Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to 500 year diary.
The only Doctor Who podcast that will still keep going, even when
no one is left alive to hear us.
I'm Nathan.
I am Melvin.
I'm Peter and I'm Simon.
It's the 3rd of September 1977.
Around the beginning of February, work was halted on Terence Dix's
season opening story, The Vampire Mutation, more of which next
week.
And at the end of March, Terrence Dix dropped his replacement
script on Bob Holmes's desk.
And so tonight, 6.800000 people will tune in to watch what might
be one of Doctor Who's all-time classic stories, The Horror of
Fang Rock.
So, I'm gonna, uh, light my cards on the table straight away.
I think this might be my favourite classics series story.
And certainly, I think that this might be my favourite performance
of any actor in the role of the doctor.
Um, I think, Peter, you've said to me before that Peter Davison in
Frontios is your favourite performance, and I think that it's
definitely up there.
But this is my doctor. absolutely my doctor.
I just think this is an extraordinary piece of work easily.
Terence's best script.
For me, for my money, there's only really one moment that is
misjudged in Tom's whole performance in all 4 episodes and it's
when he charges into the meal room and says, um, it's, it's the
moment where he says, there's a, there's a dangerous creature here
that it wants to kill every one of us because he has this like
glee in his eye.
When all of the rest of the 4 episodes, he plays it almost
understated.
I mean, the comedy is there and the, the, the satirical bent of
his, of his humour is there, but I feel like there's just, there's
he goes a little bit too far in that one moment and it's the only
moment that is, I feel misjudged.
Is that the sequence where Paddy Russell was upset that he
wouldn't sort of just pause for a microsecond as he rushes through
the door.
Yes, that's right.
The cameraman couldn't follow him when he came through the door so
quickly, and so they tried it 3 times and it didn't work.
And in the end, she said, look, just hold on, Louise, which
explains that slightly odd choice, but it works.
And that's amazing.
It just goes to show sort of the creative differences and, you
know, arguments with a small A that we can have over Doctor Who.
I think that line and that delivery are one of the all-time greats
in Doctor Who.
Gentlemen, I've got news for you.
This lighthouse is under attack and by morning we may all be
dead.
Anyone interested?
That'd be smart.
I think he's actually sort of quite contemptuous of all of them.
With the exception of Harker.
And...
And Vince.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, like, even Reuben, like, he's amused my root, and there's one
adorable moment where Reuben's being ridiculous, and he turns to
look at Louise.
He turns to look at Leila, you know, hoping to kind of go, wow
this guy's crazy and Leila's biting her lip with fear.
That's the story of the Beast of Fang Rock.
And so, of course, Leila's got no reason not to take it seriously
frankly, especially because of me, for goodness' sake, having her
being a beast of fang rock in the context of Doctor Who, he's not
out of the question.
So I don't know why the doctor's so dismissive of the concept.
No.
And also, I feel like skin sale, skin sale definitely wins him
over by the end.
I mean, if he hadn't died.
I almost feel like, I mean, I watched this 2 or 3 times in the
last sort of week leading up to this just to really refresh it in
my mind.
And there's a sense for me in which seeing skin sale, Leila and
Tom's doctor would be an incredible team going through the
universe together.
But I think it's because he, and even just in the context of this
story, I feel it's the skin sale, approves that he is resourceful
in, in a moment of crisis, which I feel like the doctor finds
respect for at the very end.
Except there's one moment after Tom picks out the one diamond and
throws the others down the stairs.
He just kind of looks as if he's wondering what skin sail will
do.
And skin sail obviously goes after the diamonds and is killed.
And Terence Dix complains about Tom's delivery of the line.
What happened to skin sale and he says dead with honour.
But there's a kind of contempt, I think, in the dead with honour
line because he knows it's ridiculous and that it's not right.
And remember, skin sale is after all, and shows himself to be just
a corrupt politician, I think.
I mean, granted across the board, but I feel like in the
novelisation.
That is much clearer.
In the TV, in the TV story.
It is alighted very quickly and the way, and you, like you say, the
line delivery definitely does matter.
It's interesting because it's only Harker and Vince who are really
completely sympathetic characters and that does make...
I mean, Vince is all very sweet and, you know, I've always liked
him and but Harker's character is sort of functional.
Everybody else, it is a bit like the way Agatha Christie would set
up her stories in that every character has flaws.
And to some extent, those flaws are those characters undoing.
So it's the greed, it's skin sales greed that he rushes out to the
diamonds and is killed because of that.
You know, it's...
Armadale's Avarice.
Exactly.
Or Adelaide's hysteria.
Or but even, but also Rubens kind of almost wilful ignorance.
Ludditism.
Oh my god. unwilling to accept new technologies, unwilling to
accept progress and so on, and that's kind of his undoing as
well.
I think there's a definite class thing here too.
You know, like the doctor next week we'll see him kind of
reflexively ally himself with the normal people of that planet
against the Lords.
You know, his 1st reaction is the Lord's need to be overthrown
almost immediately before he's met them.
Here, I think the contempt that he has for the posh characters is
pretty clear and contrast with his respect for Vince and Harker.
And even when Harker's behaving irrationally, He has some sympathy
for him.
And I think with Reuben, it's amusement, really.
Do you know what I mean?
And it's partly amusement, I think, because he's such a hilarious
stereotype.
I mean, one of the things that I'd never really noticed before is
how funny the dialogue is, just how clever, you know, like there's
just constant, brilliant lines.
The sort of thing that I normally associate with Bob Holmes is
absolutely here with Terrence.
This may have what I think is the funniest line in sort of the era
which is, which is Adelaide.
After the Colonel says, you know, how attractive he finds Leila
Adelaide says, were you a long time in India, Colonel?
What an evil racist cheat.
And it's just so terrifically funny.
Even the kind of background with the Beast of Fang rock and stuff
is a very homesian idea.
But this isn't a very homes in story.
And I think the reason for that is, there is something absolutely
brilliant about bringing these characters in in episode 2 and
having these interactions among the characters that has nothing to
do even thematically with what's going on in the in the monster
alien plot.
And I actually have to say that for me, the best thing about the
story is the interactions between Adelaide, skin sale in Palmadale
I think it's just absolutely brilliant, I'm on the edge of my seat
for the whole thing.
It's awesome, just tremendous.
Terrence has an incredible knack for drafting characters with just
a few broad strokes.
It's a little bit like Russell in his early days as well.
You can kind of like get a character from just a couple of lines.
And so having all of his characters interact like that, is the joy
of the story.
Then there's his dialogue drawing it together.
And Nathan, you mentioned a couple of great lines, but I think the
way that Terence approaches the doctor as well is always amazing
he has this particular knack for writing for the 4th doctor.
What the 4th doctor does is mock his enemies and Terence loves
getting into that.
And have you ever heard such a great summation of the character of
the doctor as the line, are you in charge here?
No, but I'm full of ideas.
Yes, that's just tossed off in scene after scene, and it's
absolutely incredible.
I mean, if I can just sort of pick up on 2 things there.
Firstly, with the sort of the class thing, as I said with Reuben, I
think it's not about class, it's basically a matter of taking
people.
You have to, regardless of what class you are from, your value and
how good a person you are, is your actions.
You know, with great power comes great responsibility.
The doctor is a timelord.
With that, you know, he has great power, with that, he has great
responsibility.
It's the people who, the moral of the show, at least the moral of
the show, and the classic era, is that those who have the ability
to make and effect change, have a responsibility to do so.
And just going back to the Terrence thing, I think Terrence's
characters and the Bob Holmes, in sort of characters as well, are
better than the Russell ones because I think the Russell ones tend
to in the modern era tend to be more one note.
Like, basically their character summary is half a paragraph and 3
lines of dialogue, whereas I don't know whether it's the
opportunity the actors have here to do the rehearsals properly and
maybe because the story is a bit longer.
I don't know, but I believe in the existence of all these people
far more than I believe in the existence of ancillary characters
in the 21st century, in the main.
I mean, part of it is the reliance on dialogue in classic Dog 2
which helps you to draft those characters.
Yes, exactly.
Someone I think what the doctor doesn't have time for is
artifice.
He doesn't have time for people who are just kind of, you know
presenting some of that.
Like, he doesn't have the same problems with, say, Lightfoot intel
and Swang Shiang that he does with Armadale here.
Exactly.
And that's the kind of thing that I will keep coming back to.
Part of the class thing that really appeals to me, rewatching this
was the way that Terrence Dix plays with genre expectations.
You were saying that these characters show up in episode two
because episode one sort of feels like, you know, uh, uh, uh, I
know that people talk about the sort of end of the Gothic era, uh
of Doctor Who, with this particular story, but it does sort of
feel like it owes something to Joseph Sheridan, Lefanu, like
Victorian Gothic stories.
Carmella, things like this where there's a recognisable sort of
monster that will be defeated at some point or some sort of
spectral horror that we have to deal with.
Whereas episode 2 almost feels like you're dropped into
Galsworthy.
Like it feels like the foresight saga.
