Image of the Fendahl Part One

The one where an ancient Kenyan skull appears to possess a beautiful scientist...

The very first shot of this episode is a close-up of a human skull. Right from the beginning, Image of the Fendahl does not mess about, and is determined to creep the viewer out with a gloriously uneasy atmosphere which is built up expertly by director George Spenton-Foster and writer Chris Boucher. Credit must also go to the ever reliable Dick Mills for his "special sounds" which add layers of atmosphere.

Handsome scientist Adam Colby has nicknamed the skull Eustace (perhaps a nod to American paleontologist Eustace L Furlong, who had a plesiosaur named after him), but the funny thing with Eustace is that it appears to date back to a time eight million years before mankind roamed the Earth. Adam finds it hard to accept that the skull is that ancient, even though the fact has been arrived at by his beautiful colleague Thea Ransome, played by the stunning Wanda Ventham (an actress who appeared in Doctor Who every 10 years, like clockwork!).

In another room in the oak-panelled house, Professor Fendelman and his stern-looking colleague Max Stael are dabbling with things they think they understand, but cannot possibly control. They have a sonic time scanner, with which Fendelman (one of the richest, but shabbiest, scientists in the world) hopes to see a physical image of the living owner of the skull. He believes his clunky 70s tech will allow him to see into the past, to put flesh and bones back on the skull like some sort of temporal identikit machine. However, his time experiments seem to be having unforeseen side-effects: whenever the power's cranked up to maximum, Thea seems to get transfixed by Eustace, which glows eerily in the darkened laboratory. The way Spenton-Foster overlays Ventham's face with the skull is magnificently spooky, and coupled with Mills' rhythmic, pulsing electronic sound effects, it makes for an arresting, unsettling image.

Outside, in the misty haunted woods, a passing hiker feels that something is following him, perhaps hunting him. It is unseen, but definitely felt, and he begins to run, until he cannot move his legs any more, and he is attacked...

The whole segment is so well directed, provoking a queasy unease with the combination of atmospheric location filming and great sound design. The hiker seems to be trapped in a literal nightmare, unable to move his legs to run away. We've all had that nightmare, haven't we? And it seems to have been brought on by Fendelman's time experiments.

Meanwhile - and after six-and-a-half minutes - the TARDIS is pulled off course by Fendelman's experiments with the time scanner, which is creating a hole in time. The TARDIS scenes show off Tom Baker and Louise Jameson's splendid on-screen chemistry once more ("I like your new dress"), and serve to write new arrival K-9 out of the story as soon as he's arrived! The truth is, this story was written before it was decided K-9 should stay on, so he had to be written out in haste. It must have been quite jarring at the time to see the tin dog join the TARDIS, and then completely sidelined the next week! That seems to be a running theme with the Doctor's mechanical companions (such as Kamelion and Handles).

Everything about this episode shouts Hammer, but there's an even more obvious influence in the form of Nigel Kneale's The Stone Tape, a TV play shown in 1972 concerning scientists conducting experiments in a grand old house which go terribly awry. Boucher pretty much wears this influence on his sleeve as he touches all of the hallmarks of Kneale' production: scientists in lab coats, the lone, beautiful female lead, electronic equipment in a historic setting, unsettling sounds, and ghosts.

Colby and Leakey the dog (evidently named after Kenyan palaeo-anthropologist Richard Leakey) happen across the poor hiker's body in the grounds of the house, but this grim discovery rings the wrong alarm bells in Fendelman, who wishes to avoid calling the police, fearing they would interfere with his experiments. At first, Colby is keen to call the cops in, but when he is reminded that his aspirations for a Nobel Prize may be scuppered, he backs down and agrees that the body could be moved elsewhere to be found by someone else. Edward Arthur gives a charismatic performance as Colby, even if sometimes he has a, shall I say, unique way of delivering his lines, while Denis Lill makes Fendelman dangerously persuasive, but with a dark edge (he cares so little for the hiker's demise that he instructs Stael to move the body and perform a post-mortem on it, all without alerting the authorities).

Intriguingly, Fendelman mentions someone called Hartman in London, an obvious silent collaborator in his project, and one who has security teams at his disposal. Big Finish picked up on this many years later to link Image of the Fendahl with Torchwood One (which Yvonne Hartman is in charge of in Army of Ghosts). The Hartman mentioned here is John, Yvonne's father.

It takes the Doctor and Leela the entire episode to get to the priory, which does make the story drag a little (Spenton-Foster is great at atmosphere, but lacks pace), but we do get treated to one of my favourite scenes of the 1970s, where our heroes interrogate local Ted Moss. The dialogue is so well crafted, and perfectly played by Baker, Jameson and Edward Evans. Baker is wonderfully playful, and Boucher churns out some cracking lines. "You must've been sent by Providence," says the Doctor, to which Ted replies: "No, I was sent by the council to cut the verges." And that's topped again by Leela's concern that Ted's council should choose its warriors more carefully: "A child of the Sevateem could have taken you!" Wonderful.

Ted says that the local village is a mile away (although it seems to take the Doctor and Leela ages to travel that mile, as it's dark when they get there). That village is called Fetchborough, which immediately tells the Doctor there must be ghosts about. A fetch is an apparition or double of a living person, once believed to be a warning of that person's impending death. So not a ghost as such, but a vision of a living person about to die.

Just as you think you've got a good hold of the episode, at 17 minutes in something wonderful happens: Martha Tyler! What a stunning performance from Daphne Heard, playing a batty old woman steeped in the traditions of the past who some might say practices witchcraft (security man Mitchell certainly would). Heard makes an indelible impact immediately, making Martha Tyler a force to be reckoned with indeed. She's written beautifully too, Boucher giving her an archaic turn of phrase which is both amusing and sinister. "I don't hold with the likes of 'ee." She reminds me strongly of my own grandmother, to be honest, and I'm willing to bet a good many other viewers thought the same (both in 1977, and today!).

As the Doctor and Leela approach the priory, the Doctor appears to be transfixed by an unseen force in the haunted woods, which are lit so spookily and dressed with swathes of mist. The image of the Doctor unable to move as "something" creeps towards him has a surreal nightmarish quality, and as if that's not enough, someone fires a shotgun at Leela as she creeps into a cottage (admittedly, she could have knocked first). It's a deliciously strange cliffhanger, dripping with atmosphere. I just love the entire feel of this episode, of unease and dread, conjured more though Dick Mills' sound design than Dudley Simpson's score, which is very sparse for once.

Now we just need the Doctor to actually get involved.

First broadcast: October 29th, 1977 (just in time for Hallowe'en - perfect!)

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: The sense of unease conjured by the sound design and direction.
The Bad: The Doctor and Leela take more than six minutes to enter the story, and still aren't actively involved by the end.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★☆☆

"Would you like a jelly baby?" tally: 09 - The Doctor offers a red jelly baby to Ted Moss.

NEXT TIME: Part Two...

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

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/image-of-fendahl.html

Image of the Fendahl is available on BBC DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Image-Fendahl-DVD/dp/B001UHNXMY