Doctor Who: Horror of Fang Rock

Horror of Fang Rock is the first serial of the 15th season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts on BBC1 from 3 to 24 September 1977.

On the way to show Brighton to Leela, the TARDIS lands on the island of Fang Rock off the south coast of England in the early 20th century. Noticing that the lighthouse isn’t functioning properly, the Fourth Doctor decides to investigate, as well as to ask for directions, as the TARDIS seems to have got ‘lost in the fog’.

Upon arrival at the lighthouse, and after introducing themselves, the Doctor discovers the dead body of one of the keepers, Ben. The other two keepers, old superstitious Reuben and the keen young Vince Hawkins, report that a light fell from the sky near the island. They also explain the electricity flow to the lamp on the lighthouse has become erratic and the Doctor deduces something is feeding on the flow.

Reuben does not help matters with his constant references to the mythical Beast of Fang Rock, which reputedly once terrorised the lighthouse. As the Doctor and Leela explore, something moves Ben’s body out of the lighthouse and onto the island, and they witness a curious electric crackling which seems to have killed fish nearby.

The loss of the electric light due to the unexplained draining of power from the generators causes a luxury yacht to crash onto Fang Rock. The four survivors are brought to the lighthouse: the bosun Harker; Colonel James Skinsale MP; the owner, Lord Palmerdale; and his highly strung secretary Adelaide Lessage. Over time it emerges Palmerdale has bought government secrets from Skinsale and was desperate to reach the stock exchange to make a killing – hence the reason the ship was travelling at such a pace.

Harker and the Doctor retrieve Ben’s body and the Time Lord deduces it has been used as an anatomy lesson for an alien life form. He determines that their best protection is to secure the lighthouse to keep the creature out. Reuben then disappears for a time and then reappears a changed man, which the others put down to shock.

Palmerdale is killed in the lamp room by a glowing alien presence on the outside of the lighthouse, and then Harker is killed in the boiler room. From the alien light emanating from Reuben, it is clear he has become possessed or transformed by the alien creature. The Doctor finds Harker’s body and then Reuben’s own – the latter cold for some time – which means the creature in Reuben’s form has chameleonic properties.

The creature then stalks and kills the others in the lighthouse. With its presence now revealed, the alien sheds its disguise, revealing it to be a Rutan, a green blob-like amphibious life form, whose scout ship crash-landed in the sea and is trying to summon its mother ship. With the Rutans losing a long war against their hereditary enemies, the Sontarans, they plan to turn the strategically-located Earth into a base, from which they can launch a counterattack.

However, once the Sontarans find the planet, they will certainly bombard Earth with photonic missiles, taking countless human lives in the process. The Doctor uses a flashbomb to disorient the Rutan, forcing it to retreat to the boiler room. The Doctor and Skinsale retrieve diamonds from Palmerdale’s body belt to use in modifying the lighthouse beacon, but Skinsale is killed by the Rutan in the process. The Doctor then modifies a flare mortar to destroy the alien, and then uses the diamonds as a focus for the electric lighthouse beam to convert it into a high-energy laser, with which he destroys the Rutan mothership.

Disobeying the Doctor, Leela watches the laser destroy the ship and is momentarily blinded, and as a side effect, the blinding flash turns Leela’s eyes from brown to blue. The Doctor quotes Wilfrid Wilson Gibson’s poem Flannan Isle as they leave.

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To view the list of other Doctor Who serials, please click this link

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