Talking about like, what is their usefulness or what can they
contribute?
You know, when they introduce Lord Palmerdale basically as a
financier, you know that that's someone who has nothing to
contribute, but who views himself as a job creator, as we would
say, in America these days.
By the time you get to episode 3 and episode four, you've turned
into weird fiction.
Like, this is tentacle, like tentacle.
I was going to say tentacle porn.
That's not what I'm talking about, but you know what I mean.
It's to become a sort of HP Lovecraft tale.
And so all these characters in both of those genres, they both
work in the 3rd genre.
So, like, for me, just the way that it works formally and
generically, by which I mean genre is really fascinating also.
But that's sort of the, the, a beautiful point as well, is the
fact that I think the Doctor Who isn't as most successful when it
creates those settings, which you could legitimately imagine, ah
say, a period, BBC drama, like the foresight saga, and then
suddenly, 0 my gosh, there's a green jellyfish climbing up the
side of lighter.
And that's why.
I think it's wrong as a rule when it treats those earlier scenes
in episode 2 with the shipwrecked survivors as fantastical
things.
That's when I start to lose time for concepts. whereas here you're
absolutely right, Melvin.
That's what exactly what makes it great.
Yeah, I don't think that's filler or anything.
That's not kind of background.
That's absolutely the central thing.
And I think that's extraordinary how that works.
And we've talked before too, about how Terence doesn't delay us or
jerk us around when it comes to how the plot works.
People arrive in episode two, just like the scientific reform
society in robot, the root in here has plans and is doing things
that we're discovering and reacting to, things continue to happen
things continue to develop.
The doctor's allowed to make a mistake.
All of that sort of stuff just keeps the plot going and we aren't
locked up for episode three.
We're not spinning our wheels.
We haven't created a world and then just dropped the doctor in it
to be captured and escape until the end of, you know, part four.
It's a proper developing story.
And Terence is absolutely brilliant at it.
And of course, what you're describing are the mechanics of the
base under siege.
I was going to say exactly that.
That's right.
And this is the purest example of that Doctor Who tradition.
And of course, Terrence has his only stab at it and is better at
it than almost anyone else.
And I know, Nathan, we've talked in the past.
You've had a bit of a problem with based under siege in terms of
what message is it sending.
Now, this is an example of, I think, base under siege done right.
And we can kind of then sort of ask ourselves and wonder why, in
other instances, it's wrong.
Maybe there's an underlying message that's missed or something or
the nature of the way the characters are brought together or
something.
I mean, it's a little bit more of a sort of horror thing where you
have a monster just going around picking off the main characters
like in alien, for instance.
And it's not quite the base under siege that we've seen before.
And, you know, we talk about it being Gothic and it's set, what, 10
years perhaps after the previous story, talons of Wang Chiang, but
it's utterly unlike talons of Wang Chiang.
That's all about the location and the time and the exotic, you
know, foreignness and all sorts of things where, whereas this is
almost only incidentally said in 1902.
And it doesn't have the sort of weight of the past that all of the
Hinchcliffe stuff, has.
There's the beast of Fang Rock, which, as I said, is sort of
classic homes, but this is just some alien soldier, like alien
jellyfish soldier kind of killing people.
It's not an evil, long thought dead or anything like that.
It doesn't have the scale and the scope of a home story.
People overlook that, I think, just because of the period
trappings that it shares with Hinchcliffe stories.
Although I think just to sort of pull all these sort of threads
together.
I think, I mean, yeah, it is a very, very lean script, like
everything moves the plot forward, like literally every line.
And as far as the base on your siege stuff goes, and you were
saying, you know, there's no being locked in a, you know, room for
episode three.
Like, it's one of the other things that really like jumped out on
me this time is that everyone is in constant motion.
Like the lighthouse keepers are constantly circling up and down
the stairs from the lamp to the boiler room, and then the doctor
and Leila are constantly going in and out and up and down, and Tom
is like hanging off the outside.
Like it's like an ant hill.
Like, it's so, it's so busy, but all of that frenetic action, like
is it makes the, it makes the script feel very propulsive.
Yeah.
And the other thing I was going to say is in terms of the, the, the
the period setting, one of the other things for me that that
does.
And I think it does have some, it's some, it does have some
weight.
It doesn't, you know, like you say, it doesn't sort of set dress
the whole thing, like talons of Wang Chiang, but like, there is
that idea, and it's set up in that 1st conversation between the
lighthouse keepers, and it continues in a different form when, uh
uh, the upper class people arrive after the shipwreck.
But it's this idea of, again, 1902, like we're a few years from
World War one, like we're on the edge, the whole debate between
whether oil lamps are better or electricity is better.
This is the march of modernity that is coming.
Like the future is coming.
And I feel like the rooting scout actually plays a role in that as
well because it's something from the far future who is here to
sort of like just use the earth for its resources.
So like there's a sense in which, and that's the other part of the
the skin sale Palmerdale debates is that one of those guys wins.
Like the Palmerdale attitude as repellent as it is, is the 20th
century.
You know, so again, like it's not, it may not be like the period
piece sort of the way that we expect it, but it, you know, it does
have a lot, again, in terms of the sort of gallsworthy plot of
like, you know, we're going from the days of the skin sales of
landed gentry of birth to cash rules, everything around me, Wu
Tang Clan.
But isn't it interesting, though, that, um, this is what you get
in a lot of those period dramas is the tension between
establishment money, i.e. skin sale, and new money, i.e. Parmadale
and how vulgar Parmadale is, in comparison to the refinement of
skin cell, despite his own corruption.
Yeah, you've been watching too much of the Gilded. age, Simon.
That's not possible.
I mean, for me, what is also interesting is, of course, that all
of this stuff is happening, they're also obsessed with it, that
they actually imperil their own ability to be rescued.
And there's that great moment where Skincer looks across at the
telegraph and we know he's going to destroy it.
And then when Tom discovers it.
And without raising his voice, he just says, and so you came in
here and destroyed that thing.
And so they're so obsessed with this little drama that they're in
that they actually aren't able to deal with the bigger drama
that's going to kill them all.
Exactly.
And sidebar, the way he says Tom delivers that line, so you came
in here and wrecked the telegram in this, as you said, underplayed
way, but it matches the, um, I even as a child.
I was reminded of Tom in Tear of the Zygon saying it may be calm
but it is never empty.
Like in really this really closely miced line, you suddenly get
where you get this full resonance of Tom's voice. absolutely
beautiful.
This sort of sombre tone.
Tom's voice is stunning here.
You make it just absolutely stunning.
And the other thing about modernity and the, and communication is
that the, the other, the other thing that's happened is that Ruben
is dead and as old school as he was, he was talking about, yeah
when the morning comes, I'll use semaphore.
So he's dead as well.
So there is no way to communicate with the mainland.
Yeah, yeah.
Nathan, I'd like to pick up on something that you said about this
is different from the Hinchcliffe era and that there's no long
evil dead awakening.
It does something different, and it's kind of like the future of
the show.
Terence has always been interested in time lords and things like
that.
And so rather than have a threat rising from the dead.
What he does is weave it into a wider tapestry of Doctor Who.
So he's introducing law to the program, which is what he did with
the Time Lords.
And so the rootans are not just a one off foe, they are the
eternal enemy of the Sontarians, who we've met twice before and
who we're going to meet again at the end of the season.
Terrence likes doing that.
He likes building a universe in which the doctor operates.
The other thing is, too, that I think that he just borrows from
earlier stories and things that we know in order to just do the
alien thread, because his focus is on the human characters.
And so he borrows the Ruten's arrival from the Time Warrior, he
borrows the way that we dispatch the Ruten from the Santarin
experiment.
He uses the Santarans because he doesn't want to spend a lot of
time establishing who this alien is.
And so he just hangs it on something that already exists that's
already been mentioned, and we don't have to spend a lot of time
justifying why the aliens here and what their deal is because we
don't care about that.
And let's not forget that the whole thing's written in a week or
less, and so often, because of the loss of the vampire mutations
and so often with Doctor Who, and we've said this before, those
last minute scripts come together so beautifully, and I think in a
lot of our own work, my own work, things that are done super fast
can often be some of the best stuff that you do, because it's like
you're working on heightened sens- senses.
You know, he doesn't hang about wondering, or should I do this?
Should I do that?
He goes to the standard go to stuff and goes, right, we're going
into this, we're going to do this, we're going to do this.
And it all comes together in this magical, beautiful way. because
there's no sort of internalised 2nd guessing that you sometimes
get when you have too long to think about something.
It's not the only story.
Like that city of death is another one that's written in basically
a weekend.
I think talons is written fairly quickly, isn't it?
Arken Space for it.
Midnight.
Yeah, exactly.
Terrence is relying on instinct, and that's great because
Terrence's instincts are perfect.
He always said that he was good in a casis.
And the reason that he's good in Equasis is that he doesn't muck
about.
Like you said, he just gets in there and tells the story.
And that's why we dive straight into this.
When people talk about Doctor Who, they say, okay, we're going to
lose Disney money, Doctor Who will have to go back to doing
haunted houses.
