It always feels a bit odd coming back to the TV series in my marathon. All of you are (mainly) focussing on the television series whereas with my flitting around from audio to comic strip to book to TV to whatever, means I sometimes feel a little out of touch with the programme. It’s part of the reason I decided to start randomly rewatching stories as I realised, in the case of the new series, there are rafts of episodes I haven’t seen since broadcast; and with the classic series, loads of stories I’ve bought the DVD for and never actually watched.


Horror of Fang Rock, though, is one I think I’ve watched on DVD and is, obviously, one I have watched a fair few times before (although not as many as some as it was one of the later VHS releases).


As I rewatched this story the one word which kept popping into my head was ‘atmosphere’. This story is steeped in it. It’s a story at the beginning of the Williams era which clearly has its feet firmly planted back in the Hinchcliffe years. With stories such as Image of the Fendahl still to come, it’s not really until The Sun Makers that Williams’s stamp of the series, for me, begins to show (with The Invisible Enemy stepping towards it with a fairly large bound).


Horror of Fang Rock is fog and gloom. It’s horror and death. It’s claustrophobic and scary. I’m sure many of us know the background to the serial. It replaced a script which eventually became State of Decay because the BBC didn’t want a vampire story so close to its transmission of an adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Terrance Dicks, the writer, restricted the action to simple, small sets and in needing an adversary chose to finally show the oft-mentioned eternal enemies of the Sontarans, the Rutan. The story was filmed in Birmingham as oppose to London. Tom Baker did not see eye to eye with the story’s director, Paddy Russell.


These facts all, in some shape or form, contribute to the story’s palpable atmosphere. From the moment the TARDIS materialises on the foggy fang rock, doom and gloom pervade the story. Characters die brutal deaths and it’s common knowledge that this is one of the few serials in the series’s history where the Doctor and companion are the only survivors of the adventure. The small, enclosed, restricted sets create the claustrophobia – for example, after Lord Palmerdale attempts to bribe Vince, the only place he can go when the Doctor arrives in the lamp room, is out on the balcony. He has nowhere else to go (and subsequently falls victim to the Rutan). Even the exterior rocky island feels hemmed in and inescapable due to the fog, darkness and vicious looking rocks.


The guest cast deliver well-rounded performances and it’s interesting to have characters such as Palmerdale and Adelaide who, whilst not the main antagonists of the story, create tension and dissent among the humans attempting to survive the attack. The three lighthouse keepers form a believable trinity of Reuben (played brilliantly by Colin Douglas), the old hand, suspicious of new technology, the experienced forward thinking Ben and the vaguely naïve, impressionable but ultimately decent youngster, Vince (a wonderful John Abbott). It’s almost a shame Ben is killed so early, although Rio Fanning’s Harker slips into a similar role (the voice of reason amongst the heightened emotions of the shipwreck’s survivors). Even Alan Rowe’s seemingly level-headed and honourable Colonel Skinsale ends up dead due to greed.


Tom Baker and Louise Jameson are on top form. It’s well-known now how difficult the relationship was between Baker and Jameson was during her time on the show (although now they are good friends and old wounds have been healed). However, this doesn’t show on screen. There are some wonderful scenes between them throughout this story. Leela continues to shock history with her ‘savage’ approach to life highlighted in the scene where she willingly undresses in front of a poor, embarrassed Vince. The similarity in Leela’s attitude to clothing in this period is also quite interesting with her switching from a ladylike outfit to, effectively, men’s clothing – a contrast of fashion and gender expectations which is present in The Talons of Weng-Chiang. It’s a great companion piece (if you’ll excuse the pun) to that story – which don’t forget is only set little more than 10 years before this story. What’s interesting is that – chronologically in the TV series, Talons directly preceded Horror meaning that (if we ignore novels, audios and comic strips) the Doctor and Leela have only travelled forwards in time by around 10 years after they departed from Jago and Litefoot’s company.


The Rutan is presented well. Colin Douglas’s performance as the shape-shifted Rutan is chilling with his pale demeanour and sinister smile. Even the blobby, jellyfish is convincing which is partly thanks to the restricted sets and some good voice work. I also like Dicks’s logic in creating the Rutan as an opposite to the cloned Sontarans. The idea of a gestalt blob with little individuality is the opposite of the Sontaran’s massive armies of clones and yet has parallels in that both races abhor the individual. The Rutan’s ability to shape-shift into any form contrasts nicely with the idea that all Sontarans look identical (ignoring the fact that, in the series, they have done nothing of the sort).


Historically, an exact date is not given although clues in the story point towards early after the turn of the century. The attitudes on display are very much in keeping with those that were present in the Victorian-set stories with little details such as Adelaide’s belief in her psychic, Palmerdale’s treatment of the lower classes and Reuben’s distrust of new technology adding layers to both the characters and the setting.


Horror of Fang Rock is one of those stories that, for me, used to just ‘there’. It wasn’t one I ranked highly but equally I didn’t dislike or deride it. This rewatch found my appreciating it a whole lot more. My 8 year old son actually watched a lot of this story with me. In recent years he’s been a little dismissive of Who (heart breaking) but more because he has been trying to define his own likes and dislikes rather than just liking what Daddy likes. He was gripped by the opening episodes and was constantly asking questions about the alien and the motivations of the characters; as well as some of the history. He can be quite a nervous child and doesn’t like fiction which is too scary but this story just about stayed on the right side of his tolerance levels. I think this is one of the reasons I appreciated this story in a different way as I began to see it through the eyes of a child who had never seen it before. (He also loves Leela because of her savage, warrior-like ways).


A foggy, gloomy gem.