Image of the Fendahl

Dear Gary—

 Image of the Fendahl is one of those stories that I like despite myself. I have a vague memory of really enjoying it the first time I watched it many years ago, and then being disappointed upon the re-view several years ago. I struggle with this dichotomy today, the gut level enjoyment of my youth with no preconceived notions and the surface level disappointment of my world-weary middle age with jaded eyes.

Of course, that is the eternal struggle, isn’t it Gary? But I don’t want to go off on a tangent about lost innocence or reconciling past with present. Let me just say as a disclaimer, and this can go for all of Doctor Who and not just Image of the Fendahl, that my perception of the show has changed and that if I were to have written this all those years ago it would be very different than it is today. And it may very well be drastically different if I were to write again in another thirty or forty year’s time.

But I can only write now, in the present. And what I write is colored with my present as well as my past, no matter how much I would like to stay in that protective bubble of naiveté.

And so I will start by saying that just because you put some actors in lab coats this does not mean they are believable as scientists. And if I can’t believe that these characters are serious scientists then much of the impact of the story is lost on me.

Secondly, I do not like Leela’s new hair or costume. She does not look like herself. And maybe this is why I am beginning to be annoyed by the slightly antagonistic relationship between Leela and the Doctor as I watch Image of the Fendahl. Don’t get me wrong, Gary; I like Leela; I like Leela as a companion; I like that Leela is strong and ‘savage.’ But I think that there is limited life in this dynamic and it must either grow or move on. It is beginning to become too much of a one note broken record.

I will only superficially mention the sets and monsters. If I could be more invested in the characters I wouldn’t mind the cheapness of the rest.

Having said this, though, I do have to say Gary that it is the characters who keep me invested in the story.

I’ll start with Colby. Colby is the standout of the scientists, and the least believable. The others, Thea, Fendelman, and Stael, are ordinary and run of the mill. Very fine actors, I’m sure, and they all do credit to the roles given them. But Colby is the class clown. He gets all the attention because he gets all the good lines. I just don’t think this cut-up ever made it through some serious and probably rather dreary schooling and field work to cut it as a geologist or whatever field of study in which he supposedly specialized. Much less a geologist or whatever that made a major discovery.

Yet despite this lack of faith in character on my part, I love this character.

Colby: “There’s a corpse by the wood.”

Fendelman: “What sort of corpse?”

Colby: “A dead one. What other sort is there?”

This is another rather unbelievable point. Four professional, respectable scientists find a dead body in the woods. Not one of them reports this to the police. Fendelman and Stael, OK, they have their own nefarious reasons. Colby, OK, he has his pride in work and debt to Fendelman appealed to; less convincing but OK. But Thea? What is her excuse?

Just when I’m questioning the plot, though, Colby comes out with another one: “You must think my head zips up the back.”

Fendelman and Stael treat everyone as though their heads zipped up the back, and all for some very murky reasons. The plot is really done a great disservice because it could have been very intriguing. However Fendelman and Stael, who are at the heart of it all, are not given adequate back stories. Stael in particular is sidelined with only the barest of hints that he is part of some underground cult. Just telling us that Stael is in a cult does not give us the feel of any ominous threat or any sense of gritty reality (just like clothing actors in lab coats does not necessarily make us believe they are scientists). And while the story itself is steeped in mystic lore and atmosphere, it never quite convincingly connects this up to Stael.  I get the sense that Image of the Fendahl was meant as a six part story but at the last minute was shortened to four and most of Stael was left on the cutting room floor. And Fendelman (“Is that really your name?”), who should by all rights be front and center in this story, is only used as an excuse for them all being there. Fendelman and Stael both are mere footnotes to Image of the Fendahl.

But then Colby comes out with another one: “What are you exactly, some sort of wandering Armageddon peddler?” and I forget about the holes in the plot.

Ma Tyler and her grandson Jack are two more characters I can get behind. By all rights these two should have been the footnotes, but they are given the limelight at the expense of Fendelman and Stael. That’s OK with me because they are superb, Ma Tyler in particular. Ma Tyler provides the mystical that is lacking in Stael, although this too is given rather short shrift. There is some implication that she has been “consulted” by the cult, yet she does not associate herself with them. Her mysticism is concentrated in her and not fully connected to the wider scope of the story. Yes, she can sense the Fendahl, and the actress makes us feel the foreboding: “I . . . I seen it. In my mind. Dark. Great dark. It called me. Hungry. It were hungry for my soul.” But this is a one on one connection, Ma Tyler to Fendahl. There is nothing to link her visions with the so-called cult or with any historical precedence in the village.