They don't mean haunted houses.
Hooray.
Yes, hooray for that idea, but they don't mean an actual haunted
house.
What they mean is the horror...
Yes.
The actual haunted house this season is Image of the Fendial.
And that has a larger sporting cast, changed its location, outdoor
filming, et cetera, et cetera.
This story was praised by the head of series and cereals, Graham
McDonald for, quote, its contained production scale, unquote.
And I would argue that that's fantastic, but it's not actually
very representative of Doctor Who.
The series is usually more ambitious than this and successfully so
and I would argue that the only 70 story to even approach its
economy is the Santarian experiment, which was essentially the
location component of a six-part story.
So, do we know whether Horrorfang was actually very cheap to
make?
Yes, I mean, I haven't read any production memos about its budget
being particularly less, but you can see it on screen.
Small cast.
Um, notch film, and there's only sort of, I think they used, they
had 2 weeks of filming. which was meant to be used for the vampire
mutation at Ealing.
It wouldn't be 2 weeks.
That's a long time, 2 weeks, be 2 days, you mean?
No, 2 weeks. and they only used a week of it to do this.
There's actually more Ealing filming in this than you remember
when you go and watch it.
Yes, yes.
But no, I think it was quite cheap.
But of course, something else which made it cheap was that it's
been recorded many times they had to go to Birmingham to make it
because they didn't have any sets available and Birmingham was
cheaper.
Studios.
That's right.
The sets are quite small.
I mean, there's four. and they're quite small because it's a
lighthouse.
I think the sets are incredible.
Last season, I think we complained or I complained about worries
of the deep, it being easy to forget that we were actually
underwater.
There was nothing in the frame, that indicated we were
underwater.
But here we're never allowed to forget that we're in a lighthouse
and the curved walls.
The curved doors are incredible, just tremendous.
But again, that's because, unlike being Warriors of the Deep, any
set designer has an idea of what a lice house looks like.
So the BBC set department is doing, what it does best, which is to
create these period drama sets.
It's interesting you mentioned about the size of the set and I
don't think this has got anything to do with it being going to
Birmingham per se, Peter, but I watched the making of on the Blu
ray and I was abs- they did, you know, how this guy's doing, I
can't remember his name, but he does these 3D renders of what, how
the studio was with all the sets set up, which are extraordinary
extraordinary resource and kudos to him.
I think he's called Andrew Orton.
Right.
Thank you, Andrew.
So Toby Haydoke is interviewing Louise Jamieson about it in the
sitting and in this lighthouse and Toby brings out his iPad and
shows, Louise.
This is what the sets looked like when they were set up at Pebble
Mill.
And, you know, we're so used to the idea of, oh, my God, the sets
are so small because the studio that they have to work with and
set them up in is so small.
But no, he shows this space of what seems to be a reasonable sized
studio.
And these absolutely microscopic 4 sets are basically in 4
different areas of the studio.
I mean, vast acres in between them, where the cameras can get
around.
And you know, you're just little insensible, so sensible, clever
things, like the fact that, of course, the lamp gallery is built
as a raised set.
So all the cameras are looking up at them to imply when they're on
the gantry thing, to imply that, you know, obviously we're looking
from below, because it's all those sorts of little clever little
directorial things which don't really cost anything, but help give
you a sense of the space and how these spaces relate to each
other.
And of course, even though the sets were simple, and even though
they were working out Pebble Mill, which was all rudimentary in
its facilities, you can't take away the technical achievement of
having in that lamp room, that constant chroma key backdrop.
You lose it a little bit.
Yes, with all that glass.
Yeah, you lose it a little bit when it's just missed.
But in those early scenes from episode one and the late scenes
from episode 4 where you actually have a horizon and the sun on
them, you can't get your head around the fact that they had to
keep both of those cameras, the one who's, which is pointing at
the action and the one which is pointing at the backdrop in sync.
So it didn't look like the backdrop was floating.
That's a marvellous technical achievement and it just flies right
under the radar.
I was going to say one of the things about the sets that is
remarkable, regardless of the size of them.
And I think that's the size of the smallness of what appears to be
the smallness of them actually works to the story's advantage in
the base under siege style because you feel, again, it feels like
an ant hill.
Like, what I was saying earlier about the characters being
constantly emotional.
They're constantly brushing past each other, and I feel like the
sets as small as they are.
And I, you know, I'd have to go back and rewatch it the entire
thing again to make sure, but it feels like they're shot from
different directions or maybe it's that the height of the
characters makes makes the perspective and the way that they're
paired up against each other look different every time.
So even though it's the same 4 sets, it feels like there's almost
a limitless variety of perspectives that they're giving us.
And that feels like a real achievement in this story as well.
I mean, it's verticality.
Russell talks about verticality as a thing that isn't normally
available in a studio set, and this is entirely about that.
The 4 sets are stacked on top of one another.
Um, and it's Holmes's idea, isn't it, to set it in a lighthouse
and that's part of the genius of that idea, I think, is, you know
the base under siege, just sort of uh, uh, impregnable and and and
spread out.
But this, it's all stacked on top of one another.
And you've got the thing climbing up rather than coming in, you
know, that wonderful thing and you don't quite realise what's
happening, I think, is you watch it for the 1st time where Reuben
turns into the root and climbs up the wall kills Parmadale and
then climbs back down and goes back into the thing.
Like, I'm not sure that I understood that when I watched it as a
kid, but that's very clearly what's happening.
It's just so brilliant.
It's so good.
And it's so good that you never, apart from one moment, which I'll
talk about shortly, they always get the geography completely
right.
And you're always aware of the fact that you've got the ballroom
at the bottom, then you've got the crew, then you've got the
sleeping quarters, then you've got the lamp gallery, and you've
only got the one spiral staircase going around the outside of it
and you're never in any illusion as to what's happening where and
why.
We take that for granted because I can tell you, it would not have
taken much for the whole thing to have been quite rubbish in terms
of the way the sets are done and the way it's shot.
And so full credit to Paddy Russell and full credit to whoever the
set designer is, whose name escapes me.
It's Paul Allen who did Spearhead from Space.
Thank you There you go.
But although Spearhead from Space is a series of locations rather
than...
He never had a chance to do his craft, Simon.
It puts me in mind of one of my new series Bugbears, which is the
rebel flesh.
The gang is two-parter.
I mean, I loathe that story just because I think it is so badly
made and told.
It's not that it really is.
I like it.
I think it's fun.
One of the things about it is that you have absolutely no sense of
how everything relates to each other.
You get confused with...
You get characters entering and leaving... and turning up the
different spaces you have. absolutely no idea.
Paddy ties that together, but also Terrence ties that together
because he has the characters moving logically between the
spaces.
So you know where they are at any given space.
Okay, so this is my one thing where I think there is an error in
terms of, from that point of view, not that it ruins it.
It's just the fact that I've always thought this every time I see
the story.
This might take a while.
So, you know, when Ruben's come back up the stairs as a routin, and
he goes into the crew room.
Got it in one. goes into the sleeping quarters and locks the door
right?
The doctor and Leila come up and knock on the door and he's, oh
he's in a state and so on.
Now, and in fact, at one point, Adelaide comes up and says, I must
speak to Lord Palmerdale, and he, you know, the Tom says, get back
to the crew room and all that sort of sequence.
So at some point, Lord Palmerdale has come up the stairs and gone
past the doctor and Leila to get to Vince, who's up the lamp room
to bribe him to send a message to London, et cetera, et cetera.
But the fact that the doctor and Leila don't even know that, or at
least, I know that you can say, well, obviously he walks past them
but why does he then prevent?
We didn't see it.
And why does he prevent Adelaide going up there and not
Palmerdale?
And so there is a there is that little missing moment.
Not that I think it matters.
The other one that I think is when skin sale looks out the door
Reuben has gone past the doorway and he looks down the street.
Ruben is just there, 6 inches from him and he doesn't notice him.
So he doesn't always work 100%. doesn't get it.
I don't know.
See, I was under the impression that the doctor and Leila were
outside when Palmerdale went upstairs.
Okay.
No.
No, no.
I even went back and watched just on fast forward to watch it
again to see all the characters movements.
So they've come back from inside.
They've gone upstairs.
So, um, I think they've gone up and Palmadale is still in the in
the crew room when the doctor and Leila go up to follow Reuben up
the stairs. or do you know what?
I mean, look, as I said, it doesn't really matter, but it is the
only time that the beautiful location logic might have a slight
error in it.
And you say it's something like an old school director like Paddy
Russell would be very keen on that.
She would absolutely be making sure that all the characters
comings and goings made sense logistically.
And to go back to something that you were saying, Melvin, about
the way that, even though they're small sets, they're shot
differently and people seem to be placed differently in them.
What Paddy does, and you don't get this a lot in studio work in
the BBC, is that she pulls focus, maybe not literally, but she
will have characters in the background of shots.
Yes, actually.
It's not a literal focus pull, or if it is, it's very minor, but
it means that you get depth in your sets, even though they're very
small.
