Doctor Who: Horror of Fang Rock

But for this particular story, you need not know that Doctor Who is a Time Lord who travels the cosmos in a spacecraft called the TARDIS, an interplanetary time machine that looks like a police call box, or that Tom Baker, who portrays him here, is the fourth and perhaps most popular incarnation of the good Doctor.

Horror of Fang Rock is as much ghost story as science fiction. The TARDIS has deposited the vacation-bound Doctor and his companion, Leela, on Fang Rock ("You told me I would like Brighton," an unimpressed Leela remarks about the desolate surroundings), just after a strange light was witnessed plummeting from the sky into the sea. A mysterious fog envelopes the lighthouse, and one of its inhabitants is mysteriously killed. When a ship runs aground, its passengers take refuge in the lighthouse and find themselves stalked as well. Is it the mythical Beast of Fang Rock or, as the Doctor suspects, an alien menace?

The cheesy mid-1970s-vintage special effects are part of this show's charm. Like Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons, what Doctor Who lacks in production values, it more than makes up for in verbal ingenuity. "Are you in charge?" someone asks the Doctor. "No," he responds, "but I'm full of ideas." --Donald Liebenson

Clearly special effects were never Dr. Who's strong point and they certainly are not here in this episode as well but who needs them when a story is so well-written and as wonderfully acted as this episode is? I certainly plan on buying this dvd even though I already own the VHS copy.


One of my all-time favourite Who stories   December 5, 2003
I can remember watching this story very young actually, and it's one of the few that I can watch today and remember seeing back then (the rest seem to have gotten lost in a fog of memory). Besides that, it's one of my favourites because it's a great story during one of the best times in Doctor Who...Tom Baker as the Doctor and Louise Jameson as Leela, his companion.
Just the fact that the entire story takes place in a lighthouse was a stroke of brilliance. It's a perfect setting for this horror-laced story, brimming with tension and suspense a-plenty. The entire cast gives great performances and there are some classic Tom Baker moments: The survivors or a ruined ship take refuge and start to bicker amongst one another, and the Doctor is just sitting there amidst it, until he suddenly interrupts: "Just a moment! We haven't been introduced!" and then slumps back in his chair. Additionally, later on in the story, he returns to the survivors and says, in his usual maniacal fashion, "Gentlemen, this lighthouse is under attack and by morning we might all be dead. Now, who's interested?" Classic stuff, to be sure. Not to mention we finally see the nemeses of the Sontarans, the Rutans.
I would heavily advise this story to anybody looking for a primer in not only the Tom Baker era of Doctor Who, but Doctor Who in general. I've shown this as an introduction to several friends who were unfamiliar with the show and they've become fans as a result, so I suppose I must have chosen wisely! LOL


An Interesting Morality Tale   November 8, 2003
Tom Baker was blessed with some of the best Dr. Who scripts and this one, for me, remains one of the best and one of the most intriguing. Besides being a variation on 10 Little Indians as other reviwers have mentioned, the story is also an intriguing morality play. All the victims were guility of a kind of deadly sin. The lighthouse was populated people guilty of greed, ignorance, intolerance, etc. which ultimately costs those people their lives.

I can't think of another story that did similar.


Hitchcock-style suspence at its best.   June 30, 2003
The Doctor and Leela arrive at a lighthouse which, unknown to the keepers, has already received a visitor. Before long, a ship lost in the fog runs aground on the rocks and its survivors are marooned on the island. A creature with electrical powers is stalking the shadows. And, fittingly, it's at the dawn of the twentieth century, an era when there was fear concerning the invention of electricity. All in all, this is one of the most tense and suspenceful stories in the show's history. The isolated lighthouse, enshrouded in both legend and in fog, makes an ideal setting. The characters are all very well-thought-out, the dialogue is first-rate, the Doctor and Leela are just as they should be. Tom Baker is at his best here, his character shifting perfectly between brooding stranger and rolling-eyed madman. There is barely a dull moment.


Everything You Could Want from Doctor Who   March 15, 2003
In one of Tom Baker's best performances as the Doctor, Horror of Fang Rock has nearly everything a fan of the series could want: snappy dialog between the Doctor and his quasi-reformed savage companion, Leela; a menacing and thoroughly cheesily-done up enemy; a well-written and executed story lacking silly tangents; and a piece that fits well within the overall Dr. Who universe.

In this episode, the Doctor's usual poor navigation skills land the Tardis not in Brighton for a holiday but upon an isolated lighthouse isle in the middle of a supernatural fog--just in time to witness a shipreck and the mysterious deaths of various members of the lighthouse crew and crash survivors.

The Doctor soon finds out that he culprit is a Rutan, the enemy of the big-headed Sontarans but no friend to humans or timelords (how a mass of glowing green jelly ever built a tremendous space fleet is beyond my comprehension, but I guess a monster with a head and arms wouldn't be scary enough). Leela's antics are hillarious as she plays the role of the savage before Victorian Brits quite well, offering to wear men's clothes while hers dry, holding a woman at knifepoint, and general skulking about and waspishness.

The story fits well within the episodic length without diverging onto silly tangents (see perhaps the Stones of Blood from the Key to Time series for a perfect example of said failing) amd encapsulates a rather entertaining story. Certainly one of the best Leela episodes and one of the better during Tom's tenure as well.

Trivia note: Louise Jameson (Leela's) ceasing to wear colored contact lenses is explained away by her eyes being temporarily blinded by intense laser light--a quick if painful form of cosmetic surgery!