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Doctor Who - Horror of Fang Rock [VHS]

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"Horror of Fang Rock" is one of "Doctor Who"'s creepier entries. It proves that a story made on styrofoam sets, with a monster so poorly made that the props kept melting under the studio lights, can still be edge-of-your-seat viewing. The TARDIS lands on a rocky outcrop under a lighthouse on the same night that an alien invasion fleet's advance scout crash-lands into the sea. A team of doomed lighthouse keepers, derived from a sub-Coleridge turn-of-the-century ballad, falls easy prey to the shape-shifting, electricity-wielding creature, as does a yacht full of bickering aristocrats also stranded on the isle.

The story opens the 4th (and exact middle) of Tom Baker's seven seasons as the Doctor. As a midway point to the Baker years, "Fang Rock" is intriguing in that it not only hearkens back to the gothic horror of his earlier years, but also serves as a window on the series' future mayhem, when Baker the actor would start acting against the scripts and run amok of the producers' control. The DVD release pays detailed attention to Baker's on-set flareups, while demonstrating how he could still produce great on-screen moments when working with the right people -- actress Louise Jameson and director Paddy Russell.

The commentary track sizzles with tales on on-set strife generated by Baker, if you're into learning that stor of thing. Jameson (companion Leela) provides excellent audio, balancing detailed production anecdotes with an intelligent critique of the story, almost 30 years later. She gives a far more satisfactory origin of the name "Leela" than did Leela's creator, writer Chris Boucher, on the "Robots of Death" DVD some years back. Terrance Dicks, always a hoot on DVD, lavishes praise over elements of his own script, while laughing off other elements of the story. If he likes a cliffhanger (the end of Part Three, a funereal Baker oratory), he takes full credit; if he thinks the cliffhanger landed on the wrong beat (the end of Part Two, when two characters awkwardly embrace against an off-camera scream), he'll cheerfully blame the director. Third wheel John Abbott, who played the youngest of the lighthouse keepers, has neither lot to do in the story nor to say on the commentary track, but he does give an interesting account of what it was like for a rookie actor to intrude on Baker's turf.

The best of the extra features is the 35-minute documentary on Terrance Dicks' "Who" career, featuring interviews with producer Barry Letts, old series writer Louis Marks, and current series writer Paul Cornell. Cornell gives a great breakdown of what made the "Fang Rock" script work so aggressively well ("The story has three McGuffins... and two of them are used to defeat the third"). DW book editor Peter Darvill-Evans, who looked nothing at all like I imagined (more like Ric Ocasek than Charles Dickens), describes Dicks' contribution to several decades' worth of DW novels. The closing credits feature a fabulous montage of every iteration of the Dicks-coined phrase "reverse the polarity of the neutron flow", against Jon Pertwee's observation that you could sing the line to the tune of "The Sailor's Hornpipe".

Now that "Doctor Who" has graduated into the 21st century and is working on its second season of new episodes, with modern production values and British TV's most celebrated writers, an episode like "Fang Rock" can easily sink into irrelevance alongside last season's gothic horror fests "The Unquiet Dead" and "The Empty Child". However, aided by the usual wonderful set of extra features, this DVD reminds those of us who've been in the "Who" fandom game for a while just how we got here in the first place.

Season 15 opens with what has been aptly described as Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians set in a lighthouse in the early days of the 20th century. Vince Hawkins, an amiable enough young man and one of three employees at a lighthouse on Fang Rock, sees an object fall towards the sea. Three things happen immediately after: One, there's a "fog coming up here like it's nobody's business." Two, Ben, the electrician, is electrocuted. Three, the TARDIS arrives with the Doctor and Leela.

Reuben, the stout oldster of the group, is initially suspicious of the Doctor and Leela, but when she tells the Doctor of a glowing creature she saw, he attributes it to the Beast of Fang Rock, which according to legend, killed two lighthouse employees and drove one mad back in the 1820's. He prefers oil to electricity, as the lights keep playing up, and has that experienced instinct of looking at the sky to see if there's going to be any fog.

Ben's body then vanishes, but before long, comes another crisis.
A yacht crashes aboard the rocks after one of the electricity foul-ups. The survivors are the arrogant Lord Palmerdale, a millionaire and crook, Colonel Skinsale, an MP who gave Palmerdale inside information in exchange for tearing up his IOU's, Adelaide Lesage, Palmerdale's high-strung secretary, and Harker the coxswain. It is he who finds Ben's body, which has had a post-mortem done on it. There then follows probably the highest casualty rate of any Who story.