Yeah, you'll have the doctor.
I'm thinking in that scene where he's initially toying with the
telegraph and Leila is eating something at the table.
And you see the doctor, you see the telegraph, you see the doctor
you see Leila, you see the background of the set. and it makes it
look impossibly bigger than it actually was.
Yeah.
Yeah, a focus pull, as opposed to pulling focus, because pulling
focus is when there's a character in the background. doing
something that's distracting us.
And pulls the focus from the main action.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
One thing I wanted to go back to real quick before we left the
script behind altogether was that one of the last times we
addressed it, we were talking about how quickly it was written, how
instinctively, but I wanted to argue that it is not, for that
reason, a simple script.
Like, it's a very, it's very dense.
And I just wanted to make sure that it, it, you know, that we came
back around to that because, again, watching it, uh, specifically
for for this recording, like I was noticing, and again, I read
everything like a, like a book, all the mirroring and dark doubles
like the 2 sets of three, the, the, the 2 light keepers and and
Vince and then the 2 financiers and their, their secretary.
And then you've got like the 2 sort of warriors in uh, the Rutin
and Leila.
Like, this is like, it goes on, like, there are so many of those
sort of things going on as well as like, again, um, the, the, the
science versus supernatural, the, the march into modernity.
Like, there's just so much going on in the script.
I just wanted to make sure that we weren't leaving it behind and
saying that this was, because it's quickly written and because
it's efficient, because it's lean, doesn't mean that it's also not
you know, literary and proficient in its depth.
Absolutely.
I mean, I wasn't meaning that as the majority of it all.
There's so much there, Melvin, that I didn't even think of, and
you're absolutely right.
And again, in the defence of the four-part story that, you know
old, you know, classic Doctor Who stories were too long, blah, blah
blah.
No, under the right writer, under the right team, they're gripping
from go to woe.
Now that's a variety of reasons for that.
Probably a lot, a lot of it's to do with the fact that the
shipwreck crew don't arrive until part two.
But that's what you do when you've got a limited number of sets
and a limited number of days.
I mean, that's just how you write this stuff, you know?
Palmadale's only in 2 episodes. his body's in episode four. that
is true.
He's lying in the floor. credit at the end, actually.
It's why it undersells it, just to say that Terence is good in a
crisis because the reason he's good in a crisis is that he has all
of that talent and experience to draw upon.
And so if you do have that, then having to do something quickly
doesn't mean that you have a quick end product as a result.
You also can't talk about horror Fang Rock without talking about
it in the context of Leila because it was so strange, the myth
that grew up about Leila in this script, and some of it was
propelled by Louise Jameson, who said that when she got the script
it was terrible, and it wasn't Leila and she was screaming, and it
must have been written for Sarah Jane.
Now, obviously that was her experience of it, but we know that
that's not true.
It wasn't written with Sarah Jane. was written for Leila.
I don't know who rewrote it or if they did.
I suspect no one did.
I expect they just finessed a couple of things, but it is
absolutely in character for Leila.
It is, in fact, her best story, because not only do you have the
comparison with Adelaide, not only do you have her as kind of the
quite grim, but also quite jolly counterpart to Tom's grimness in
pieces.
She's given a great chunk of the action and she has all of her
best lines.
So people celebrate the silence.
You'll do as the doctor instructor will cut out your heart, which
is, of course, fantastic.
But you also have her taunting rooting.
Enjoy your death as I enjoyed killing you, which is like a
quintessential Leila moment.
And when the ship strikes the rocks.
She just turns her head dismissfully and says, well, they'll all
die then.
It is just amazing.
You know, Boucher obviously creates the character and gets her 1st
what, 8 episodes?
Is that right?
I think Holmes is a bit dismissive of her.
And I think Holmes Holmes is good with the, you know, the 2
companions that he creates. you know, Liz and Romana.
I think that Terence shows a greater respect for her.
And I think, I think what's interesting about that is, you know
Terrence used to performatively go, oh, you know, we just need a
girl who screams and asks the doctor questions and stuff and
that's all the companion is.
And he usually does that in the context of talking about Joe, who
is absolutely not that at all.
Um, you know, is much, much more proactive and competent and
sophisticated than he gives her credit for here.
I think he absolutely critiques Adelaide, but the other characters
as well through Leela.
Leila gets to change out of her period frock into men's clothes
with a fabulous smell.
She's wonderful.
And that scene again, which critiques, you know, the weird
Victorian attitudes, like Vince's kind of terrible embarrassment
at, at, um, her taking off her clothes, yeah. dressing in front of
him.
And, and you know, Adelaide with her, you know, and you send women
to Stoke boilers and, you know, like all of that sort of stuff
about, about what a woman's role is and just how dismal and
pathetic Adelaide is.
And the role of slapping a hysterical woman in the face is a man's
role.
Brilliant.
And and Leila gets given it.
And gosh, it's such a satisfying moment.
Apparently, the actress told Luis...
Yes, she didn't...
You can tell, too.
It's like she goes after it.
It's not the usual Doctor Who think of slapping near someone and
then falling.
And one of the great things about that relationship.
And again, the Leila character in this is, again, we really do
need to talk about it because she's written and it's performed by
Louise in such a nuanced way.
Like, again, rewatching this for the 1st time in years, like, it
just struck me how much this is like the pattern for every cop
drama that has been since the 70s or 80s that you've got the sort
of brainy one who thinks and the other one who's like all action.
It's the sort of life on Mars, like Gene Hunt and uh, uh, uh, Sam
character, but like that, that Leila can play.
Leila is the bad cop and she plays that very well and she's also
it doesn't mean that she's not smart, even though she is used to
highlight that that idea of science versus superstition.
At one point, she tells Adelaide when she's like, Adelaide's like
oh, my Miss Nethercott, my astrologer was telling me, you know, the
death was around me.
And she's like, no, this is this is nonsense.
The doctor has taught me that science is better.
Even though the way that Leila talks about it, it might as well
just be another astrology.
It's a new religion.
That's so good.
Yeah, I think there's this thing that's built up around Layla
though, that the character is quite inconsistently recent.
I think most of the fault of that goes to underworld where she
just becomes quite stupid.
And she's a bit stupid.
An invasion of time, she's stupid.
So she kind of does deteriorate and invisible enemy.
She quite stupid as well.
I disagree with you, Nathan.
I think Holmes does a great job with her in both in both talons
and sunmakers.
I think she's got that thing because what, but Terrence, absolutely
this is the best portrayal of Leila and where most of her
memorable lines come from because it basically it gets to the root
of the thing that she is not stupid.
She just has a different frame of reference.
And she's actually incredibly smart and I think, and as you said
Adelaide is useless.
And it comes back to that to the moral of the story.
It's not what you've got.
It's what you do with it.
Do you know what I mean?
It's all about how you behave in those situations.
Adelaide falls to pieces.
Whereas Leila comes to the rescue.
And the way, and one thing you sort of just touched on there
Pepita, but just to underscore some of the brilliant lines she
throws back Tom.
None of the 3s to mind where she completely takes...
The technician line?
Yes, where Tom laughs.
Tom Cardiff goes, you've made a pun.
Um, you know, it's test mission.
But no, but she takes the piss out of you on so many occasions.
It's brilliant.
The one where she's like, oh, but I'm, what would I know?
just a savage.
Like, that just feels... so knowing.
Also, the, and I think this was actually, maybe you weren't
supposed to see Louise's reaction here, but when she says, you are
a timelord, which is a little bit unlilah-like, but just as the
camera follows Tom away and you see Louise's face, she crumples up
in laughter.
And I don't think that's Leila.
I think that's Louise.
Leila is all instinctive intelligence versus the doctor's reasoned
intelligence.
And that's what makes them such good pairing.
Going back to what you were saying about talons, Nathan.
I think even though I love the way that Bob Holmes writes Leila in
that story, he fits her into the Eliza Doolittle role, whereas I
think when he comes to write her in The Sunmakers, then, you know
that might well be co-best story for Leila along with this.
But again, it brings us back to the brilliance of Terence because
what Terence does time again.
We'll see it next week and stated to K. We saw it last week in
Robot, and it's what makes him so uniquely appropriate to write
the 5 doctors is that he understands that you have to have the
doctor and the companion bouncing off each other continuously.
And so he has endless scenes with them together, discussing the
plot and what's happening, and that gives rise to all those
beautiful character moments and some of the best dialogue.
I think that we tend to read Romana as a reaction against Leila.
You know, the dynamic between them is different and it definitely
is.
But what we do have here is 2 aliens, we're both from space.
We both stand outside this society and its customs and its ethics
and its worldview.
And as a result, she gets to be, I think, more doctor-ish.
She gets to to take initiative, to tell the other characters to do
things.
Both the doctor and Leila order the other characters around all
the time and tell them how to behave.
So I think they're co-equal in a way that we don't normally think
of them as being.
And I think they are quite a lot like the doctor and Romana.
And the doctor and Liz as well.
And the doctor and Sarah Jane as well.
