Horror of Fang Rock Part Four

The one where Leela's eyes change colour...

"Shameleon factor"? What's all that about, Doctor? It's surprising that someone as well-read and knowledgeable as Tom Baker could get the pronunciation of such a word so wrong, but then this isn't a unique example. He also wavers on the pronunciation of Rutan in this episode, while other Doctors have slipped up too, including the Seventh bodging Spiridon in Remembrance of the Daleks, and the Eleventh fudging Metebelis III in Hide.

Within moments of this episode opening, poor, sweet, innocent Vince is killed by Reuben the Rutan, which is such a crying shame. This era is scattered with deaths like these, characters that you get attached to, and so you feel it more when they die (Dr Carter in The Hand of Fear, Runcible in The Deadly Assassin, Casey in The Talons of Weng-Chiang...).

We finally learn what the creature is in this last episode: it's a Rutan, a race locked in an unending war with the Sontarans. This is a Rutan scout, who has decided that Earth will be the perfect strategic location for its race to launch a devastating attack on the Sontarans, so it has set up a signal relay to guide in the Rutan mothership. The Doctor realises that, in retaliation, the Sontarans will fire photonic missiles at Earth, destroying it, but the Rutan doesn't care a jot about this.

The Doctor's humoured chat with the Rutan on the stairs is nicely written, and very well shot with interesting POV shots by director Paddy Russell. And even though the realisation of the gooey green globule is done well - it's movement up and down the stairs is particularly good - it's still low-level silly that the alien is just a green jellyfish. Season 15 is troubled by monsters which struggle to convince, from jellyfish Rutans, to the prawn-like Nucleus of the Swarm (The Invisible Enemy), to the tin foil Vardans in The Invasion of Time. However, it's a nice little twist that Season 15 starts with a Rutan story, and ends with a Sontaran one, but never the twain shall meet!

Incidentally, I find it interesting that the Rutan scout says it has recently been trained in the "new metamorphosis techniques", suggesting that Rutans don't usually have this power. The fact the ability to change its body is new to it means it may not be a natural attribute, which means the Doctor's observations about the "chameleon factor" and lycanthropy seem oddly misplaced.

Reuben the Rutan stalks the lighthouse, targeting its human prey, and mercifully knocks off Adelaide, who dies horribly, but still achieves a blood-curdling scream before she goes. That's all she was good for, really. That, and fainting. Adelaide Lesage was such a pathetically pointless, and annoying, character that you're actually glad when she dies. The moment where Leela says: "The creature has got in to the lighthouse. Now we must fight for our lives", and Adelaide just faints sums it all up really (as does Louise Jameson rolling her eyes in despair!).

The Doctor manages to hide from Reuben the Rutan by dangling himself precariously out of the bunk room window when he enters, which coincidentally enables him to find and deactivate the creature's relay signal to the mothership (I'm sure the production team could have come up with a better prop if they'd really tried though. The aerial is pathetically small!).

The Rutan blob is voiced by Colin Douglas, but he somehow manages to sound exactly like Michael Spice (Morbius and Magnus Greel). The Rutans are a proud race and simply do not believe that Earthlings pose any kind of threat to them. But this Rutan is wrong, because the Doctor is no Earthling, and the small band of survivors (we're down to just the Doctor, Leela and Skinsale now) have various tricks up their sleeves, including maroons and diamonds! The Rutans are susceptible to heat (Ruta III is an icy planet), so it's easy to put two and two together and use the lighthouse lamp as a light projector against the Rutan mothership. It's actually Leela who comes up with the idea in a lovely moment between Tom Baker and Louise Jameson. "Leela, that's a beautiful notion," gasps the Doctor, and the beaming smile of pride on Jameson's face is breathtakingly sweet.

The last surviving human, Colonel Skinsale, is brave enough to accompany the Doctor to the crew room to retrieve the diamonds from Palmerdale's body (how actor Sean Caffrey manages to keep so still with someone frootling about his nether regions is impressive!). But Skinsale has his weaknesses (and his debts), and in this case it's the allure of diamonds. The Doctor is a little bit naive to simply throw the unwanted jewels to the floor, because a man like Skinsale (let's face it, a man like any of us) is bound to try and retrieve them. And that is what does for him, as the Rutan grabs him with its deadly tentacle and electrocutes him to death. There is a very brief flash of recognition on the Doctor's face that maybe, perhaps, he had a part to play in Skinsale's demise.

The Rutan mothership arrives in a ball of unconvincing special effects - it looks like what you see when you peer through the spyhole in your boiler, a blaze of tumbling flame. The Doctor and Leela have 117 seconds to get clear of the lighthouse safely, although Leela seems to think this is time enough to waste retrieving her precious knife and then sheathing it in her boot. There's then a huge explosion as the Doctor's lash-up destroys the mothership, but Leela unwisely glances up at the big bang, which results in making her temporarily blind.

Calling on the Doctor to slay her, because blindness is for the old and infirm, Leela simply has to blink a few times for the effect to wear off. But her eyes have changed colour, from brown to blue. Louise Jameson's eyes are naturally blue, but she had to wear contact lenses to play the savage Leela. Finding that the lenses disorientated her, they worked out a way to have her eyes change colour. "Pigmentation dispersal," explains the Doctor. In reality, it is possible to change a brown eye to blue using lasers, but the dispersion of pigmentation in the eye is so closely associated with the development of glaucoma that it's really not advisable!

The Doctor begins to recite the poem Flannan Isle (written in 1912) as he and Leela make off in the TARDIS, at the end of a story in which every single guest character dies (it's the yang to The Empty Child's yin!). Horror of Fang Rock is pretty merciless in that way: all of the keepers die, all of the ship's crew and passengers die, even all of the Rutans die. There aren't many Doctor Who stories with such an all-inclusive mortality rate, and it's made all the more powerful by the fact it's a small cast. You grow to like, or dislike, the characters, and their fates are felt by the viewer. This is undoubtedly Terrance Dicks's masterpiece, and a story produced by some high-scoring talents: Paddy Russell, Tom Baker, Louise Jameson, Paul Allen, Bob Gell... What a cracking start to Season 15!

Like curs a glance has brought to heel,

We listen'd, flinching there:

And look'd, and look'd, on the untouch'd meal

And the overtoppled chair.

We seem'd to stand for an endless while,

Though still no word was said,

Three men alive on Flannan Isle,

Who thought on three men dead.

First broadcast: September 24th, 1977

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: The on-screen chemistry between Baker and Jameson is delightful, all the more so when you think about the behind-the-scenes tensions. The two characters work so well together, and their interactions are lovely.
The Bad: At the end of the day, when all is said and done, when it comes down to it: the monster is a talking jelly.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★★☆ (story average: 9.8 out of 10)

"Would you like a jelly baby?" tally: 08

NEXT TIME: The Invisible Enemy...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Part One; Part Two; Part Three

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site: https://doctorwhocastandcrew.blogspot.com/2014/07/horror-of-fang-rock.html

Horror of Fang Rock is available on BBC DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Horror-Fang-Rock/dp/B0006FNXNK