It was such a stroke of genius to make the Sontarans' mortal enemy these slow-moving little blobs. The Rutans' ruthless intelligence and infiltrating techniques counter the Sontarans' brusque warmongering perfectly. You can't stop one and can't even find the other. They're evenly matched. It's why Reuben the Rutan is unironically one of my favourite DW villains...that and Colin Douglas' creepy smile before he goes in for the kill. We're overdue for a Sontaran-Rutan war onscreen -and- another story where the entire guest cast gets killed off.
The Doctor Who novels have done a good job of further establishing what it is that makes the Rutans such a threat. They generally move around by wrapping their tentacles around them and quickly rolling everywhere like a large beach ball. The argument could be made here that Reuben was moving so slow in this story because, in his natural form, he was having to climb up a set of stairs, and he was scaling up and down a sheer wall, not its usual mode of transport. They are also essentially amoebas, and can reproduce at will at a very fast rate. One can quickly become two, with the resulting Rutan having all the memories of its progenitor, two can become four, four becomes eight, and so on.
Loise Jameson had some colored contacts that were driving her crazy, so the whole thing about "going blind" was done as a way to explain why her eyes changed color.
What I love about Leila is while yes she's the violent companion, her characterisation doesn't stop there, she's just brimming with personality beyond that. She's full of wit and intelligence too, she might not be educated, but she is clever which often allows for her to provide insight the doctor couldn't. She just great and oddly adorable for a homicidal maniac.
Terrance Dicks, who wrote this one, didn't want to set a story in a lighthouse, and was "dragged kicking and screaming" into it by script editor Robert Holmes. This was Holmes' revenge for Dicks previously dragging him kicking and screaming into writing a story set in the middle ages: The Time Warrior, which introduced the Sontarans. And in a great bit of irony, the story that is revenge for the Sontarans' debut story introduces their mortal enemies, the Rutans. The Doctor's poem at the end is "The Ballad of Flannan Isle", which is about a real lighthouse where three keepers disappeared, the events which inspired this story.
You're not awful, Leela is refreshing, a change from the majority of companions who come from contemporary England. Leela's change of eye color isn't just a weird little throwaway detail incidentally. During her first season Louise Jameson wore tinted contact lenses because the production team (for whatever reason) wanted the character of Leela to have brown eyes, but Louise found them very uncomfortable to wear and asked if she could stop, hence the explanation for why she's blue eyed going forward.
(2) Speaking of the Doctor, he’s in an incredibly dark and abrasive mood throughout this story. I’ve already said in previous comments that I think Pyramids of Mars and The Seeds of Doom are the stories the Doctor has felt most alien in the hands of Tom Baker, but after watching this again, I would now opt for his performance here instead. I love how the Doctor is almost totally separate from all the human subplots and he’s only really involved with the main, alien plot, which shows that he’s above all our petty human concerns and doesn’t think it’s worth his time to get entangled in any of that stuff. He dutifully tries to save all the humans from the Rutan, but that’s only out of a moral obligation. He has no interest in trying to save the humans from themselves. The Doctor’s reactions to their deaths speaks volumes. Vince aside, he doesn’t shed any tears once the worst happens to them because he’s acutely aware that they represent the worst of humanity and were all responsible for their own deaths He’s aware of the bigger picture and knows his main concern is saving the entire world, not a bunch of selfish humans. The fourth Doctor is the closest any Doctor has come to feeling like a true alien, his nearest and only competition in this respect is the seventh Doctor. In some ways he’s just as alien as the Rutan. The Rutan isn’t interested in any of the worries and petty foibles of the humans either. Its sole interest in the Earth is as a way to get the upper hand in the eternal war with the Sontarans and is casually willing to destroy our planet and kill us all as collateral damage even though we have no stake in the war one way or the other. Perhaps the scene that best shows the parallels between the Rutan and the Doctor is that chat they have on the staircase in part four. A Rutan and a Time Lord on a planet foreign to both of them, have a confrontation and seem completely unconcerned with the hysterical