Great dialogue by the Doctor: "localized condition of planetary atmospheric condensation caused a malfunction in the visual circuits." He then gives the simpler answer: "We got lost in the fog." To the members of the yacht in the crew room: "Gentlemen, I've got news for you. This lighthouse is under attack and by morning, we might all be dead. Anyone interested?" Leela to Palmerdale: "You'll do as the Doctor instructs or I'll cut out your heart!" Whoa, better not mess with her!

Trivia: As Louise Jameson complained of the brown contact lenses she had to wear, the end of the story did away with the necessity of that accoutrement.

An intensely atmospheric, suspenseful story that slowly builds up in Episodes 3 and 4.

Some times the best way to generate drama and suspense is to simply lock people into a room and whisper: MONSTER - and watch what happens.

THE HORROR OF FANG ROCK does this, and does it very well. Although scripted in a rush, and filmed in circles (it does take place in a lighthouse), rarely does it get dizzy and lose its balance. The story is focused, the tension is tight, and while most of the plots don't hold together all the way through, by the time the story ends its somehow managed to work, and work very well. And what's more - it's one of the few DOCTOR WHO stories (perhaps the ONLY one) where everyone but the series regulars are killed, or die. Grim, downbeat, yet still full of adventure and creep it's a nearly perfect period piece.

The DVD comes with all the bells and whistles we've come to expect from these releases. Commentary, with Louise Jameson, John Abott and Terrance Dicks is solid and fact filled, but like many of the commentaries on these DVD's they could really benefit from a moderator. There are trains of thought and interesting stories that get lost or trampled on by those present and it can be frustrating (especially when Jameson remarks that HORROR is one story where she and Tom Baker had a serious falling out. She says she was saving the story for when the scene that nearly busted up the pair came up - but it came and went without comment - either she forgot, thought better of it, or it was edited out). Text commentary repeats some of the audio commentary word for word, while other times it expands on something you've already heard or know.

Although the highlight for me on this release is the way too short THE ANTIQUE DOCTOR WHO SHOW where fans and collectors bring their DOCTOR WHO fortunes and finds to be reviewed. The highlight of which is an original typewritten script (with handwritten notes) for what would become THE RESCUE during the First Doctor's run - featuring TANNI, who would become VICKI filling in for SUSAN who left in THE DALEK INVASION OF EARTH (confused yet?).

THE HORROR OF FANG ROCK would be the last of its kind for some time on DOCTOR WHO. STAR WARS would alter the shows pacing and storytelling for years to come, and it wouldn't be until the Fifth Doctor's BLACK ORCHID that the series would return to a true period piece played simply for story and style. But until that story is finally released, THE HORROR OF FANG ROCK is one of the best, and a must for fans and those new to the series.

If you're like me, you'll remember watching DOCTOR WHO every day on PBS, unable to resist tuning in again after the previous day's nail-biting cliff-hanger. If that sounds like you, then this DVD is a must-buy. This one's an excellent example of what DOCTOR WHO did best, and why it kept so many of us entertained for a half hour every afternoon.

DOCTOR WHO was never a lavish production, and it was always best when it knew how to work with its limitations. It never had a big budget or gigantic sets, but this adventure shows how that was used as an advantage. In this one, a small cast of characters gets trapped in a spooky haunted lighthouse, with a monster slithering in the shadows, killing them one by one..... The Doctor has to figure out how to defeat the monster, while the body count starts climbing. It's a classic recipe for suspense, well-executed - and I'd seriously reccomend this to many modern, over-financed film-makers as an object lesson in how to do that right. It doesn't hurt that the actors are all top notch (especially series stars Tom Baker and Louise Jameson), and that they're given some great snappy dialogue. This is supposedly a science fiction show, but the result is some great combination of horror, murder-mystery, and Masterpiece Theatre.

The picture and sound quality are amazing, considering how old these shows are. But I honestly found some of the DVD bonus material took away a little of the show's excitement by examing it in more detail than I wanted to know. If you're at all interested in production trivia, you'll probably love the lengthy interviews with the production crew, and the technical notes - but I thought they took away some of the 'magic' of the show, even more than seeing the strings holding up a spaceship.
And, while I thought it was cute, I didn't see the relevance of the sketch starring the little puppet fox.

Its obvious, watching it nowadays, that DOCTOR WHO was made in a very different time and place than the one we live in now, here in 21st Century USA. But no matter what's changed in television and technology, this show is still exciting, and loads of fun to watch. It's even better on DVD, because there's none of that awful waiting for tomorrow to see how each cliff-hanger resolves itself. If you're like anyone in my household, you won't be able to resist watching it all in one go.

