Doctor Who and the Image of the Fendahl

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We have commentary from Tom Baker (The Doctor) Louise Jameson (Leela) Wanda Ventham (Thea Ransome or now known as Benedict Cumberbatch's Mother and Edward Arthur (Adam Colby) Louise Jameson claims the reason her hair is done up in this episode is because a BBC hairstylist had mistakenly cut six inches off her hair just prior to filming. Her final scene in the story was filmed some five weeks after this incident, by which time her hair had grown long enough to allow her to wear it down for a single scene. ( DCOM: Image of the Fendahl)

It should come as no surprise that Bucher-Jones is a big fan of Image of Fendahl: after all, he co-authored the 1999 novel, The Taking of Planet 5 with Mark Clapham (and yes, a handy appendix points out places where Fendahl‘s narrative is expanded). But he’s not blinded to its faults. In fact, there’s a section balancing out the good and the bad. Although I find some ‘bad’ points are easy to explain away, his sheer enthusiasm for the story shines through in the ‘good’, pleasingly including script extracts featuring Mother Tyler. Drawn by the operation of the scanner, the Doctor and Leela arrive as the experiments reach a peak. The skull is exerting an influence over the mind of Thea Ransome, one of the scientists in Fendelman's team, and glowing with power each time the scanner is activated. Thea is eventually transformed into the Fendahl core, and a group of acolytes assembled by Maximillian Stael - another of Fendelman's team, who is trying to harness the creature's power for his own ends - are converted into snake-like Fendahleen. Silent Antagonist: The god-like entity of the Fendahl does not speak because Chris Boucher decided that one could not write dialogue for God. From ‘ The Stone Tape’, ‘ Fendahl’ takes much of the setting – an old haunted country house and also the main protagonists. The Kneale play features the exploration of the supernatural (a ghostly apparition of a maid servant) using modern electronic equipment and computers, by an obsessive millionaire electronics entrepreneur, a competitor to Japanese electronics companies and also the sensitive female scientist at the heart of the disturbance. In the case of the ‘ The Stone Tape’ this is Jane Asher’s character, Jill – the sole female in a very male world, who he is able to see the manifestation. She is brilliant like Thea, also empathetic and intuitive, but a good deal more overwrought and far less the calm and controlled scientist. The rest of the team in ‘ The Stone Tape’ have a macho laddishness about them – deliberately so it has to be said. ‘ Fendahl’ is an awful lot less masculine and testosterone filled and a good deal more watchable today, but the setup is very familiar if you watch ‘ The Stone Tape’ for the first time and are already familiar with ‘ Image of the Fendahl’.

Image of the Fendahl’ is Tom Baker’s darkest DOCTOR WHO story since Phillip Hinchliffe produced. Fendahleen, alien monsters with deadly, psychotelekinetic powers, looked like serpentine versions of horror writer H P Lovecraft’s ancient, fictional god, Cthullu. His stories detail how knowledge of fictional mythology cause madness. In this story, the Doctor needed Leela to help him survive his living nightmare and save humanity from Armageddon.

Unusually, for a Dudley Simpson-scored story, part one contains less than thirty seconds of his music. Accompanied by a detailed magazine that details the appearances and impact of the Mondasian Cybermen. Thea is again drawn to the room where the time scanner is kept and sees the x-ray of the skull. Stael appears and, revealed as the leader of the local coven, proclaims she is the key to his power, the chosen one. Thea tries to leave, but Stael grabs her and uses chloroform to render her unconscious.

Side guide

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 Doctor discovers that there is a large time fissure near Fetch Priory, which explains its reputation for being a haunted area. In fact, the Doctor claims that every supposedly haunted location is near a time fissure. There is a Making of featurette with the writer, special effects designer and several of the actors. Sadly Tom Baker doesn't appear in this nice overview of the production.

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).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. According to the 2009 DVD release documentary After Image, Anthony Read was brought on as script editor to help in the transition during Robert Holmes' departure from the role. Only Holmes received the on-screen credit. The Tarot card imagery is drawn from Dr Terror's House of Horror and the mixture of science and supernatural echoes The Stone Tape, The Road and The Legend of Hell House. Dialogue Triumphs Still, it's The Police Box Show, where we can forgive a bad monster when there's lots to enjoy and especially with a double bill of the marvellous Who rep girl Wanda Ventham as an human character and then a priestesslike Fendahleen Core. True as the core she just flounces mystically but as Tom put it in "The Tom Baker Years" video;