Yeah, yeah.
And again, I think that's one of the things that jumped out at me
when I was talking about the police detectors is that they feel
like partners more than like the My Fair Lady sort of
relationship.
But also I wanted to complicate and develop a little bit.
And I know that you weren't trying to be simplistic about it, Peter
but the idea of of Leila's instinctive intelligence because, again
I feel like it sort of makes her into, and again, this is part of
that move to modernity as well, is that idea of from Rousseau, of
natural man, of the noble savage.
That's sort of, I believe that's where that language is coming
from in the 1st place.
But there's also the intelligence of practice and practical
knowledge that she has as a hunter, which sort of goes back to
that idea of of her being the double in this story, not only of
Adelaide, but also the double of the rooten, because the rooten is
also a cunning warrior.
And there's that scene where, you know, Tom is trying to, he goes
off and tries to, he's going to go talk to Vince, I think, in the
boiler room.
And Leila sort of sneaks out to go, like, literally, sort of see
see, if she can track the creature.
And, you know, you have that sequence where she finds the dead
fish and she hears something rustling and she like, so she is
furtive.
She is cunning.
All the terms that they apply to the rooting scout can equally be
applied to Leila.
And I feel like that's one of the reasons why she does gloat there
at the end is she has seen it, as her enemy this entire time, and
that they have been, like, regardless of whatever else is going on
that she has pitted herself against it, to see who is the best
warrior.
That use of the word first, if there's that moment where the
doctor describes the root and is furtive. and she just says what
is furtive and she's not made fun of and nothing like that, the
doctor just explains what it means.
And then she says, you know, then we're not facing an enemy that's
bold and stuff, you know, like she clocks it immediately, even if
she doesn't know that particular word.
And the fact is that Leila goes out on that solar mission of her
own.
And following the scene where the doctor says, I don't fancy
playing tag in the fog with something that can do that.
And when she comes back in, she says, do not be afraid, doctor.
Yes, absolutely incredible.
And then he, you know, it takes him a moment to clock that also
when he turns around. you don't be afraid.
I love those moments too, when the doctor says something that
makes it very clear he's very fond of the companion.
Like, for instance, in the seeds of doom, where he says, this is
Sarah, she's my best friend.
And in here, I love the moment where he aggressively says to the
others, Leila's senses are particularly acute, if she says it's
getting colder, it's getting colder.
Do you know what I mean?
And that shows he utterly respects Leila's understanding of the
world.
And there's a lovely counterpoint to that scene in robots of death
where she hears from the vibration, the engine that the sand minor
is going wrong.
He doesn't believe her and then is proven wrong and says, please
don't say I told you to.
Ponder this. ponder this.
There are more good scenes between the doctor and the companion in
this story than in the whole Davis and era.
I think that's now that is needlessly cruel, patience.
No, I mean, I'll bring you that.
I don't hate the Davidson era.
I don't particularly love it, but I did sit there counting them up
in my mind and thinking, obviously, I'm being a little bit
facetious here, but the fact that the program loses its focus on
these things, which make it so successful.
You know, part of the reason, horrifying rock, that we love it and
part of the reason that it doesn't matter that it's only set in 4
sets.
And probably the reason that it's so atmospheric is that you have
those endless great scenes between the doctor and his companion.
And when the program moves into a more straightforward action
genre, like under Eric Sayward, you tend to lose that nuance.
And for whatever reason it just makes it slightly less enjoyable.
Several things.
Firstly, I'd probably suggest that most of the good character
moments in the Davis Nera are in caves, Evangelzani, actually.
So fair enough.
It's interesting expanding what you're saying there, Peter, because
listening to John Abbott, who plays Vince, his interview in the
making of on the Blu-ray.
Oh, right.
Clang.
And I believe is what's said at that point.
But he made the point is he loved and he loved doing it because it
was character driven.
And I think, Peter, you're absolutely right that as we get to the
Saywood era, the characters aren't fully rounded characters and
the whole thing becomes incident driven.
And I think, Nathan, that could be why you get these various dull
episode 3s because if you don't have strong characters, you can't
do that kind of padding in a nice way that you need to do in order
to flesh things out to 4 parts.
So I actually think it's all interlinked there.
I mean, the other thing that say would lax is Terrence's ability
to make new things happen.
But again, because the characters, but when the characters purely
become cyphers for the action rather than characters that actually
interact with each other, that's, I think, when things start to
sag and be a bit average.
If I can just something we haven't yet talked about, which is
essentially script driven, is actually how unusual the
cliffhangers are.
Um, for Doctor Who.
Like there's no crash zooms on the doctor's face as, you know, if
we don't do something quickly, the whole universe will be
destroyed kind of thing.
Even you know, they're all relatively understated.
They've often got kind of quiet moments of dialogue.
You know, episode ones, the shipwreck, which is a bit probably the
weakest because it's like, well, we don't even know who these
people are on the ship, so who cares?
Episode two, but just the wonderful thing with episode 2 with skin
sale. saying, what the devil was that?
And then the whole, we've locked it in here with us in episode
three.
That's the kind of cliffhanger, which can be so affecting.
There's no peril.
There's no doctoral companion at all.
And it is a what next cliffhanger.
And I think they're the best.
I mean, I think that the episode one cliffhanger suffers from some
lamentable model work.
But it is what the hell will happen now. that we've thrown these
other people into the mix, and then, I mean, the episode 2
Cliffhanger is literally skin sale asking, what was that?
And so what's going to happen?
But it's not, it's not the same as, of course, it's this way, which
is obviously...
That wasn't real.
I know it wasn't real.
It was real to me in 1985, Nathan.
And of course, the reason that you have those kinds of
cliffhangers is that this is not an action driven story.
So there's not the opportunity, not that Terence would ever be
this gauche, just to drop in a kill them.
Wait.
Kind of quick hang up.
I can't imagine who would do that, Peter.
Then it means that you have to use the high moments of drama as
cliffhangers, which, of course, we know is always the best.
And I feel like one of the things that sort of that links all that
together is when I was talking about genre earlier is that one of
the genres this focusses in on from start to finish is the sort of
tale of ratiocination, sort of Edgar Allen Poe, DuPont, sort of
like someone, they're here to investigate something.
And we don't know what that is.
So like each of these revelations that happens, it doesn't have to
be an action one.
It's just like, what is the next thing that is about to happen to
us?
So, yeah, in terms of Leila, to develop further the idea that she
is a double of the rooting, is that they are both, and you
mentioned this, when y'all mentioned this earlier, when she
changes clothes, like the rooting transforms, and she also
transforms, like, and it's made much more explicit in the
novelisation, because the narrator, I suppose, says that the
doctor told Leila that she cannot carry a knife when she's wearing
the Victorian dress or when she's wearing a dress.
When she takes Vince's clothes out of the chest and puts them on
she's rooting around and finds a knife and she's like, well, I'm
no longer wearing the dress.
And in the TV episode, you see her sort of like sitting down at
table, sort of measuring the knife after she's changed clothing
but it's again, it's much more explicitly that sartorial
distinction, and it's something that Terrence also like
foregrounds a lot more in the novelisation is that the way the
characters are dressed also reflects who they are.
Uh, so that idea of change and transformation is something that is
unique to her, uh, but also in terms of the tale of ratiocination
that idea of Tom or the scene where Tom walks into the lighthouse
for the 1st time and grabs the bowler hat.
Like there's something very, very detective about that.
And a Victorian detective and I really, really love it.
I love too.
Like Palmadale is wet when he arrives and we can't really achieve
that in the studio, but it's a brilliant kind of writerly idea
because he's wet because he's jumped in the water because he's so
keen to get onto land and save himself and doesn't care about
what's happening to anyone else.
And so that's visible on him, not so much in the studio.
We can't quite do that at this point.
Uh, but it is, you know, definitely something that he's done in
order to characterise, to characterise Palmerdale.
Speaking of the novelisation.
Melvin.
Here's a question for everyone.
What's the only season of the show that Terence novelizes in its
entirety?
Is it 15?
It is season 15.
Of course.
Yes, because Ian Marty does rival separation. yeah And he also
does the Arcan Space and the Santarian experiment.
And Philip Hinchcliffe does seeds of doom and mask and Dragra.
Otherwise, Terence does all of those seasons.
The novelisation of horrifying rock is as elegant and concise as
any of Terence's books.
He's always on great form when he's novelizing his own stories and
it's got one of those great Terence opening lines.
It began with a light in the sky. which is just, you know, so it's
so scene setting and evocative.
And what he could do just effortlessly.
But the horror fang rock also holds a special place in my heart
because I'd been a fan for a number of years.
I started watching Dogs Who very early.
I think I saw the repeat of season 11 in 1974 when I was just 2 or
3 years old.
So that was my sort of my 1st exposure to the program, watching it
with my family.
By the time we get to 1978 and we have those year round repeats
and I'm 6 years old, I was a fully fledged fan.
And so when my grandfather went back to the UK in January 1979.
I was asking him to find me Doctor Who books that they may have
that we didn't have yet.