The 1970's were, without a doubt, the best period for Doctor Who in terms of writing as well as performance from both the regular cast and the supporting/guest actors--especially 1973-1977, the latter part of Jon pertwee's tenure as the Doctor into the mid-Tom Baker era. This was the "Golden Age" of DW. The Horror of Fang Rock was a strong opening story of DW's fifteenth season (Baker's fourth as the Doctor). Set in a lighthouse during the Victorian Era, we are treated to a claustrophobic "Hammer Films meet Agatha Christie" story as members of the lighthouse crew and survivors of a shipwreck are being killed one-by-one. The killer is revealed to be an alien called a Rutan. A couple of previous stories involving the Sontarans had included mentions of an ongoing war between the Sontarans and the Rutans, and here we finally get to see a Rutan. Baker and Louise Jameson (Leela) both turn in outstanding performances in this story. This episode is also well-executed from the writing and directing end as well. The Horror of Fang Rock is a classic Doctor Who adventure--one of the best stories from the best era of the show's history.

The first story of season 15 finds the show picking up a new producer and starting with another great story. This is without a doubt, one of my favorite Tom Baker stories. The story starts a strange light in the sky, the disappearence of one of the lighthouse keepers, The Doctor and Leela arriving around 1902 at the lighthouse on Fang Rock surrounded by fog and stormy weather. This is Who at it's moody best and full of suspence. the story is well written which is surprising given the fact that it was a last minute replacement. The original story was to be a vampire story but was sacked due to the fact that the BBC was getting ready to run it's own version of Count Dracula. The vampire story would be rewritten as State of Decay in the show's 18th season. This story was based partly on a poem which The Doctor reads at the very end.

There's some reason to think that this episode was inspired by a real incident -- the never-explained disappearance of the three lighthouse keepers on the Scottish island of Eilean Mor ("The Island of the Dead") on December 15, 1900. The mystery inspired Wilfred Wilson Gibson to compose the wonderfully macabre "Flannan Isle" (read it at http://oldpoetry.com/poetry/43252/), from which the Doctor quotes the last lines of the episode, in that sepulchrul basso profundo voice that was perhaps Tom Baker's greatest contribution to the character: "Of the three men's fate we found no trace/Of any kind in any place,/But a door ajar, and an untouched meal,/And an overtoppled chair."

As a beginning Dr. Who fan back in the late 1980's I was already hooked but this was the show that reeled me in. The Horror of Fang Rock is easily one of the best shows not only of Dr. Who but also in science fiction history. The Doctor arrives with his companion Leela near a lighthouse. Unknown to the inhabitants there is an unearthly creature lurking about determined to destroy all life on Earth. It is up to the Doctor to save the day!

Clearly special effects were never Dr. Who's strong point and they certainly are not here in this episode as well but who needs them when a story is so well-written and as wonderfully acted as this episode is? I certainly plan on buying this dvd even though I already own the VHS copy.

I can remember watching this story very young actually, and it's one of the few that I can watch today and remember seeing back then (the rest seem to have gotten lost in a fog of memory). Besides that, it's one of my favourites because it's a great story during one of the best times in Doctor Who...Tom Baker as the Doctor and Louise Jameson as Leela, his companion.
Just the fact that the entire story takes place in a lighthouse was a stroke of brilliance. It's a perfect setting for this horror-laced story, brimming with tension and suspense a-plenty. The entire cast gives great performances and there are some classic Tom Baker moments: The survivors or a ruined ship take refuge and start to bicker amongst one another, and the Doctor is just sitting there amidst it, until he suddenly interrupts: "Just a moment! We haven't been introduced!" and then slumps back in his chair. Additionally, later on in the story, he returns to the survivors and says, in his usual maniacal fashion, "Gentlemen, this lighthouse is under attack and by morning we might all be dead. Now, who's interested?" Classic stuff, to be sure. Not to mention we finally see the nemeses of the Sontarans, the Rutans.
I would heavily advise this story to anybody looking for a primer in not only the Tom Baker era of Doctor Who, but Doctor Who in general. I've shown this as an introduction to several friends who were unfamiliar with the show and they've become fans as a result, so I suppose I must have chosen wisely! LOL

Tom Baker was blessed with some of the best Dr. Who scripts and this one, for me, remains one of the best and one of the most intriguing. Besides being a variation on 10 Little Indians as other reviwers have mentioned, the story is also an intriguing morality play. All the victims were guility of a kind of deadly sin. The lighthouse was populated people guilty of greed, ignorance, intolerance, etc. which ultimately costs those people their lives.

I can't think of another story that did similar.