humans around them. It’s interesting how the Doctor probes and mocks the Rutan to try and provoke and get a reaction out of it, because it makes it seem as if this entire affair has been a grand game to him, just as it has been to the Rutan. It’s also interesting how cautious the Doctor is here, wanting to keep everyone in the dark as to the true danger they’re in for as long as possible, but that only puts them in further peril. All this leads to one of the best cliffhangers ever at the end of part three, when the Doctor makes the mistake of looking for Reuben outside the lighthouse, where he lies dead, rather than inside, and realises he’s locked the monster in with them instead. An incredible way to raise the stakes going into the final episode. I love the Doctor in this story. I think these four episodes are a fascinating example of how to write the lead character of your show. I also think it's important to note that we’re shown the POV of the Rutan several times and see the lighthouse through its eyes. This means that we’re aware and know more about the danger than the characters in the story. This very effectively increases the level of tension in several moments of the story and allows a moment like the part three cliffhanger to happen and work so well because the audience is already aware of the Rutans’ ability to shapeshift before the Doctor. It’s simple writing, but incredibly hard to pull off well in practice. I’m also really glad that this story finally introduces us to the Sontarans’ mortal enemies, the Rutans, after being mentioned in both the previous Sontaran stories we’ve had so far. I think the one Rutan we have in this story makes for a really interesting foe and considering its efficiency and strategic brilliance that enabled it to eliminate all the humans one by one, I can totally believe these creatures are worthy adversaries for the Sontarans. It’s just a shame the on-screen realisation ends up being a big green blob, which doesn’t do justice to how interesting the Rutan is as a monster, but at least they effectively conceal how rubbish their true form looks by either keeping it hidden and in the shadows for most of the story or have it shapeshift. After the grand extravagance of The Talons of Weng Chiang, this is on the other end of the spectrum. This is a story with very little in the way of flashiness. To oversimplify it, Horror of Fang Rock is a standard base under siege story that introduces a bunch of characters and kills them all off one by one by a mostly unseen menace to gradually increase the jeopardy and sense of uncertainty. It’s Doctor Who stripped back to its basics, but the execution of that basic formula is what makes it so good. If anyone knew how to write a story like that, it would be the legendary Terrance Dicks. The former longtime script editor throughout the third Doctor’s era (he script edited most of Troughton’s last season too and even co-wrote The War Games with Malcolm Hulke) and he makes a very successful and triumphant return to the show after a couple of years away. It’s a shame that he won’t be sticking around as a regular writer after this and won’t be back to write another story for a few seasons. I do find it interesting that the story that first made mention of the Rutans was The Time Warrior, when Terrance Dicks was script editor and Robert Holmes was the writer, and here there’s a total role reversal. Just shows how Doctor Who is constantly changing and evolving. Horror of Fang Rock is also one of the few stories where just this once, everyone dies! Aside from the Doctor and companion/s of course. It’s one of the last hurrahs for the gothic horror tone that had become the norm over the previous three seasons too, before the show moves towards a much more lighthearted and comedic tone after Robert Holmes leaves as script editor later in the season. Overall, Horror of Fang Rock is excellent and it knows exactly the story it wants to tell and executes it with brilliant efficiency.
Louise Jameson (Leela) has praised the performance of the actress who played Adelaide. Jameson said it's very difficult to sustain a performance at that level of hysteria over an extended time. Annette Woollett certainly managed that. I don't think I've ever been so pleased to see someone slapped. I love this story. Classic Who reactions on this channel are an essential part of my Saturday here in Melbourne.
I was at a convention , over 10 years ago now, where Adelaide's demise was met with a standing ovation. As has been mentioned all the incidental characters die.This is the first time that this has happened in Classic Who but i'm not going to tell you if it is the last.
One of my all-time favorite stories. Well written, directed and acted with one of the series' best cliffhangers when the Doctor realizes he's made a big mistake.