And what he brought back for me were the novelisations of the
Santarin experiments and the horror of Fang Rock.
And so, seeing that cover, which I have actually hanging on my
wall right now, I'm looking at it, brings back indelible childhood
memories around family and the way that I grew up and the way that
my family were around me when I watched Doctor Who.
And I think horror Fang Walk is just the distillation of that for
me.
Can I say that I was watching Doctor Who for the 1st time in 1978
when we got those year-round repeats?
And I've observed on podcasts before that I was put through the
entirety of the Hingecliff era in a very, very short time.
And then, of course, you know, the beginning of the Williams era
as well.
That question, no use that the words put through, Nathan.
Yes.
What I'm saying is that I never stood a chance.
Do you know what I mean?
Like it was, it was, I think.
But my 1st experience of Doctor Who was the Doctor Who Monster
Book 2nd edition, which just covers the Hinchcliffe era.
And so when I tuned into Horror Fang Rock, I'm not sure whether it
was a repeat or not, but my knowledge of Doctor Who stopped with
the talons of Wang Chiang.
And so I was aware that this was the beginning of a new season in
a way that I was never aware of.
The 2nd Doctor Who Monster Bork was such a thing, an artefact of
its time, because not only did you have those gorgeous spreads on
basically every story, potentially Fera, but also it was like this
mystical lost artefact because it had the brain of Morbius and the
deadly assassin, which we never saw in the 70s.
But also in the particular way that things did back then.
It just got these hopeless things wrong.
Like it had terror of the Zygons placed before Genesis of the
Daleks.
And I love that kind of thing.
It was like the ABC in Australia showing things in their
production order, so we'd get this on current experiment before
the art.
Not just once, but a number of times.
Just some further context there, Nathan.
Interestingly, the ABC did 15 and 16.
They showed them for the 1st time together, rather like the way
they did later with 18 and 19.
So I was saying your draft, actually, singing the 1st time.
And actually, that's when I pick up the show.
I don't see that 1st run.
I pick it up in the middle of the repeat run that follows those
stories.
But the interesting thing is that the ABC actually shows, which is
what they actually did with season 17 as well.
They actually show season 15 and 16 immediately after, like 15 is
shown at the end of when it, the same year when it's been shown or
read at the beginning.
So you actually probably would have seen Horrorfanger Rock twice
in the same year.
But if I can just, I think we need to talk more deeply about the
novelisations and sort of what Terrence Dix has done to all of us
as fans.
And, you know, things are teased over the years about, you know
the wheezing, groaning sound and pleasant open face and certain
lines that he use, standard lines and subscriptions that he uses
to describe certain things.
That's okay.
But with things like that opening line, Peter, that you express
just then, it began with a light in the sky.
Instantly, from the 1st sentences of all of his novelisations.
I think Dalek Invasion of Earth has a similarly gripping 1st line
as well.
It does through the ruin of a city stalks the ruin of a man.
Yes, there you go.
Such brilliance.
He's really thought about that.
And, you know, he's he's mantra that, you know, he wanted us to be
able to we live it in our heads, basically.
And we could.
Now, I don't know whether his writing style is what informed my
brain as to how Doctor Who should read when looked at on the page
because of course he writes the vast majority of them.
But I actually think it's more than that.
I actually think he most accurately captures the show on paper
even compared to some of the other great novelisation writers like
Ian Master, for instance, and Malcolm Hall.
He recreates the show on the page in a way that an 8 year old, a 7
and 8 year old, is able to understand and genuinely we live it in
our heads.
And the cover, the covers were important to that as well.
And I think horror fang rock, as you said, Peter, I think is a
beautiful distillation of capturing the mood of the story in that
exact same way.
It's Jeff Cummins, who does brilliant work on things like Talons
Wen Chayang, and that great recover of the dinosaur invasion, which
has the T-Rex in front of St.
Paul's Cadet Clack, the non-clack one.
Yeah, he does beautiful work and it's so evocative and it's like
I...
It's like the effects work in the story itself.
Not only those shots of the lighthouse technically proficient, they
suit the atmosphere.
And at the risk of sort of taking this to the nth degree.
Even the fact that for a lot of them, the four-part stories are
split into 12 chapters.
One of them may be called escape to danger.
But even putting those to one side.
The nightmare begins.
Indeed.
But, but, you know, the fact that, you know, I was able to, as a
child, relive those stories and have the episodes divided into
three, and you could reach the end.
The cliffhanger's all matched up and it was all beautifully paced
out.
And I actually wanted to say that with my early novelisations, it
took a while for me to start wanting normalisations of stories I
had not seen.
I really just, you know, I wasn't buying or getting people to buy
for me for birthdays and Christmases.
I wasn't getting to buy abominable snowmen or, you know, the
crusades or something, you know.
And the ones that I had acquired, like the Dale Convasions Earth
which was like, no, this is not that thing that I saw on a Sunday
afternoon with Peter Cushing in it, even though the cover suggests
otherwise.
Or things like that, I had to be a bit older to be able to read
like sort of more like 9 before I started reading those
novelisations like Webber Fear, which were from stuff that I
hadn't seen.
I cannot overstate how significant that was to my grasp of the
English language.
Absolutely.
And Simon, I think that point that you made about Terrence
writing.
So let an eight-year-old can visualise it.
The importance of having that structure of 12 chapters broken up
into 3 chapters per episode.
That's so important for young minds to be able to recognise that
structure and to anticipate it and to know that the cliffhanger is
coming when you're a couple of pages before the end of chapter 3.
Look, I had a very advanced reading age when I was young, like 9
or 10 years old.
And I'm certain that reading the novelisations was the reason
why.
Terence is not only an economical storyteller, but his grammar and
sentence structure and verbiage were always on point as well.
And I'm certain that they taught me more about the English
language than my teachers did.
100%.
I remember, look, I was collecting the novelisations from a very
early age, as I said earlier, you know, asking my grandfather to
get them from Britain when I just turned seven.
And even though we had some Pertwhees and the 1st 4 Tom Baker
seasons on annual repeat.
The books were sort of the tangible Doctor Who that I could own.
And that's important to you as a child, that the fact that you're
not just waiting for a repeat, which may or may not come round, but
you actually have them and own them.
So every week or month between like 1978 and 1981.
I'd be spending my pocket money on adding another title to my
collection until I was entirely caught up and then only buying the
new releases.
So sitting in the bookstore, looking through the shelves, deciding
which one I'd like to buy that week or that month.
No, it's an indelible happy memory for me.
Yes, I know, but agony, you couldn't have all of them.
Like, not.
It's like, you know, it's that thing of which one will I buy with
I buy this one or this one, you know?
I left the Dalek Invasion of Earth to one of the last ones and I'd
sort of reconcile myself that I'd have to buy this one now.
And then I saw the making of Doctor Who.
And all ideas of buying the Dalek Invasion of Jettisoned, as I had
the making of Doctor Who in my hands.
Look, I remember reading as a child.
So I just bought the 2 latest novelisations to come out, which
were 2 Men Saidemen and the Time Warrior.
And I remember reading The Time Warrior in a car trip to
Canberra.
So I would have been about, I would say, 6 years old.
My brother would have been 10 years old.
He was reading Two of the Cybermen.
Of course, he was going through it more quickly than me because I
was 6 and he was 10.
And I insisted halfway through that we swap books because to my
young brain, obviously, the term of the sidemen was the easier
book to read because he was getting through it more quickly than I
was.
And I just have so many memories around that kind of thing, taking
all the books off my shelf on a Sunday afternoon, spreading them
round the floor so that I could appreciate the artwork, swapping
the order from alphabetical to chronological and then back again
so that they looked different on the bookshelf with the different
spines.
They were so important to my childhood, and they remained so
important that, as you guys will know, having been over to my
house, I have all of those brilliant Chris Achilios covers in mug
form and it still gives me, it still gives me a tiny little
thrill.
Every time I make a cup of tea and I open up that cupboard and see
all of that artwork in front of me and I have to split 2nd
decision of, what shall I drink from today?
The claws of Axos or the Arkin space.
It's interesting. the whole laying them out on the floor thing.
I mean, I would never have thought to put them in alphabetic order
because that would have just been perverse and wrong.
They were always, they were always in incorrect broadcast order
according to the making of Doctor Who and later the 20th
anniversary radio time special.
But the pattern that they form on the floor.
And I know that, you know, various books have different covers and
you know, different editions and stuff like that.
But, you know, obviously the ones that I had were the correct
versions, but just seeing the patterns and seeing the holes, the
gaps, because those stories, either I hadn't bought it yet, or it
wasn't released yet.
And it was that fascinating moment where you sort of realise as a
child that they're not just all available.
They're not just all there.
Like you suddenly, and I can't remember when I did.
I think it may actually only be when the neon logo appears on
something like the as.
Well, it wouldn't be that late, but you know.
The Sunmakers. right.
When the sunmaker suddenly appears with the neon logo, It's like
that's strange.
And then, and then I think there's a there's a trout or a heart or
something, which has a neon logo on.
