Horror Of Fang Rock (1977) Review

I love Doctor Who.

Horror Of Fang Rock is a classic scary story with all the hallmarks apart from wasteful gore. There's psychological tension, a terrific location, memorable and likable characters and a creeping atmosphere. It could be the best Fourth Doctor horror story yet.

PLOT

The Doctor and Leela find themselves in a lonely lighthouse in the middle of nowhere. However, as they soon discover, it's less lonely than they'd prefer... soon they are joined by a motley crew of stiff-lipped upper-class gentlemen and a spooky alien foe...

ANALYSIS

It strikes me now that Horror Of Fang Rock is extremely reminiscent of the classic Troughton-era Base Under Siege stories. Although the characters are a bit more complex than the formulaic "crazy commander" types the Second Doctor ran into and the setting is historical, the whole serial is confined solely to the lighthouse which serves as the base. 

The alien's intent, build-up and silly appereance harkens back to The Krotons, which itself was a very generic representation of the Troughton era and the story concludes with the Doctor building a make-shift doomsday weapon that instantly neutralizes the threat, a trademark of the late 60s-early 70s era. 

CHARACTERS

The lighthouse crew are all lovable in their own way with a chemistry that's practically spin-off material(Big Finish!). Ben is a slightly arrogant, but clever engineer who's seen a few things. Vince is the young whittersnapper in training who tries to do things right(and almost serves as an extra companion in the story) and Reuben is the superstitious, slightly grumpy old man. They all bounce off of each other in a wonderful fashion and I wish we had seen more of them.

After the shipwreck, we're also introduced to the slimy, ever-irritated Lord Palmerdale who's been robbed of the chance to make a hefty profit and tries as hard as possible to get in the Doctor's way so he could escape. Despite this less-than-admirable character, the actor's performance is quite likable, in a "love to hate" kind of way. 

He is accompanied by a world-weary co-conspirator who tries to stop him to save his honor(being a retired colonel), but ultimately succumbs to his greed as well at the very end. Another great performance.

The only ones really lacking are Palmerdale's secretary, a parody of weak-hearted women who need to be rescued and the Rutan itself, horribly designed and not really memorable in any way. 

NOTES

*The Rutans' very appereance is a nice bit of continuity: they are the enemy the Sontarans fight in an eternal war.

*Did anyone get what the poem at the end was about?

*We never saw the Doctor clean up the lighthouse. Does that mean it's full of corpses, including one alien? 

*Why did the Doctor say the colonel died with honor?

*Jeez, Leela is quite dagger-happy in this one. I mean, she always is, kind of, but the Doctor really should do some more schooling. They wouldn't dare have a companion who throws knives into people's backs nowadays.

*What were the chances that both the colonel and Lord Palmerdale were carrying diamonds around?

*And why does the Doctor drop them? I get that they're not valuable to him, but he has big pockets! Why doesn't he just keep them in the TARDIS? If he needed them here, he might need them in the future!

*How does the Doctor end up in a situation where he has to hide in a bed with curtains twice in a row? First The Robots Of Death and now this? Was it a running joke or something?

*Why does the Rutan take so long to get up the stairs? And how come he comes after already been threatened away with fire? 

*The Rutans not coming back ever because their mothership was shot down(yeah, maybe not now, but never?) is as believable as the Sontarans not coming back ever in The Sontaran Experiment.

BEST QUOTE

"When you've seen one Rutan, you've seen them all."

CONCLUSION

A great Doctor Who horror classic with style.


Now, I forgot to talk about this at the end of the last review, but let's take a look back at season 14. I thought it was good. Definitely not the string of jackpots that was season 13, but keeping the level of quality production we've seen lately. There were some problems with plot development, but I could go back to any of these.

Also, we now have a new producer - Graham Williams. It's a shame that Hinchcliffe(with Holmes) pushed himself so far he had to be removed, but there's no hiding the incredible work he did in making the programme a serious, intellectual piece of television whilst retaining its light, child-friendly core. Many Doctor Who fans look back on the classic series and immediately think of Hinchcliffe's years, I'd say and for good reason: nobody did it better. Many did it great, but nobody did it better.