The Curse of Fenric

Dear Gary—

“They say evil was once buried here.” It’s a good premise for a Doctor Who serial, and The Curse of Fenric has many of the elements to be a first class story. I wish I could like it. It wants me to like it; it tries really hard. I think that is the trouble. It takes itself too seriously.

By viewing The Curse of Fenric in the serious vein it is intended, I end up poking holes in its pretense.

“Why is everyone round here so interested in Vikings?” My question exactly. There is nothing overwhelmingly Nordic about the story. The stage is set beautifully with a ghostly carving of a sunken ship’s dragon head lurking beneath the waters, some old runes that need deciphering, talk of a Viking curse, and Nordic names on some gravestones. But then we are not treated to anyone remotely like a Norseman. Instead we have a cast of British and Russian soldiers who apparently share a lineage with those long ago seafarers but bear no resemblance. And rather than taking place in the land of the North the action plays out along the Yorkshire coast. To complete this mishmash, we have a stolen Oriental vase, a World War II setting, a replica of the German naval cipher room in Berlin, and vampires—or rather Haemovores—a future link in the evolutionary chain of Homo sapiens. The set up of Viking mythology is wasted.

The runes are the biggest waste. Much is made of these ancient writings. Much time and effort is expended on translating them. There is even a giant ULTIMA supercomputer devoted to their deciphering (never mind that there is a war going on and that there are military communiqués that probably could use decoding) along with the expert Dr. Judson. “The ULTIMA machine can break the most sophisticated Nazi ciphers; some ninth century scribbling shouldn’t be much of a problem.” Except that the ninth century scribbling that everyone is so interested in has already been translated long ago by Reverend Wainwright’s grandfather, and they don’t reveal anything that most everybody doesn’t already know or could guess. “We hope to return to the North Way, carrying home the Oriental treasures from the Silk Lands in the east, but the dark curse follows our dragon ship.” Just a retelling of the ancient lore; no new secrets divulged; simply some exposition for the viewing audience.

I also have to wonder about those British and Russian soldiers. They are on the same side in their war against the Germans, yet as the story begins the Russians are sneaking in to the British naval base to steal the ULTIMA machine. They slaughter a bunch of soldiers on the beach in the process, and are ready to murder two innocent East End evacuees as they frolic in the water.  But by the end of the serial these battling allies are working together, their slain friends forgotten.

The Russians are surreptitiously aided in their raid by Commander Millington. Millington is so fixated on fighting Germans that his office is modeled after the German naval cipher room complete with Hitler portrait. As the Doctor explains, “He’s just trying to think the way the Germans think.” The Russian are fighting this same war with him, yet he engineers their abduction of the sabotaged ULTIMA machine that will eventually decimate the Kremlin. He is thinking ahead to when the war is over and the Russians will potentially be enemies. But then shouldn’t he wait in his destructive plans until, oh, I don’t know, after the war? His failsafe is that the poison won’t be released until a particular word (love) is decoded, and he therefore thinks the timing of the detonation can be controlled; but who is to say that this word won’t be incidentally decoded before that time?

OK, this is not really Millington’s idea; he is merely a pawn—a Wolf of Fenric. This brings me to Fenric. Now Fenric is supposed to be a pretty smart guy, and powerful too I would imagine because even entrapped he has the ability to influence minds and transport people through time and space. Yet he seems content to stay in his prison for centuries while he maneuvers and manipulates his Wolves in some elaborate scheme rather than simply having one of them find and crack open his flask. And he has had centuries to ponder on this supposedly insoluble chess game with the Doctor and still can’t figure it out, yet Ace can come up with the solution out of the blue. I can’t imagine why this mighty being is flummoxed by a game of chess to begin with. I wonder if a game of tic tac toe would suffice. And when Fenric does finally solve it (with the aid of Ace), I don’t know what all the fuss was about. What, the chess board bursts into flame? That’s it? That was its intended fate by order of Commander Millington anyway, so what’s the big deal? There are no great lightning bolts of destruction; no earthquakes; no tidal waves; not even gale force winds. Nothing but a burning chess board.

A freed Fenric doesn’t seem much different than a trapped Fenric. He has a body ("Evil needs a body.")—first Dr. Judson and then Sorin when Judson’s body proves too weak to undergo even the mental agonies of a tricky chess move—but he does little more than influence the minds around him, which is what he was doing while kicking back in his bottle. If he really wanted to be effective in a body, he should have taken over that of the Ancient One.

The Ancient One is a remarkably effective Doctor Who monster in the mixed bag of Haemovores that are roaming the naval base at the command of Fenric. I’m not sure how long these vampire creatures have been lurking under the water off the coast in varying states of conversion and decay. They have apparently been luring unsuspecting souls, enough so that Maiden’s Point has quite the reputation amongst the locals, but not enough to have spawned any kind of investigation into mysterious deaths or disappearances. I suppose their presence is just some devilish fun on the part of Fenric and are conveniently on hand to cause chaos on the base to divert the Doctor and the soldiers from Fenric’s machinations.

The two ‘maidens’ Jean and Phyllis are unnecessary distractions. They become chummy with Ace in record speed, but then Ace has been forming instant attachments all over the place in this serial. They are snide and unlikeable as human evacuees boarding with the caricatured Miss Hardaker, and too much time is spent on them. Why the initial dip, other than to showcase Ace’s fears and her loyalty to the Doctor? The stage is set for Phyllis’ and Jean’s conversion at that point, but then it is put on hold and we have to sit through yet another journey to Maiden’s Point with this deadly duo. Vampire Jean and Phyllis are sufficiently creepy in small doses, but again we have too much of them and their attack on Hardaker is gratuitous. Their usefulness comes in putting a human face on the Haemovores, I just wish this could have been done more economically. And of course the payoff is their confrontation with the Reverend Wainwright.

