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Special Features
- Terrance Dicks: Fact & Fiction: a look at the writer's six-decade career in books and television
- Paddy Russell: A Life in Television: specially shot retrospective interview on the director's career
- The Antique Doctor Who Show: 1993 short film on Doctor Who collectibles
- Photo gallery
- Production note option
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
But for this particular story, you need not know that Doctor Who is a Time Lord who travels the cosmos in a spacecraft called the TARDIS, an interplanetary time machine that looks like a police call box, or that Tom Baker, who portrays him here, is the fourth and perhaps most popular incarnation of the good Doctor.
Horror of Fang Rock is as much ghost story as science fiction. The TARDIS has deposited the vacation-bound Doctor and his companion, Leela, on Fang Rock ("You told me I would like Brighton," an unimpressed Leela remarks about the desolate surroundings), just after a strange light was witnessed plummeting from the sky into the sea. A mysterious fog envelopes the lighthouse, and one of its inhabitants is mysteriously killed. When a ship runs aground, its passengers take refuge in the lighthouse and find themselves stalked as well. Is it the mythical Beast of Fang Rock or, as the Doctor suspects, an alien menace?
The cheesy mid-1970s-vintage special effects are part of this show's charm. Like Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons, what Doctor Who lacks in production values, it more than makes up for in verbal ingenuity. "Are you in charge?" someone asks the Doctor. "No," he responds, "but I'm full of ideas." --Donald Liebenson
Product Description
Customer Reviews
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.
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.
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.
