Review: Doctor Who Classic: The Curse of Fenric

Fenric lives!

Doctor Who - Season 26, Story Three - The Curse of Fenric. Written 17/2/12.

It's the Holidays, and as a change from the norm, this week's Classic Who Review is of a Seventh Doctor story, The Curse of Fenric. I've always viewed the McCoy era with a great deal of apprehension, steming mainly from the way that Andrew Cartmel's influence changed the show as it headed towards a style more fitting of the late Eighties/early Nineties. And Mel. Eugh.
     One of Who's greatest tragedies, if one ignores the turmoil that struck the rest of the Eighties, was how much the show was improving right at the end. Andrew Cartmel may have been working on a plot to make The Doctor into a god, but his influence was having a profound effect of the show and the final season in 1989 is often considered the best of the Eighties. The Curse of Fenric comes right in the centre of three stellar stories focussing on Seven's companion Ace, and it is everything Who ought to be - a runaround with witty dialogue that works on both a basic level and on a greater metaphorical one. It's daunting.
     The story follows The Doctor and Ace in 1943 at an Army Camp in Northumbria. Russian spies have arrived just in time for creatures known as Haemovores to reawaken in the oceans, marking the return of the grand evil Fenric. While army-representative Commander Millington wants to use the Enigma machine to trap the Russians after the war is over, scientist Dr. Judson uses the machine to play a strange Norse code. The code triggers the Heamovores' rise in numbers, and Fenric - whom The Doctor trapped away hundreds of years ago - is able to return once more. The Doctor exercises his grand plan, and manages to trap Fenric once more - but not before telling Ace about his manipulation of her life.

Ace's character is developed significantly.

     This story shows one of the key features of the Seventh Doctor that really highlights Cartmel's grand plan. We find out the reasoning behind The Doctor's acceptance of Ace as a companion back in the Season 24 story Dragonfire; she is a Wolf of Fenric, one of the descendants of Fenric's gaolers in the Viking era. This Doctor is manipulative and scheming, and is taking up plans he set in motion during his first incarnation (as in Remembrance of the Daleks in Season 25).
     Ace is also a key part of this story and this unintentional trilogy of stories at the end of the series run (Ghost Light, The Curse of Fenric and Survival). The way the character is written exposes how Ace has had so much development in her relatively short tenure; she starts as an inexperienced girl stranded in space and eventually becomes a grown woman, able to exploit both her intelligence and her sexuality. There's a scene where Ace needs to distract a guard, and does so by using this bizzare method of flirting that's both tacky and completely mesmerising.
     The Haemovores, marine-like vampires from Earth's future, are very well produced and at times are quite chilling. They would be copied by Toby Whithouse in 2010, for The Vampires of Venice. However, the vampires and their fear of faith don't quite pay justice to the story's wide array of themes. On one hand the story examines Nordic beliefs about evil and the afterlife, and on the other it dives straight into Cold War politics, an issue that was still potent even as the Soviet Union began its slow collapse. 

Better than Being Human...

     The Curse of Fenric's themology and character work is stunning. In comparison to the Saward era, it blows it out of the water. Despite my love for that period of Doctor Who, Fenric has convinced me that I was very wrong to dismiss this era of the show, and it remains a classic example of how good Doctor Who can be at any point in its history. I wholeheartedly reccomend that you check it out, no matter what era of Who you like.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: We resume our Five marathon with Warriors of the Deep.