(1) Horror of Fang Rock is a superb, tense story and it’s yet another fan favourite, that’s three in a row now! The last time this happened was way back with The War Games, Spearhead from Space and The Silurians coming one after the other. I love the lighthouse setting and how tight and small all the sets are and the use of fog and the dark, moody lighting. It all comes together to make for an extremely claustrophobic and creepy atmosphere that permeates this whole story. Characters like Reuben are a big part of creating that atmosphere too. Right from the start he’s established as a superstitious old timer and accuses the Doctor and Leela of being foreign spies and suggests the possibility of vengeful ghosts or the return of a legendary sea monster that supposedly left another crew all dead. These are all simply misdirections because it’s obvious from the beginning none of what Reuben is saying can be true and that he's just paranoid, but it still contributes massively to this story’s cloud of unease and menace. Most of the characters in this story have their own distinct personalities and unique way of reacting to the situation they’ve found themselves in and I love how they’re utilised within the plot. They’re all selfish to varying degrees and have their own motivations, which leads them to act in ways that drive the plot forward and ultimately cause their own deaths. Just to give some examples, at the start of the story, Ben and Rueben are debating the merits of electricity vs oil with Rueben coming down heavily against electricity. Ben is so steadfast in his belief that electricity is superior, he nonchalantly goes down to fix the power once it starts to go wrong, which ultimately gets him killed. I’ve already mentioned that Reuben is an old man stuck in his ways and his refusal to adapt to modernity makes his fate of not only being killed, but to be quite literally replaced by that same electricity so darkly ironic. As I've already mentioned though, Ben and Reuben are far from the only characters like this. There's also Palmerdale and Skinsale, whose squabble led to Skinsale wrecking the telegraph to protect his honour, cutting the lighthouse off from the outside world and leaving them all even more isolated than they already were. Their selfishness had a direct impact on everyone else and ultimately became the primary reason for not only both of their deaths, but arguably every other human character. Palmerdale tried to make an underhanded, secret deal with Vince (perhaps the only good-hearted human character in this whole story) and because of his fear of getting caught in the act, he went to the edge of the lighthouse and gave the Rutan the chance to get him. As for Skinsale, his greed forced him to stop and try to retrieve the diamonds from the floor instead of doing the sensible thing and escaping with his life, which gave the Rutan the perfect opportunity to kill him. Some people think the Palmerdale/Skinsale subplot is strange, unnecessary and feels shoehorned into in a story like this, but, along with Ben and Reuben (and a few other characters I haven't mentioned), their uncomfortably ironic fates say so much about their characters and make the story more than just a simple runaround with a monster of the week. The juxtaposition between Palmerdale/Skinsale's subplot and the main plot is the point. It highlights how shortsighted and clueless the humans are to deal with a threat like the Rutans. It ties into perhaps the main theme of this story, which is human pettiness and our inability to put our personal concerns to one side and focus on the bigger picture. Their refusal to listen to the Doctor and continuing to squabble among themselves, instead of focusing on the imminent threat and defend themselves lead to all their deaths. This story is famous for being one where all the characters die besides our leads, but there's a very good reason for that within the narrative. Of course, all the characters dying one by one helps to make the threat more palpable and increase the sense of tension and danger, but there's more to it than that. Horror of Fang Rock is not a pointless massacre, it’s a commentary on human weaknesses, while also of course being a great base under siege and monster story. I also love how the meek and cowardly character of Adelaide contrasts with Leela’s bravery and level headedness and is used to highlight her best attributes. It’s interesting that Adelaide, a woman who compared to Leela comes from a much more advanced age, still believes in old superstitions and relies on an astrologer. Leela’s response to that is to say she too used to believe in that stuff, but the Doctor has shown her a better way and to believe in science. This shows how far she’s come and the influence the Doctor has on those who travel with him. I love how innocent and humble she comes across too. There’s no arrogance or a sense that Leela thinks she’s better than Adelaide because of this. To her it’s just a simple truth of life that she now tries to live by. The fact that it’s Leela that gives the Doctor the idea to turn the lighthouse into a giant laser beam is perfect and is also a brilliant and ingenious way to make use of the location of your story. Leela still has much to learn though, as demonstrated by her gleefully celebrating the death of the Rutan, which is very clearly abhorrent to the Doctor. She’s such an interesting and layered character.
Ben's dead! And so is everyone else. I'm enjoying how much you're into Leela so far. :) Her outfit from this story would be a nice casual cosplay (sweater, belt, pants, boot with a knife holster).
I believe Terrence Dicks said he designed the Rutans for this story to be the complete opposite of the Sontarans. Since they were a clone race and all look alike, he made the Rutan amorphous blobs who could shape shift into any form. Sontarans are masters of weaponry while Rutans have inborn killing abilities. With this being there only television appearance, I don't think I've ever seen or heard a story where the 2 races appeared together until the 6th Doctor's LOST STORIES audio: The First Sontarans.
Terrance Dicks who wrote the script originally wanted to have Harker and Adelaide escape but the script editor changed it to have everyone die so the Doctor could quote Wilfrid Gibson's poem "Flannan Isle" at the end as a kind of epitaph. Although I'm with you: if anyone had survived it should have been Vince.
The British class system shows its colours here. And maybe everywhere. Isolated by events out of their control, the first instinct is self-preservation. And I feel like we've had a lot of that recently.