And then you sort of almost in with some horror that they're not
just all available because, you know, you'd go into the bookstore
you'd go into Angus and Robinson, hoping to find, this time, will
Dalek Master Plan actually be there?
You know, that was quite a way, you know, but it's just the
patterns they form on the floor and the gaps.
And you know, I can kind of close my eyes and sort of see where
those early gaps were, you know, edge of destruction, for
example.
There's also something I think about the connection between the
way that a child's mind and a fan's mind works.
And so I remember in the aforementioned laying out of all of the
books.
I remember asking my mother if I could count Planet of the Spiders
as a Joe Grant book because she's in the 1st chapter as a prologue
where she's up the Amazon with Cliff.
And my mother said very kindly.
Yes, of course you can count it as Joe Grant book, she said
because there's lots of Sarah stories, but there's only 4 Joe
stories, because of course, the only stories that we ever saw were
Day of the Dialects, the 3 Doctors, the Carnival Monsters, and the
Green Death.
So not only did she have enough working knowledge of the series to
be able to tell me that, but that satisfies you in a very child
friendly and fan friendly way, the fact that you can put all of
these things together in this way and then create law around them
if you wish.
It's one more reason why the novelisations are so important for
fans of our vintage.
I have to say that that's one of the things that I've liked in
recent times where the practice of novelizing the story says come
back, that it was really avoided for quite a lot of the history of
the new series and now we're going back and seeing novelisations.
And like I don't know that they'll ever have the role that they
had for us in our childhood because you can just watch the show.
I did read someone this week describing Terrence's our videotape
recorder, which he was in sort of many ways.
My experience is a bit different from yours.
I only ever bought the Pertwee and Baker ones because they were
the only doctors that I knew.
And I frequently bought novels of stories that I hadn't seen
before.
And so plenty of the Pertwee era.
I had a lavish imaginative version in my head when I 1st came to
watch the actual show.
Lavish imaginative version you watched on TV.
Yes, yeah, yeah. colony in space.
For example.
Wash your mouth out.
And I feel like that's one of the things that we should definitely
talk about about this novelisation in particular is that
lavishness because there is a real, like, relish that Terrence Dix
takes in this particular novelisation.
Like, you spend, like, we were talking earlier about the scripts
being very lean and efficient, like, and I feel like that leanness
and efficiency only stands to the novel's benefit when he comes to
write it because, you know, you know, I've listened to enough
podcasts about novelisations to know that some of them basically
are the episode transcribed into book form.
Whereas this is, this is much, much more than that.
Like you spend a lot of time with the lighthouse keepers at the
beginning before anything happens.
Like I started like feeling like I was watching that Willem Defoe
Robert Pattinson movie after a while and I was wondering when they
were going to start making out.
Like, I'm like, this is this is like a lot more than you get in
the TV show.
Maybe it's a lot more than you get in the TV episodes that you
that you really get a sense of throughout the novelisation that
every single character is on edge. there's a sort of paranoid
facet to the way that the novel works that is just, it's not there
in the...
I mean, it is, but in a much more limited way, in a way that the
novel, like Terrence is really allowed to develop stuff.
Like, you don't get any mention of an alien, like you see in the
TV story, like Leila's looking, and she sees the rooting sort of
squirrelling around.
There's none of the alien mentioned until like halfway through the
novelisation and you don't see a rooting until like 3 quarters of
the way through the novel.
So in the novelisation, like the suspense of it is drawn out much
more.
The narrative is allowed to breathe and develop in a way that the
TV story, you really have to get to the next cliffhanger.
But at the same time, Melvin, what he does in those
novelisations.
And I think I can acknowledge that maybe there are some lesser
ones of his where it is kind of he said and she said after the
dialogue.
But what I think of something like horrifying rock, and that kind
of the classic era of the classic novelisations, is that that
extra flesh that he adds never gets in the way of the overall pace
of the story.
So there are all these beautiful paragraphs which contain volumes
if you know what I mean, because it captures so much additional
character and backstory without saying, well, now we're going to
stop for 10 pages while we give the backstory of Vince.
Do you know what I mean?
which is what I think some of the, the, the McCoy era novelizers
start to do.
It starts to become a bit pretentious.
But it's interesting with my relationship with anomalizations
despite all that love and affection that I still have for them.
But I have them in a nostalgic way, for this is something that was
an era in time because it was the replacement for the show because
as you say, Nathan, it was our, it was our VHS tapes.
But the time we get into the 2nd half of the 80s, when I'm
starting to be in a position to buy enough videotapes to basically
record everything that is transmitted, it basically the
novelization's very quickly just fall away and I lose.
In fact, I've never even read some of those very last ones, like
the Curse of Fenrik or Battlefield or whatever.
I just didn't need to.
And so it's just a moment in time, which is just basically
irreplaceable and we can never, we can never bring it back.
You know, there's a moment in the broadcast show where Vince burns
the money and because he's the only person there, nothing is said
in the dialogue or anything like that about why he's doing that.
And because genre TV like this sometimes, uh, overexplains, like
it tends, I think, to hold our hands in a way that really
shouldn't be necessary, it's actually mentioned on the TARDIS
WIKEA page that this happens, but no explanation is given.
And then I know, I know.
And uh, that Terrence does give the explanation for it uh, in the
in the thing and it's quite, it's quite a detailed explanation
isn't it?
Like he imagines what might happen to him. if he's discovered and
he's thought to have robbed him and pushed him off the lamp
gallery.
So he does add things in, but it did strike me as actually quite a
good moment, a rare moment.
You know, I watch a lot of Doctor Who and a lot of Star Trek, and
it's kind of like we're constantly being told things that we just
saw.
And this was actually a nice moment where that wasn't possible.
And it clearly freaked out the Tardis Wikia editor.
The TARDIS WIKEA page is only interested in text, never some
text.
And I think this as a child.
I was confused as to why he was burning the money.
I have said, well, just pocket the £100 or the £50 or whatever it
was, but maybe that says more about me than it does about the
show.
Also, what we were talking about, about kind of them being a
moment in time, the novelisations.
I think horror fang rock is on the cusp of something because the
novelisations that are very fondly remembered by people of our age
um, are the ones from basically the start through to the end of
1978, and horror fang rock was released in mid-1978.
Something goes wrong after that and I think it's probably a
multitude of factors.
They lost Chris Keios and Jeff Cummins from the covers and they
were 2 of the interpretably best cover artists.
And then you got sort of a series of 2nd string people who didn't
do such great covers.
So you got Image of the Fandal and Underworld.
So they start to lose like that.
Yeah, and so they lose their distinctive identity, they're not
they're not attractive artwork in their own rights.
But also, you do start to lose other people.
You lose Malcolm Holk from the writing.
You've only really got Ian Marty, um, supplementing Terence Dix
and Sir Terence having to do them more quickly.
I think maybe after 5 or 6 years, Terence has lost a little bit of
interest in kind of crafting 10 or 12 stories a year.
But for whatever reason, the novelization's imperial phase ends
around here and overnight at the end of 1978, the quality of the
books just drops precipitously.
So the last couple of Terrence does before that are the Time
Warrior, Death to the Daleks, and the Android Invasion, all of
which are excellent retellings of the stories involved.
And then suddenly we get a bunch of season 14 and 15 stories that
are thin and basic, like robots of death, which you would think
would lend itself to a great Terence novelisation.
It's one of the slimmest, I think.
I think it comes in at 108 pages or something, appalling.
That's right The word counts on some of them, drops to like 22,000
words, whereas frequently, you know, the face of evil was 26,000.
So another 4000 words on a same length story.
Talons is more than 30,000 words.
And that's done, you know, 6 months before that was released.
There's something about that era in particular, and it's a reason
why.
I love having those mugs on my shelf from that era, is that from
basically the republishing of those 3 Hartnell books and the 1st
pert wee books, right up until the end of 1978, which is Death and
Alex Time Warrior, Horror Fang Rock, that is a certain period in
time where the quality matched what our expectations were and what
we hoped for.
And in some ways, it tracks the series itself.
You get people who've lost faith with the series at various parts
um, and you'd see it in the sweep of fandom.
There was a whole bunch of people who kind of think the show went
off the rails during the Graham Williams years.
There's more who think it went off the rails during season 22 or
season 23 or the McCoy era.
And I just think if there is an imperial phase for the
novelisations, it's absolutely that period with all of those great
covers and including Horror of Fang Rock.
And also, of course, 3 or 4 top selling titles were released in
1976.
Genesis the Daleks, the Web of Fear, Planets of the Daleks, which
remains possibly the most Doctor Who story of all time, and the
most Doctor Who novelisation of all time.
Well, that's all the time we have this week.
We'll be back next week to tell the story of how the vampire
mutation finally made it to our screens, as state of decay.
In the meantime, you can find us wherever you get your podcasts
and you can keep up with us on our website, 500-year diary.com
where you'll find our social media links, as well as links to all
of our other podcasts, including our other Doctor Who podcasts
Flight through Entirety, and the 2nd grade, and Bountiful Human
Empire.