The Doctor explains her telepathy on a time fissure (“He’s as bad as she is. Here, what’s a time fissure?”) that exists in the woods near the cottage she has lived in all her life. “Every haunted place has one, doesn’t it?” the Doctor notes. But again, I just don’t feel the haunting. You can tell me, Doctor, that the woods have a haunted reputation, but just telling me doesn’t make it so. Yes, the opening scene with the hiker being chased by some unknown presence in the woods was eerie, but it was an isolated incident that was tied to the resonating skull in the priory and had no feel of being any part of a larger lore associated with the surroundings. In fact isolation describes the scene with the hiker—it came and went with no real explanation, it was an excuse to . . . I’m not even sure what. The scientists find one dead body and cover it up and then it is forgotten and what was the point of that? Just to show us that something mysterious was going on? To show us that Fendelman and Stael were up to something? And what’s with the blister at the base of the skull? It is all disconnected, isolated, an asterisk, a footnote.

But then we get Ma Tyler and her grandson.

Tyler: “Look, you know that I don’t believe in all that.”

Ma Tyler: “Most round here do. And when most believe, that do make it true.”

Tyler:  “Most people used to believe that the world was flat, but it was still round.”

Ma Tyler: “Ah ha, but they behaved as if ‘twere flat.”

And so, taking Ma Tyler’s wisdom to heart, I will behave as though Image of the Fendahl were flat (so to speak).

I will therefore start over. We have an eerie, haunted wood where a hiker is pursued by an ominous presence and literally frightened to death. We have a group of scientists guarding a mysterious skull that is an impossible 12 million years old and that is attacking the mind of Thea. We have an ancient and murderous cult, the leader of which is Stael who is working in secret with Fendelman on harnessing the power of the skull. We have Ma Tyler, an old soothsayer being consulted by members of the cult and warning against the powers of the wood, and her grandson Jack who loves his Gran and who will protect her with his life but who believes in none of her folklore.

Setting the stage, now is the time for the Doctor and Leela.

Leela: “It is quite clear to me that you cannot control this old machine either.”

Doctor: “What did you say, Leela?”

Leela: “Leela said . . .”

Doctor: “I heard what you said.”

Leela: “Then why ask?”

The Doctor and Leela, bickering about whether K9 is a he or an it, trading insults about the TARDIS and Leela’s ancestors, the Doctor and Leela arrive as the skull resonates, the hiker dies, the scientists cover up, and Ma Tyler becomes comatose with fright. The Doctor and Leela arrive at “this moment of destiny.”

A moment of destiny 12 million years in the making.

Colby: “Did you say that about 12 million years ago, on a nameless planet which no longer exists, evolution went up a blind alley?”
Doctor: “Yes.”

Colby: “Natural selection turned back on itself and a creature evolved which prospered by absorbing the energy wavelengths of life itself?”

The creature they speak of is the Fendahl of the fifth planet right out of Time Lord mythology (“I was frightened in childhood by a mythological horror”). A history that the Time Lords covered up with a time loop (“they’re not supposed to do that sort of thing”). But for 12 million years an escaped skull has been festering on Earth and influencing the evolution of Mankind (or so the Doctor theorizes), all culminating in this moment of destiny.

The Fendahl, a gestalt creature made of 12 Fendahleen (transformed cult members) and a core (the transformed Thea), that can telepathically freeze a person in terror and that devours life and that cannot be killed (“How do you kill death?”).

Except that it can be killed—with rock salt no less. Ma Tyler and her charms to the rescue. All that remains is for the Doctor to dump the skull in a super nova and that is the last of the Fendahl.

Image of the Fendahl is itself a sort of gestalt, but like the Fendahl not yet complete. It is missing a few of its Fendahleen parts. But with the Doctor and Leela as its core, and with Colby, Tyler, and Ma Tyler as some of its Fendahleen, Image of the Fendahl is enjoyable nonetheless.

Missing from most of Image of the Fendahl is K9, out for repair. He does get the last laugh, however.  While working on him when our story began the Doctor insisted that K9 should be referred to as it rather than he, but as our story concludes he says, “I’d better finish repairing him.”

“Ah, You called him him. You called him him!” Leela pounces, to which the Doctor replies, “I can call K9 him if I want to. He’s my dog, aren’t you K9?” K9 can’t answer his usual “affirmative” but he can nod his head as the TARDIS dematerializes.

And that is my cue, Gary, to dematerialize.