Reverend Wainwright is an element that is right. His halting recitation of Corinthians 13 is simple and real. Wainwright is the very picture of the earnest young man of the cloth who has become disillusioned by the war and is struggling with his faith.

Faith, as it turns out, is the only weapon that works against the Haemovores. That is a nice twist on the vampire legend and works to great effect in The Curse of Fenric. Thus Wainwright with his failing faith is ultimately defeated whereas Sorin can walk away from the blood lusting mob with his belief in the Revolution intact. The Doctor uses the names of former companions as his defense, but I don’t know about that, Gary. Love, yes, but faith? I don’t know that faith is the correct word. This is perhaps where the two become confused, and I wish more had been made of this. Faith and love are the two themes of The Curse of Fenric, but it is faith that is put at the forefront; love is left for the subtext. “And the greatest of these is . . .”

It is in Ace that the two, faith and love, are most effectively represented. “I believe in you, Professor,” Ace exclaims as things come to a head. The Doctor must brutally break Ace’s faith in him. “She’s an emotional cripple,” he says. “I wouldn’t waste my time on her unless I had to use her somehow.” Devastated, Ace drops to her knees. “I had to save you from Fenric’s evil curse,” the Doctor explains afterwards. It is powerful stuff, except I can’t figure out why Ace’s psychic barrier was preventing the Ancient One from attacking Fenric. Is faith that powerful that a Haemovore can’t even walk past a devout person to get to his intended target? Apparently.

Ace is the linchpin of this story; it is her coming of age tale. In addition to the belief she places in the Doctor, she displays superhuman mental powers, falls in love, seduces a soldier, and confronts her mother hate.

I never considered the sixteen year old juvenile delinquent Ace a genius, yet she not only outthinks the great intelligence known as Fenric, but she also discerns the true meaning of the latest rune when the expert, Dr Judson, cannot. How has Ace obtained all of this mental ability? She is supposedly one of the Wolves of Fenric; is Fenric therefore providing her with the knowledge? But then, why doesn’t he know it himself? Why does he need Ace to begin with? Why choose her; why transport her into the Doctor’s world; why manipulate her future? Is it merely to get the Doctor to cross his path, and if so there surely is a more direct route to that end; or is it to provide the answers he seeks to free himself, and if so, doesn’t he already have that knowledge, or does he somehow anticipate Ace will have the knowledge, or . . . ?

Too many imponderables; if this were a chess game I’d be trapped in an Oriental jug by now. Maybe I should get Ace to explain it to me.

But then, she’s busy falling in love with Sorin. Not busy exactly. She only sees this guy on the fly a couple of times. I guess it is the old standby love at first sight. Perhaps it was the “How about a little Cossack blood, eh?” line that swayed her.

Seriously, though, she spends more time with the guy she is trying to seduce; if you can call it a seduction. I marvel at the lack of discipline for this young soldier to walk away from his guard duty to tag along after a teenager. She doesn’t even wink or sashay; she simply stands at the door and then walks away; he trails along behind her as though entranced. That’s the only explanation I can come up with; he must be one of Fenric’s many Wolves and is mesmerized; either that or he wants to keep his eye on this young woman who appears to be deranged. “Sometimes I move so fast, I don’t exist anymore.” It’s some intriguing dialogue by Ace, but not exactly a classic pick-up line.

Finally we have Ace’s mother, Audrey. Ace falls in love with baby Audrey at first sight, much like she does with Sorin. But now, really—Ace of the superhuman mental ability to outsmart Fenric at a game of chess and to beat the mathematical expert Judson to the rune solution can’t figure out that a man and woman with the same names (first and last) as her grandfather and grandmother and who have a baby with the same name as her mother are actually her family—now, really?

But what really bothers me about this thread of the story is Ace’s hatred. Her mother must be a truly vile person to rate such unconditional loathing. Ace loves the baby but cannot reconcile this to the mother that she knows. “Love and hate, frightening feelings, especially when they’re trapped, struggling beneath the surface,” the Doctor tells Ace. A quick dip in the water and: “I’m not scared now.” All very touching and symbolic, but I don’t know that she has resolved her conflicting emotions. Has all the abuse she must have suffered at the hands of her brutal mother been washed away? In order to take this seriously I have to assume that Audrey is a devilishly wicked woman (perhaps the touch of Fenric?) and that Ace’s abhorrence is not simply teenage rebellion. But then I need more to the story than just a meeting with the innocent babe and a cleansing dive into deep waters.

The Curse of Fenric wants to dive into deep waters; it wants to mine rich story lines; it takes itself seriously but hasn’t the time or budget to do it justice. I want to dive into those waters and explore the themes of love and faith.

Ace chastises the Doctor: "You always know; you just can't be bothered to tell anyone. It's like it's some kind of game and only you know the rules." The Doctor is the manipulating mastermind, and this telling scene lays bare Ace's flagging faith more than the Doctor having to artificially shatter her illusions. This darker side to the Doctor could have been dealt with on a much deeper level if properly exploited.

Ultimately, Gary, I think the biggest handicap of The Curse of Fenric is Fenric. I wish he could be tossed out and instead make this a tale of the Haemovores with a bigger concentration on Ace’s actual relationship with her mother rather than a vague ‘I hate my mother’ attitude that is never expanded. That would be a story that could richly mine the themes of faith and love.

And the greatest of these, dear Gary . . .