The Stones of Blood Part Two

The one where the true identity of the Cailleach is revealed...

Both the Doctor and Romana are in pretty dire straits at the start of this episode. The Doctor is unconscious, tied to a stone altar, about to become the latest blood sacrifice to the sacred Cailleach, while Romana is clinging onto a cliff edge for dear life (but managing to keep her jaunty Burberry cap on her head throughout). The Doctor comes round with a jolt ("I hope that knife's been properly sterilised!") and is saved by none other than Amelia Rumford on her bicycle, who frightens the knife-wielding murderers away with her tinkling bell.

In order to locate Romana, the Doctor blows K-9's dog whistle, which amazingly he can hear inside the TARDIS, even though the TARDIS is apparently in a different, separate dimension. Clever whistle! This is the whistle that also distracted Shrievenzales on Ribos, so it's a pretty handy gadget to have, it seems.

The Doctor rescues Romana by throwing his long scarf over the cliff edge to haul her up, but the Time Lady is fearful of him, claiming it was he who pushed her over. It seems that whoever possesses the third segment of the Key to Time is harnessing its powers of transmutation, which suggests that whoever has it knows what it is. It also begs the question of who really pushed Romana off the cliff. Almost every other character in the cast is accounted for elsewhere.

The Doctor is slowly coming to realise that Amelia or Vivien may have something to do with the segment, as the tracer only detects its presence when they are in the circle, and not when they're not. On the face of it, you'd instantly suspect Vivien, played with an element of guile by Susan Engel. I love the femininity of The Stones of Blood, it has one of the most female casts in all of classic Who. There are only eight members of the credited guest cast, and 50% is female. If you add the regular cast to that, it means five of the 11-strong cast are women, with the two guest leads both female. It gives the story a different flavour, and while it would have been even better to have been written and/ or directed by a woman, it's still a refreshing change for Doctor Who in this era. The 1960s and 80s both had far better gender-balance than the 1970s.

And I might be imagining it, but is there some kind of vague sapphic undertone to the story too? Vivien and Amelia are shacked up together, neither of them overtly feminine, and there's a very telling line when Romana declines a lift on the back of Amelia's bike, when Vivien says: "It'll be a new experience for you, no need to be afraid." It has nothing to do with the story, but beneath the surface, it is there if you want to look for it. The fact the Nine Travellers have always been owned by women throughout the centuries adds to the feminal feeling of the story too.

While Romana joins Vivien and Amelia at the cottage for research over a mug of tea and some sausage sandwiches, the Doctor and K-9 return to the big house to see De Vries. Arriving at the gates at dusk, they hear a woman's terrified scream, and by the time they get there, the house has been ransacked and the bodies of De Vries and Martha lie with their skulls smashed to pulp (yuk!). We're to presume they were killed by the giant glowing rock thing that we see attack the Doctor later, but it's not clear why. We know by the end of the episode that these rock monsters are called Ogri, and are controlled by the Cailleach, so why is the Cailleach having her own disciples bumped off? We subsequently see the two bodies inside the stone circle, acting as blood sacrifices to the globulin-deficient Ogri, but how the corpses got there from the house isn't clear (again, everybody else can be accounted for).

The idea of "walking" (is that the right word?) vampiric stone monsters sounds great on paper, but the practicality of realising a rock that moves on its own, and kills people, isn't quite so great. The stones themselves look fine, it's only when you see them gliding smoothly around that suspending your disbelief becomes tricky. If they were more humanoid in shape, perhaps men in rubber rock suits reminiscent of the Kastrians in The Hand of Fear, that might work better, but then they wouldn't look like bits of an ancient stone circle, so I don't know. What I do know is that, as it is, the Ogri are not scary (except when they make that bellowing noise, that's quite eerie).

K-9 pursues the Ogri that attacks the Doctor and ends up with his innards burnt out. Not sure how, as the Ogri don't appear to have lasers, but the result is that K-9 ends up close to death/ deactivation, with only the hope that Romana can regenerate his circuitry in the TARDIS. When she leaves K-9 plugged in and leaves the TARDIS to rejoin the Doctor, she sees several ravens atop the police box - the eyes of the Cailleach! It's such a good image too.

As rich and enjoyable as all this is, there are a few logic leaps that you have to overlook, such as the aforementioned question about who transports De Vries and Martha's bodies to the stone circle, as well as the improbable fact that Amelia doesn't know what globulin is, or the even more improbable way that the Doctor finds the switch to open the secret passage. At the end of this passage are the missing portraits from the hall, the paintings of Lady Montcalm, Mrs Trefusis and Senora Camara, who we're supposed to instantly understand all look like Vivien Fay. The fact they don't look much like Vivien Fay means the Doctor has to say that they do. "I know that face," says Amelia. "So you should," replies the Doctor. "It's your friend, Miss Fay."

Lady Montcalm, the reclusive Mrs Trefusis, and Senora Camara.
Or is it Verity Lambert?

So, another question: why did the Cailleach have portraits of herself painted, making it obvious that all of her different personas looked alike, if she actually ends up having them hidden in a dusty basement, in case somebody notices that they're all the same woman? And if De Vries was privy to this deceit, does that mean he knew Vivien Fay was the Cailleach, in which case why is he still summoning her in that ceremony in part 1? Maybe I've been lost along the way somewhere, but as pieces of the puzzle start to go together, I'm not finding them perfect fits.

It still looks and feels fantastic though, a dark, brooding, gothic gem slap-bang in the middle of an era of the show which favoured comedy and colour. And as it's revealed that Vivien Fay is indeed the Cailleach, the episode ends with the feathered felon zapping Romana into oblivion. A great ending to an episode brimming with energy and incident.

First broadcast: November 4th, 1978

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: That shot of the ravens on top of the TARDIS. I just wish it wasn't so murky.
The Bad: The practical realisation of a walking lump of blood-sucking rock leaves a little to be desired.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★☆☆

"Would you like a jelly baby?" tally: 18

NEXT TIME: Part Three...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Part One; 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/the-stones-of-blood.html

The Stones of Blood is available on BBC DVD as part of the Key to Time box set. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Key-Time-Re-issue/dp/B002TOKFNM