One of my personal favorite Tom Baker stories, Image of the Fendahl, is coming to DVD in the UK this April.
Co-starring Louise Jameson as Leela, this story was classic Doctor Who’s most direct stab at outright horror, featuring the Fendahl, an ancient monster from Timelord myth which ate life itself.
One of the things that made this story so scary for me as a child was that it was one of the few times where we actually see the Doctor truly afraid, as encountering the Fendahl plays on his childhood fears from the stories he heard of them when he was young.
Somewhat like the Daemons and the Exxilon from the third Doctor era, the Fendahl were supposed to have influenced the development of early humankind, but in this case humans were not only influenced at a cultural level, but the course of our evolution itself as the Fendahl used us to recreate itself after its near-destruction ages ago by the Timelords.
The story has an interesting link to the modern series in that one of the characters, Martha Tyler, has psychic abilities which she developed as a side-effect of growing up near a “time fissure”, which appears to have similar properties to the rift in Cardiff which led to Gwyneth’s psychic abilities in the series 1 story The Unquiet Dead.
The DVD features extras including commentary from actors Tom Baker, Louise Jameson, Wanda Ventham and Edward Arthur, a making of documentary, as well as deleted scenes. The release date for the United States and Canada has not yet been announced, but I know I’ll be buying it as soon as it’s available over here.