Until next time, remember that though we hunted high and low and
hunted everywhere, of the 3 men's fate, we found no trace of any
kind in any place, but a door ajar, and an untouched meal, and an
over toppled chair.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
Good night.
It's green.
That was 500 year diary, starring Nathan Bottomley, Peter Griffith
Simon Moore, and Melvin Pena.
The theme was composed by Cameron Lamb.
This episode, Dark Doubles, was recorded on the 16th of November
2025 and released on the 7th of December.
Famously, for a long time, Horror of Fang Rock Part 4 was the only
episode of television whose entire guest cast was dead at the
end.
That is, until an uncharacteristically gruesome series finale for
Love Boat the Next Wave, first broadcast on UPN in May 1999 and
never repeated again.
What do you think?
Does anyone have anything that they want to add?
I think we could probably go out on the...
I did want to go out on the novelisation talk and I think this was
the best place for it.
I think we will talk about the 3 doctors, the 5 doctors
novelisation.
Can I just say something about the effects that you can you can or
just delete, you can drop in earlier or you can just delete it.
Could be the tag.
Well, I don't fancy paying tag.
Some people stop listening, yeah, whether they're close to musical
for them, the best parts.
Yeah, I plan.
We have touched on Peter, you did touch on how effective, say, the
Kramer key is in the lamp gallery area, but that's just one
example.
I think the effects as a rule, you know, we can quibble about the
ship.
Yes, okay, the ships, you know, a bit a bit dodgy at the end of
part one, but the effects, as a rule, all meat expectations, the
root in itself is so beautifully realised with the wispy white
bits around the jelly, the green jelly like stuff and after it's
dyed or after it's been, you know, out when it's dying and sliding
down the stairs. down the stairs.
Yeah, that is incredibly effective.
And I think it's just one of those examples where the reach, the
requirement of the effects does not exceed the ability of the
affects people to achieve them.
So there's 2 effects that I think are astoundingly good.
And one is the root and mothership appearing outside the window of
the lamp gallery where it looks like it's rolling flames.
It's incredible.
And it's replaced by something much, much more boring in the
special edition on the Blu-ray.
But you repeat yourself.
It's really good.
That's Ptology as a rule.
I actually like the hilariously cute puppet squid.
It's really funny.
But the other the other shot is the shot where the beam goes from
the lighthouse and blows up the and blows up the mothership, which
is just astoundingly good. like so much better.
Light years ahead of any of the other model shots.
It's shot from below.
The sky is really vivid.
The beam is unbelievably great.
You know, the sort of thing where we sort of half-assedly pain
something onto the videotape, sort of in post-production.
Here, it's absolutely brilliant and the explosion.
Like it's so vivid and so well done.
Like, I think those are absolutely brilliant.
And one of the reasons that that shot is brilliant.
Is it that it's Chris?
Yeah, yeah.
You don't have time to take in whatever flaws they may have been.
It's a quick cut to that.
The explosion, click cutaway, and you're just left with this
impression of an amazing effect, which it is.
It is beautiful.
And isn't it beautiful that the story begins at sunset or just
after sunset with the fading light.
It's only night. with the 1st light of dawn. as the root and
spaceship is arriving.
The dawn glow is appearing in the sky and it's so evolving.
It's beautiful.
And that is the thing I've wanted to like, it's been on my notes
and it was, it was one of the 1st things I noted down when I
started rewatching the story because I actually re-listened.
I listened to the audiobook a couple of weeks ago and then
listened to it again recently on a trip, but the one of the things
that really astonished me about this story in both the
novelisation and the TV, and I don't know why it was literally the
1st thing that popped into my mind, I kept thinking about
unities.
And I'm like, why do I, why do I keep thinking about this word?
And I had to go and like remind myself what it was.
Like, why was I thinking about this?
And it's it's the Aristotelian unities.
It's the unity of action, unity of time, and unity of place.
And that's exactly what you're just talking about, Simon.
It's like, it takes place in a single night.
And so you're never allowed to like get bored or get lost or get
weary.
Like it's all happening in such quick succession.
And the thing is, like, would it matter, right?
If the rooting was, was there and the, the sun had come up and it
had not worked.
Like, would that have like disrupted the plot?
But the thing is like it, you're exactly right.
Like that's, it's such a brilliant thing that it happens from sun
sundown to sun, uh, from sun up, sundown to sun up. incredible.
I think it's rare in Doctor Who as well, to have that unity.
Like, do you never really have a sense that there's night and day
in lots of Doctor Who stories.
A counter example, I think, is spearhead from space, where the
doctor leaves work overnight, and then the thing happens in the
morning afterwards.
The Happiness Patrol is in one night, but it is very rare.
I think that you get a sense of morning and night and day.
I think ghost lights where a whole heap of stuff is happening
while ace is asleep.
But it isn't very common in Doctor Who, and it's not really, they
don't really hang a lantern on it.
It's not a big deal in the script.
It is just a visual thing.
But it is, I think it is really good and it does actually tie
everything together really kind of properly.
And the other part about that is the, just thinking about, again
the set and the single set, the, of it being the lighthouse, is
that one of the things that is emphasised in both the novel and in
the TV story is the fact that this is an operational lighthouse
that there's a constant, like, the constant action, that they're
constantly, you're talking about Elila even ordering people
around.
They're always have to keep the boiler going because you have to
keep the generator going in order to have light because well, I
mean, because it's at night, but also to run the lighthouse
itself.
And the real, like, what was really shocking to me revisiting this
story now after a span of years is that there's no, like, Leila
and the doctor piss off at the end, like, there's no one to man
the light, like, who's going to know?
Again, no one's going to know until the next night.
And then, like, you just think about like the practicality of a
working lighthouse.
And that is something that is, that Terrence Dix never lets you
forget in the TV story, he never lets you forget it in the
novelisation, is that this has, the boiler must keep working.
The generator has to keep functioning.
The, the, um, the foghorn, yes, is so incredibly well used.
Like the 1st time it conceals Ben's scream.
Yes, beautiful segues.
There's a wonderful moment where Leila is left to pull the lever
that makes it go and she's so excited by it.
Like she's really smiling and great.
And then when we cut back to her, she's utterly bored with it
completely sick of it, which I think is absolutely superb.
But just the number of times that someone says something really
portentous and then we get the foghorn just punctuating it is so
good.
It's so well used.
It just creates such...
It also matters in the scene where someone, I think it's Leila who
tries to pull it and or Vince tries to pull it and it doesn't
work.
So you know that the boiler has stopped.
Like, it's that I just love that.
I love that.
It's the totality of Dulch 2 production.
You get a great director like Patty Russell, and she's not only
thinking in terms of visuals and the internal logic of which
characters are aware and how they're entering and leaving scenes
but she's also making sure that the model work is appropriate for
what you need on screen, and she's making sure that the soundscape
is always there, reminding you of when...
You can hear the birds and stuff when you're in the lamp, gallery
and the waves, you can hear the crashing words.
And in the boiler room, there's an echo.
Dick Mills was talking about this, about how important those kind
of sounds are to help you get a sense of place.
And that's the stuff that you start to, it starts to get lost, you
know, the lesser made stories.
Do you think Leely and her skins was quite proficient at keeping
the boy pressure up?
All among you.
I was really going to make a joke about...
I thought, actually, no, I don't want to do that.
I also like module simulator is another great. module simulator.
Or when Tom, when he goes, I'm sending a signal and Tom just
produces the module simulator and goes, you're not.
I'll be so happy that the confluence of the vent. meant that we
didn't get Dracula this season.
We actually got the horror thing right. so good.
I mean, that's so amazing.
And you know, just the fact that Patty Russell, who Tom was
already shitty with, for being a woman.
Yeah, yeah.
So make you wear the pyramids of...
And, you know, he's he's kind of off the boil because he's lost
Liz and, you know, he's horrible to Louise and, you know, he's
absolutely he's intolerable the entire time, like just awful.
And, you know, it's the story where Paddy Russell has to, you know
can't get him to behave where Louise has to take him aside and
tell him to pull his head in, um, where with the lighting, People
are going to swing a boom at his head, like not a boom, but a
thing at his head, like they were so angry with him.
What Blake said to me was that there was camera crews at either
end of the studio and Tom was being particularly difficult and she
just saw these cameras moved towards him at speed.
Let there's go pressure between it.
Yeah, like, everyone hated him, and what ends up happening is that
you just get the best performance of any actor in the role, the
doctor as a result, because he's, because he's got this Olympian
detachment, he's above everyone in a way and he's aware of what's
going on in a way that they can't be, and he's contemptuous of
everyone, and all of that stuff, I think, you know, ends up
informing his performance.
And, you know, you forget how scary Tom can be when you see him
being cuddly in sort of season 17.
He's really properly scary in this and it's because he's so, so
awful.
You know, just such a dreadful person.
Tom Baker and B. Yes, newly minted, yes.
Newly invested.
Criminally, criminally energy.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, I behave like that at work, I'm expecting.
Sometimes I do.