Great story made better by having the villain be a Rutan. It expands the lore and establishes a strong presence in continuity moving foreward. A perfect world builder. The cliffhanger for episode 3 is brilliantly eerie and the ending shot of the Doctor reciting poetry over a shot of the lighthouse, knowing it's abandoned with nothing but corpses creates a bleak ghost like tone. NEXT EPISODE oh just you wait....
To put things into perspective, that £100 that Palmerdale was so willing to bribe poor Vince with would be near enough equivalent to over £15,000 today. No wonder Vince was bricking it over someone thinking he'd killed Palmerdale over it. Must have torn out his soul to burn it.
The first time I heard of the Rutans was when they released Doctor Who The Adventure Games: The Gunpowder Plot, where we finally get to see Sontarans fightings Rutans and vice versa and the redesign they gave the Rutans was brilliant
Of all of the "Base Under Siege" type stories this is the best. A brilliant claustrophobic setting and a fantastic cast of characters, both sympathetic and unsympathetic. I would class it alongside the Masque of Mandragora as a minor classic of the Baker era. A story that really bears up to repeat viewings.
Something subtle here and one of the reasons why I love the Doctors relationship with Leela is when he told her the Colonel died when honor. Because the truth of the matter is…he didn’t. He was greedy and going after the diamonds. But he didn’t want Leela to have that memory of him…so he gave him honors.
The poem at the end is about a famous disappearance of some lighthouse keepers and the empty lighthouse that was left behind. As a kid I thought it was about The Mary Celeste, which would have tied it to another Doctor Who story. Maybe that's why it made sense to me. lol
@@therealpbristow Yes, that's the one. I found out the name of it back in the late 80s through the old Doctor Who Fan Club Of America. Haven't read it in years.
@@ooklathemokfan I got lucky: It showed up one day as a poem to study in English class. Or maybe it was on the page facing the one we had to study...? I remember thinking "OMG, THAT'S IT!!!", and then "But it's not called '*The Ballad Of* Flannan Isle', just 'Flannan Isle' ... OMG, did the Doctor *get it wrong*?!?". =:oD That would have been round about 1979/1980, just a couple of years after the story aired. I'd recorded the sound track from the original transmission in September 1977 (though I think I missed part one, because of being hesitant about spending hard-earned pocket-money on cassettes... silly boy!). It instantly become of my favourites to listen to, and I used to quote that little snatch of poem at the end to people to other kids at school whenever I wanted to sound literate and mysterious. ( I was only 12! =:o} )
I do say the Rutans been shape changing creatures, were awesome villains and also it is nice to see the arch-enemies of the Sontarans appear onscreen the Rutans been jellyfish in shape are so awesome.
I always remember this story for two reasons, and both of them occurred at the same viewing. I was watching this story with several friends, and we had reach the point where we had all gotten so extremely annoyed with that one lady in the lighthouse that we actually clapped and cheered when Ruben killed her. The other was when they were frantically searching for the diamonds, and when they were found, one of my friends quipped, "Where else would you hide diamonds, but with the family jewels!" We all busted out laughing when he said that! The Doctor Who novels have done a good job of further establishing what it is that makes the Rutans such a threat. They generally move around by wrapping their tentacles around them and quickly rolling everywhere like a large beach ball. The argument could be made here that Reuben was moving so slow in this story because, in his natural form, he was having to climb up a set of stairs, and he was scaling up and down a sheer wall, not its usual mode of transport. They are also essentially amoebas, and can reproduce at will at a very fast rate. One can quickly become two, with the resulting Rutan having all the memories of its progenitor, two can become four, four becomes eight, and so on.
'Shakedown' is an hour long Sontarans Vs a Rutan spin off, low budget but starring Carol Ann Ford (Susan) and Sophie Aldred (Ace), 2 actors from Blake's 7 and featuring Michael Wisher (Original Davros). It's only about an hour long and the Sontarans look a little... different, but when that happens eg Alien/Aliens the monster looks different, for copyright and merchandise rights reasons. We've had grey and Brown looking Sontarans, these are very yellow. Personally I like it. Maybe worth a watch? :)
Yeah, there really needs to be a Sontarans vs Rutans episode. You'd think it would've happened at some point since the Sontarans were introduced (and Rutans mentioned) in 1973, but no... although Doctor Who: The Adventure Games did that with The Gunpowder Plot (featuring the Doctor, Amy, Rory, and Guy Fawkes). A bit slow-paced, but the Doctor's solution at the end is brilliant.
