Day 236 — August 24th 2021
Image of the Fendahl Parts Three and Four
Image of the Fendahl — Part Three
With hindsight I reckon Torchwood were caught up in this adventure. I thought it in Part One when Fendahlman called London to ask ‘Hartman’ to send some soldiers down for security — in my own head canon he’s spoken to Yvonne’s dad, who was working at Torchwood during the 1970s. This just feels like the kind of thing they’d get themselves caught up with. And this episode even introduced the idea that there’s a rift through which mysterious things come… it’s basically Torchwood in the countryside!
Doctor Who: ‘You’ve lived in this cottage all your life, haven’t you, Mrs Tyler.’
Granny Tyler: ‘Why should I tell ‘ee ought?’
Doctor Who: ‘Well, telepathy and precognition are normal in anyone whose childhood was spent near a time fissure, like the one in the wood.’
Granny Tyler: ‘He’s as bad as she is. Here, what’s a time fissure?’
Doctor Who: ‘It’s a weakness in the fabric of space and time. Every haunted place has one, doesn’t it? That’s why they’re haunted. It’s a time distortion. This one must be very large. Large enough to have affected the place names round here. Like Fetchborough. Fetch. An apparition, hmm?’
Granny Tyler: ‘How do ‘ee know so much?’
Doctor Who: ‘I read a lot.’
I think that whole scene where Doctor Who explains what makes Granny Tyler psychic is my favourite part of the episode — there’s something about it which feels suitably intriguing and spooky, and it’s far more interesting than any of the other things going on in this story. I think it also highlights one of the problems I’m having with this one; there’s so many ideas thrown in, but none of them seem to have any bearing on the others. As far as I can tell the rift here doesn’t have any actual bearing on the main plot with the skull, other than the fact that the skull has ended up here by chance. I think I’d have rather watched an adventure in which Doctor Who and Granny Tyler teamed up to fight an alien menace which has come through the fissure in the woods.
Especially because Tom Baker’s Doctor Who works so well with Granny Tyler. I love the way that he brings her back round from a state of shock by giving her an incorrect recipe for a fruitcake, so she feels the need to revive just to put him right! Hah! That’s fab, and far more in keeping with the kind of sparkling dialogue and character work which characterised Boucher’s scripts for the programme last season.
There’s another brilliant exchange later on and — surprise surprise — Granny Tyler is at the heart of that one, too;
Granny Tyler: ‘I didn’t reckon he’d be reliable. Never trust a man as wears a hat.’
Mr Tyler: ‘Well, Granddad always wore one.’
Granny Tyler: ‘And a wicked old devil he were, too!’
Mr Tyler: ‘I wear one.’
Granny Tyler: ‘Ah, but I give it to ‘ee. That’s different.’
Elsewhere the direction continues to be rather lovely in this one. There’s a great shot where we open on the distorted reflection of some tarot cards in a crystal ball and pull away to show Granny Tyler reading the cards. It just feels like more thought than usual has gone into making this look good, and that’s broadly the only thing giving me any actual interest in the story. There’s some shots late on in this episode where Doctor Who and Leela make their way through the darkened woods and into the priory and they feel almost filmic. I think it’s the combination of a rare night shoot and some impressive lighting which makes it stand out compared to other stories — I might not find a lot to enjoy in Image of the Fendahl but I can’t deny that it has a unique visual identity.
I’ll give the score a bit of a bump for this one in recognition of how great Granny Tyler is, but it’s still only a 3/10 I’m afraid.
There’s been an explosion of material released in recent years picking up on characters licenced from various writers over the years. The Brigadier has a long-running series of novels, there’s whole worlds spun off from The Robots of Death and even Miss Hawthorne from The Dæmons has her own spin-off movie. So how on Earth have we not yet had the adventures of a young Granny Tyler grappling with the mysterious beings that pass through the Fetchborough Rift? It’s the perfect set up! Hit me up, Big Finish, I’ve already started writing the opening episode…
Image of the Fendahl — Part Four
The biggest issue I’ve had with this story is that I simply don’t understand it. I have no clue, for example, what the Fendahl actually is, and that feels like a pretty big flaw in the story. I was under the impression that the Fendahl was the big sluggy creature, but no that’s actually a Fendahleen, which is apparently something completely different. So if the Fendahl the skull? Well, no, it’s not. It might be the concept of the twelve people meeting, but Doctor Who seems to think that if someone gets sacrificed to become a Fendahleen then they no longer count towards the magic number… oh lord I’m just lost, and the worst thing is that I really don’t care about trying to work any of it out.
It doesn’t help that other ideas are thrown in and discarded seemingly at random. We took a visit to the Fendahl’s planet in the last episode, only to find out that it had been destroyed by the Time Lords and was now replaced with a physical time loop. But I’m not sure that has any bearing on the actual plot — Doctor Who suggests that the Fendahl simply escaped before the time loop was created, so what’s the point?
And then towards the end of this episode all manner of bizarre things begin to happen. Thea — now painted gold and acting as either the ‘core’ of the Fendahl or possibly as the actual Fendahl itself — suddenly gains the ability to teleport at random around the priory. She uses this ability to ominously appear in various locations for a few seconds at a time only to return to the cellar just in time to be blown up.
The issue with throwing in so many disparate elements and hoping that something will stick is that it makes the story almost impossible to follow, and it isn’t helped by some strange choices in the direction here. When Doctor Who and Leela make their escape through the house, I thought they’d been confronted by a pair of ghosts hovering in the hallway. I went along with it, assuming it was just another thing being chucked into the narrative (and reasoning that it tied up with Doctor Who’s talk about haunting in the last episode) but then I realised that I was actually looking at Thea’s arms, and that she’d been overlaid into the image.
A few minutes later when the priory is blown up the footage appears to go into reverse at one point. It has no bearing on the story, and it’s entirely possible that I was seeing something that wasn’t even there. But because of all the stuff about a time loop earlier on, I assumed we were going to see the Fendahl, whatever it is, escape again by turning back time or something. But… no.
It feels churlish of me to mark the story down for this next point because it’s less the fault of this individual story and more of Robert Holmes overseeing these first three adventures of the season. Is it just me or is it the same ending that we’ve had to every story of Season Fifteen so far? The Rutan ship comes in to attack in Horror of Fang Rock… so Doctor Who has to blow it up. Day saved! The Nucleus of the Swarm is too powerful and there’s no other way out… so Doctor Who has to blow it up. Day saved! There’s no safe way to stop the manifestation in the cellar of the priory… so Doctor Who has to blow it up. Night saved!
As I say, I’m possibly being a little unfair here, and there’s loads of Doctor Who stories which end with the baddies being blown up, it just seems to be a bit of an over-used solution right now.
One last point today. When Graham Williams was brought in to produce the show he was specifically told to make it less violent and more child-friendly. We’ve not seen a massive shift in tone yet (again likely owing to the retention of Robert Holmes across the first half of the season), but I do think that this episode contains the nastiest thing to happen in Doctor Who so far. Steal looks into Thea’s eyes which means he’s the next marked to become a Fendahleen, and he begs Doctor Who to get him a gun so he can kill himself before the transformation takes place. That’s bad enough, but then Doctor Who actually does it! You could read it as an act of kindness, allowing the man to go out on his own terms, but I think it’s absolutely horrible. I don’t want to watch Doctor Who assisting in a suicide in any context.
Overall I’ve found Image of the Fendahl a real let down, and that’s a shame. With some decent production values and a script by one of my favourite Doctor Who writers, I was hoping to discover a bit of an under-appreciated gem. As it is, I’m going with a 1/10 for this final episode.
