Doctor Who and the Image of the Fendahl

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The Doctor and Leela decide they must investigate the priory just as Thea switches on the time scanner. A compulsion draws her to the machine and she and the skull seem to merge. Leela splits up from the Doctor and investigates a nearby cottage, where she is fired upon with a shotgun. Meanwhile, the Doctor feels the presence of the same unseen creature who killed the hiker. He finds himself paralysed, unable to run as the creature is about to consume him. In equal parts charming and irritating. He also appears to be the only character who doesn’t realise he is in a horror film! Everyone else is playing their allocated part – the doomed female scientist, the cold Germanic psychopath and the vain millionaire, duped and conned into playing his role as victim. In a non ’Doctor Who’ version of this story Colby would likely be the hero, in this, despite being a brilliant scientist he is also the voice of the audience, expressing his incredulity at what is going on.

Discover more high quality Doctor Who figurines with the Doctor Who Figurine Collection! From iconic box sets like the Doctor Who Story Figurine Box Sets: Image of the Fendahl to individual figurines of your favorite Doctor Who character, you won’t want to miss this collection! In the scene when Thea merges with the skull, just before she merges, the side of her nose takes on the texture of the skull for a few seconds. On the plus side, we see a return of someone being able to write for Leela and the Doctor is enigmatic yet serious. The star of the show however is Mrs Tyler who rightfully enchants any scene she is in. Ted Moss a decent follow up, but doesn’t make the same impact. Fendhalman is interesting with an almost split personality. The biggest missed opportunity however is Thea Ransome. who plays her part so well, yet we’re treated to so little of it. Why didn’t they delve into the relationship she has with Stael? They also gloss over the uneasy friendship the two have with Coby, and the delicate respect and fear they share for Fendahlman. Even the monster of the week doesn’t do enough to become truly significant. After that it’s mood or it’s blah.

The Eighth Doctor later prevented the Time Lords from releasing the Fendahl in around 12,000,000 BC. ( PROSE: The Taking of Planet 5) In ‘ Image of the Fendahl’, as with each of those Kneale plays, it is the melding of the supernatural, the ancient, the trappings of folk horror, melded with modern scientific investigation – the clash of the old and the new that is key. It works very well within ‘ Doctor Who’ for those very reasons – a universe in which demons do exist but are alien species, where ghosts exist but are rather temporal phenomenom – from the past or future via a time fissure. Where the trappings and rituals of the occult are explained for rational reasons – the origins of throwing salt over the shoulder, the equivalent of the use of iron at the resolution of ‘ Quatermass and the Pit’. Nigel Kneale might not have wanted to admit it, but in that regard his work and the world of ‘Doctor Who’ dovetail nicely. The Doctor is every bit the rational, scientific, moral force of the Professor, just rather less of someone struggling to grasp and understand new phenomena outside of the realms of human experience and instead bringing advanced knowledge and experience and a lot more flippancy. The Professor has to formulate his own hypothesis from historical research and scientific investigation, while the Doctor already knows the story of the Fendahl and thus completely short cuts the investigative aspect of the story, making it rather ‘ Junior Quatermass and the Pit’ in the final analysis although that is no bad thing to be.

The Fendahl, a gestalt creature that lives on death, has remained dormant for 12,000,000 years and comes from the fifth planet of Earth’s solar system that once existed between Mars and Jupiter. The Time Lords attempted to trap the Fendahl on its own world by placing it in a time loop, but the Fendahl had already escaped to Earth. A Fendahleen is psycho- telekinetic, giving it the ability to control the muscles of its prey telepathically.

Production Code: 4X

Image of the Fendahl’ is Tom Baker’s darkest DOCTOR WHO story since Phillip Hinchliffe produced. Fendahleen, alien monsters with deadly, psychotelekinetic powers, looked like serpentine versions of horror writer H P Lovecraft’s ancient, fictional god, Cthullu. His stories detail how knowledge of fictional mythology cause madness. In this story, the Doctor needed Leela to help him survive his living nightmare and save humanity from Armageddon. Bucher-Jones, Simon (2016). Image of the fendahl. Place of publication not identified: Obverse Books. ISBN 978-1-909031-41-8. OCLC 945390720. A Doctor Fendelman is studying a human skull which archaeologists estimate to be 12 million years old — far older than it can conceivably be — when the Doctor and Leela arrive. Fendelman is using a "Time Scanner" to study the skull, and it is this which has not only drawn the TARDIS to the lab, but also causing the skull to glow with power every time it is activated. His snarky colleagues (including Benedict Cumberbatch's mum) are stumped as to how the skull can even exist.