Doctor Who and the Image of the Fendahl

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X-rays of the skull reveal the shape of a pentagram which Fendelman thinks is a form of 'neural relay'. The Doctor says that the skull must have come to Earth, taking in Mars on the way - which he describes as dead (see The Ice Warriors). In equal parts charming and irritating. He also appears to be the only character who doesn’t realise he is in a horror film! Everyone else is playing their allocated part – the doomed female scientist, the cold Germanic psychopath and the vain millionaire, duped and conned into playing his role as victim. In a non ’Doctor Who’ version of this story Colby would likely be the hero, in this, despite being a brilliant scientist he is also the voice of the audience, expressing his incredulity at what is going on. Speaks Fluent Animal: The Doctor bids a herd of cows good morning and asks them if they know where the Macguffin is. If his claims in later stories that he can understand any animal are true, they don't have anything useful to tell him.

Richard Leakey was also head of the Kenyan Wildlife Service – which is the context I once very briefly met him in, at a lecture. His work in conservation and in particular his robust approach to anti-poaching patrols, won him few friends in Kenya and he subsequently lost both legs in a plane crash, suspected to be an act of sabotage. Look past the painted eyelids, and there’s something unutterably disturbing about Image of the Fendahl, Chris Boucher’s 1977 masterpiece starring Tom Baker’s Fourth Doctor and Louise Jameson’s Leela.In my next posts I’ll take a look at the characters inhabiting the world of ‘Image of the Fendahl’ and finally the nature of the menace itself. March 18th, 2022 56 comments Figurine Collection Magazine Story Sets #1: Image of the Fendah (Not Released) The Eighth Doctor later prevented the Time Lords from releasing the Fendahl in around 12,000,000 BC. ( PROSE: The Taking of Planet 5) Sinnott, John (2 October 2009). "Doctor Who: Image of the Fendahl". DVD Talk . Retrieved 20 October 2013.

This is great story and deserves to have much more praise heaped on it, we have some fine actors working on it including one woman who is Benedict Cumberbatch's mother. After image is an enjoyable making of, hampered slightly by the absences but still able to give a good sense of the making of this story. Anthony Read places it into context as the story where Robert Holmes handed over the reigns of script editing to him, while the cast offer memories. Topics focussed on include the controversial handing of a gun to a doomed character, the appearance of the monsters and the Doctor landing on top of Leela. Good stuff but a great shame not to include author Chris Boucher. This story had a working title of The Island of Fandor. (It didn't. This myth originated when Gordon Blows, then editor of the Doctor Who Appreciation Society magazine TARDIS, misheard the title of the story over the phone and reported it incorrectly. The Big Finish story Island of the Fendahl was set on Fandor as a nod to this.)

Dialogue Triumphs

Roughly 12 million years BC, the Fendahl evolved on the fifth planet, located between Mars and Jupiter. The Fendahl began to kill all life on the planet, including each other. ( TV: Image of the Fendahl) Some of the "predators" fled to Earth, where they drove the Great One into hiding. ( PROSE: White Darkness) When the Time Lords learnt of the danger that the Fendahl posed, they placed the planet in a time loop. They also removed all trace of the Fendahl from their records, leading it to pass into legend.

This is the case to such an extent, that at times the two leads are slight at an angle, tangential to the main story. They take a while to arrive in it and there is a slightly odd section of episode 3, when they head off in the TARDIS to see the missing 5th planet. This is a strange diversion in the narrative, it is something that can work as a tactic – Holmes uses it to great effect in ‘ Pyramids of Mars‘ and ‘ The Deadly Assassin‘, but here it just feels awkward and serves really to avoid the Doctor solving the plot too early, a case where tell not show would have worked fine and it doesn’t really advance the story. During her final transformation into the Fendahl Core, Wanda Ventham blinks just as the top of her face is transformed viewable as PDF files, which you can look at if you view the disc on a computer, are the radio times listings for the story. The god-like entity of the Fendahl does not speak. Chris Boucher had been similarly resistant to writing lines for the messianic computer Xoanon in The Face of Evil on the grounds that one could not write dialogue for God. [1]Thirteen physically separate organisms made up the Fendahl, twelve Fendahleen and the core. Additionally, a High Priestess of the Fendahleen would merge with them to complete the Fendahl creature. ( PROSE: Doctor Who and the Image of the Fendahl) Given all of this, I thought I would spend a bit of time and investigate the origins of the story further and that will be my next post. I’m sorry, Leela’s dress is a massive distraction to this entire story. I’ve no idea who these scientists are, what they are doing, and why World War 1 service revolvers are standard issue. While this is by no means a perfect story it’s one I rewatch again and again, so whilst accepting my nostalgia for it, it’s just such great fun to watch. The Doctor escapes from the store room where he has been imprisoned and finds the skull, which starts to hum and glow with power. He is compelled to place his hand on it, at which point the power greatly intensifies. The Doctor writhes in pain.