!" - Vincent Price.
Mary "Witch"rite thought, for the good of us all....... that Doctor Who was too violent horror for the kiddo's. So we were lumbered with admittedly tame stories. However, at least we got through enemy lines with maybe three stories & this fab story is just such one! A great escape of a loophole indeed. Yet, once more, this also draws from Erich Von Daniken's Chariots Of The Gods, & Giorgious A. TsouKalos also deserves a mention. I know, I keep going on about this stuff, but it appears I'm not alone in my belief's where Science-Fiction & alleged written history is concerned!
Denis Lil is Dr Fendahlman. Your overzealous, scientist who has a skull. A Homo-Sapien skull that is 12 million-years old, complete with a pentangle on its forehead. An experiment that can only end in disaster for all of Humankind. Edward Evans is your regular good-natured scientist Adam Colby, whilst Scott Frendricks is the disillusioned Max Steel, with delusions of grandeur by your typical, cliché occult wannabe, demi-god beliefs. Yes, he's barking mad!
Wanda Ventham. Yes. THAT Wanda of U.F.O. tight-shirt fame & Sherlock's Mum! Is the beautifully named Thea. Her destiny is chosen, more on that later.
Alas, poor Doctor!
The Doctor & Leela land on Earth....in a cow field, to investigate a mysterious time fissure. The Doctor stumbles upon the group of scientists in a hired mansion & immediately gets promoted to the rank of "wandering doom-peddler" by Colby, then a convenient murderer by Dr Fendalman. Leela wanders into Granma Tyler's cottage for tea &..fishcake(?!) & almost gets whacked by village idiot Ted Moss. But, of course, she's a warrior of the Sevateem & he's just trained by the mighty Council.
Worry not Grandma, no reindeer.
Yes, Grandma Tyler's another cliché. Peddling out doom & gloom with her psychic vision. But she's lovable & funny. But she also joins the infamous, "Ow! A twig, my ankle! Oh, woe!" club. How can she not remind us of our own Grandma's? Well alright, mine wasn't into this kind of thing unless my Mother or Father knows something I don't! Her "domestic" with her grandson Jack about flat Earth had me in hysterics! Jack Tyler is equally, rural folk, yet, very sceptic about ye olde ways likeable. "'Cpet 'e don't buy all o' Gran-ma's magick stuff!" Do I get an audition? I'm so fired, aren't I? She goes into psychic shock & our hero deduces that she was exposed to the time fissure as a little girl. Seriously, I would LOVE to see a flashback of that scene. Post Victoriana, a la New Who!
Prepare yourselves. The Timelords are hypocrites! Now that's a revelation, sarcasm mode off! They tried to destroy the Fendahl on Planet 5. Against their non interference rules (looking at you Highlanders Watchers as well!) That's red-tape, cloak & dagger, bureaucrats for you, & a great job wiping it off the face of the Universal map too! Sigh, No Star Trek Prime Directive morals here. Still, look at Captain Kirk!
Silly Steel is merely the piece in a grand-scheme type jigsaw puzzle (sucker!). Dr Fendahlman puts the pieces together in his wonderful "Mankind is being USSSSED!" speech. worth a rewind, & believe me, I kept rewinding that scene! Colby get's the funny sarcastic take about Steel trying to conjure up the Devil. Poor Thea's fate is sealed as well by this gestalt entity. The puzzle suddenly fits!
MANKIND IS BEING USED!
Okay, I feel compelled to mention Matt Smith era story Hide (2013). Oh, c'mon! If you think about it!. It's set in a dark, rural, 70's Gothic-style mansion with fancy 70's computers. There's a scientist looking for paranormal activity, & a psychic medium at hand The similarities were such that when Hide aired I had to watch this! Serious mode off, back to silliness.
This is definitely a missing jigsaw piece of Gothic-era Who. The one that got away! They really could have used K9 on this one, but it was still early days for him at this stage. Love the mellotron, backward taped, psychedelic music in the final episode. Another priory/mansion had to be destroyed. Ah, well, we did it on both 1976's Pyramids Of Mars & Seeds Of Doom. What are we gonna do? Love the Medusa-like look of the Fendahl, very apt considering. Great attempt at the giant slug-like Fendahleen. The Fendahl are cannibals it would seem, there can be only one? So, no all you can eat buffets then?
Dr Colby is sunny & funny. We could all use a little Colby within us, rather than the Fendahl(?) He's also very down to Earth, in more ways than one, I guess! He's no Dr Smith or Rimmer, but he's very funny when he's erm..something or other type of scared! He promises the Tyler's that he'll overtake them back to their cottage when offered an invitation! Max Steel, played to awesome by Scott Frederick, is equally chosen to be just nasty to the core, by the original "programming" of the fendahl, of course. Scott was the equally pessimistic & tad nasty rebel Boaz from Day Of The Daleks (1972)
In that story he sacrifices his life to save a fellow rebel unlike Steel who begs The Doctor for a quicker way out, with his pistol than the eternal torment of the Fendahl. A way out which our hero helps him with. A tad difficult subject admittedly, & seemed to get a lot of slack for our teatime hero, (a personal subject I know from experience.) but this is meant to be a fab blog! Of course, Denis Lil will appear again, used by an ancient alien evil in The Awakening (1984). Never mind that he seems to crop up in everything from Survivors, the Royal, to Red Dwarf, & Survivor!
All in all, we have a titan hidden amongst the sheep!
No copyright infringement blah-blah-blah spank me or set Leela on me!
Stay safe!
Borgduck, alias Stewart,