26x3. The Curse of Fenric
Writer: Ian Briggs
Director: Nicholas Mallett
Script Editor: Andrew Cartmel
Producer: John Nathan-Turner
Synopsis: The Doctor and Ace
travel to a secret World War II military camp, where Dr. Judson's
Ultima machine is being put to use to decrypt German U-Boat cyphers as
well as some locally preserved Viking runes, while the sinister
Commander Millington plans to create nerve gas weapons and a team of
Russian infiltrators prepares to steal the Ultima technology. The
decryption of the runes serves to unleash Fenric, an evil force as old
as the universe itself and a former rival of the Doctor, while
Haemovores - mutated future humans who resemble vampires and are deterred by the power of unwavering belief - begin to attack.
Review: "The Curse of Fenric" is an uncommonly ambitious serial, and it just might
qualify as a sort of flawed masterpiece. I can certainly identify some
problems with it, most notably: the script occasionally shuffles the
characters
between locations for contrived reasons; it's left unexplained why
Fenric - who is capable of jumping between bodies - doesn't just do so
again after his host body succumbs to the nerve gas; the origin and
nature of Commander Millington's knowledge of Fenric is unclear; and in
general, "evil
from the dawn of time" seems like a concept that really shouldn't work
and would be better suited to, say, Buffy the Vampire Slayer than Doctor Who. But
it somehow makes it work, and it does so many things right that I'm inclined to excuse the few things
it does wrong.
For
starters, it follows upon "Ghost Light" with some
more strong character development for Ace, who befriends Kathleen, one
of the base's WRNS members, and her newborn baby Audrey and later helps
them escape the Haemovores' attacks - only to discover that the baby
will grow up to be her estranged mother. Although Fenric taunts her
over this and
refers to Audrey as "the mother you hate," we sense that it's more
complicated than that. Ace, despite her brash exterior, is a
compassionate person who clearly regrets what has become of her
relationship with her mother, and when she believes that she's about to
be executed, her would-be last words are, "Mum, I'm sorry!" This is
just one way in which she's put through the wringer in this serial. At
the end, when the power of her belief in the Doctor is blocking the
Haemovore known as the Ancient One from attacking Fenric, he pretends
to betray her and
belittles her as an "emotional cripple," for which she understandably
tells him off even though she eventually forgives him when he explains
the purpose of the deception. And yet she is not broken by this turn of
events: the serial concludes with her taking a swim in the previously
cursed waters, no longer afraid of the "dangerous undercurrents" of
which a nearby sign had warned would-be swimmers.
The
Doctor receives a nicely balanced portrayal in "The Curse of Fenric."
This turn of events deepens the mystery surrounding the character that
was introduced in "Remembrance of the Daleks" and has been building
ever since. Not only have we learned that his history on Gallifrey may
be more complicated than he'd previously let on, but we now know that
he and Fenric - who comes off as almost a sort of elemental force of
evil - have squared off before, that Fenric's manipulations were
behind Ace's initial arrival on Iceworld, and that Lady Peinforte's
chess set in "Silver Nemesis" somehow related to his ongoing contest
with the Doctor and banishment to the "Shadow Dimensions." At one point, the Doctor speaks of *two* such
elemental forces - one good and the other evil - locked in opposition
since the beginning of time, raising the question: if Fenric is the
evil force, could the Doctor himself be the otherwise unidentified good
force? The script is probably wise in not attempting to answer this
question and instead leaving the possibility out there for audience
speculation. And while we as viewers are inclined to be angry with the
way he manipulates Ace at the end and to share her impatience with his
secrecy, he hasn't completely lost his moral compass or his connection to others.
When he needs to summon his own psychic power of belief against the
Haemovores, he recites names of past companions, and he clearly
disapproves of Millington's plans for nerve gas attacks.
Indeed,
one
prominent theme in "The Curse of Fenric" is that the Allies' hands were
not entirely clean in World War II. Millington, who has perhaps found
his goal of understanding the Nazi mindset a little too easily
achieved,
argues that using gas against German cities might save lives by ending
the war sooner, echoing the sorts of rationalizations often deployed to
justify, for example, the firebombing of Dresden or the use of the
atomic bomb against Japan. In fact, Millington is prepared to go even
further - guessing that the alliance with the Soviet Union will not
survive the postwar world order, he plans to allow Captain Sorin's team
to steal the Ultima machine and booby-trap it with a canister of the
gas, to be released when the Soviets attempt to decode the word "love"
- and while the choice of code word might reflect Millington's twisted
psychology, he is apparently acting under orders from the government in
setting this trap. This theme is also reflected in Reverend Wainwright,
a memorable and well-acted guest character, who finds himself disturbed
less by the possibility of Axis attacks than by the tactics used
against German cities by the British. And the Soviet troops also have their share of blood on their
hands by the end, killing several British soldiers in order to conceal their
operation and rationalizing that such things "had to be done." It's
only when Millington has become visibly unhinged that the one survivor
from each group (British and Soviet) team up against him.
All of this is pretty dark and challenging material, even by 1980s Doctor Who standards,
and I haven't even mentioned that the Haemovores are a product of a
future Earth where toxic pollution has reached extreme levels, or that
the Ancient One only turns against Fenric when the Doctor points
out that Fenric's schemes, if realized, would preclude his future from
ever occurring. Both physical and psychological horror abound, perhaps
no more so than when Fenric takes control of Judson's body, turns to
the Doctor, and announces, "We play the contest again, Time Lord." If
this were my first Doctor Who serial
and I didn't know the show's history, I'd have probably felt genuinely
frightened for the Doctor and Ace. And yet, this isn't disturbing and grim just for
the sake of being disturbing and grim. The payoff is in the reconciliation between the
Doctor and Ace at the end and in the way Ace gains a new perspective on her mother and discovers that she no longer fears
the previously dangerous waters. There's a sense that the two of them
have been through an ordeal and have truly earned this moment of
respite and relief, and that some measure of hope survives even when
the ugliest aspects of human nature are on display.
You
will not find me claiming that "The Curse of Fenric" is perfect. A
fellow fan once suggested that "perfect" is not something that Doctor Who does,
and as much as I enjoy the show, he's probably right. But it is
certainly the most successful thus far of the many ambitious and unique
experiments of the McCoy era, and I am firmly in the camp that
considers it a classic.
Rating: **** (out of four)
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