@@julianblake3140 They brought them back in one new who novel. It had the Sontarans and Rutans fighting each other on a human colony with the tenth doctor in the middle. I can't remember what else happens in the book I haven't read it in awhile.
As a side effect of the blinding flash Leela's eyes turn from brown to blue..... which was done as Leela hated wearing the brown contact lenses.....and by doing this Louise Jamison agreed to play Leela for another series (season).
The tension between Baker & Jameson came to a head during the filming of this story. Tom felt that the Leela character was too violent and he kept stepping on her lines and entrances during filming and lead to multiple takes (Baker would skip ahead and try to write Leela out of the scene on the fly). There was a confrontation between the two and things got noticeably better after Fang Rock. Louise is not the only actress who ran afoul of Tom, but things did improve.
@@AtariDad I think Louise is one of the few from that era still alive. Although you are right...she speaks very fondly of him during the interviews and vice versa. I am glad they managed to work things out.
He adored Lis Sladen and didn't think they needed to replace her. He suggested the Doctor either have no companion, or have a sentient alien cabbage perched on his shoulder that he would talk to. He thought kids related to Sarah (and Lis) and wouldn't do to a murderous savage.
Sesska: "I just don't want anything to happen to Vince" Everyone who knows the story: . . . "crickets" The Rutan are an alien I've been wanting to see return in NuWho for years! I'd love to see how it would be rendered now. Hmm, who's coming next story?
I remember catching the ending of episode 3 after school on the Horror Channel nearly 10 years ago and I remember the 'oh no' and 'get her out of here.' You can tell the Doctor and the audience were getting really sick of the character.
Couple of fun facts for this one, the Rutans were first mentioned in a conversation between Jon Pertwee's Doctor and Lynx in The Time Warrior, but this is the first time they are actually seen. Another is that up to this story Louise Jameson was made to wear red contact lenses to give a brown look, as they were under the impression the "Leela" meant 'dark-eyed beauty', these lenses were so uncomfortable for her that they wrote in the explosion causing the pigment dispersal so that she could stop wearing them.
Love this story, so dark everybody dies haha. Finally we see a rutan! The race that has always been at war with the sontarans, first mentioned by the third doctor in the time warrior and then by the 10th doctor in series 4. They rele need to come back, preferably in a story with the sontarans
Vince was adorable. Ben was creepy....that smile. Adelaide is HILARIOUSLY over the top. (slap) we still laugh about this plot/story to this day. One of our favorites.
Unfortunately we won't be seeing the Rutans again in the series but they have appeared in novels, comics, audio and a live action spin off Shakedown: Return of the Sontarans.
Louise gets to revert to her natural (and actually very attractive) blue eye colouring, after months of wearing purple contact lenses. The sacrifices people make...
Don't feel bad or guilty about it that's why we love Leela 😊 it was a nice refresher and i really wish we had more companions like Leela in NuWho but that would never happen in the current climate we live in today as RTD is far too politically correct and refuses to give us alien companions or other century companions.
Terrance dicks juxtaposition of Adelaide and Leela in this story is a master stroke. Leela finally snapping and hauling off and slapping Adelaide for being useless and hysterical will never get old to me.
This is superb. A wonderful, claustrophobic bit of gothic horror. It’s bleak, the setting is bleak, everyone else dies, Leela is delightfully savage (her gloating over the dying Rutan is epic). It’s also highly class conscious. You can tell its sympathies are with the working class Vince and Harker. Great stuff 10/10 from me. Unfortunately the great run of gothic horror stories and brilliantly designed and plotted stories can’t continue….. can it?
I just adore this story. I can find Classic Who hard to get through, but this was one of those stories where I had a lot of fun and watched it all in one go. Not perfect but very enjoyable.
Disappointingness of not actually seeing the Sontarans is because it has now gone for 2 whole seasons, this the twelfth story! without any recurring creatures. We have had the Master once but not any of the encountered other species. Hinchcliffe planned and commissioned this sorry, that's why it's still a violent one, but it's the first produced after he left. Of interest that after 12 stories, we return to one that at least mentions a recurring alien.
Another classic ‘Hinchcliffe/Holmes Horror’ story (despite the fact Phillip Hinchcliffe had left by this stage. And…definitely some good companions that got away here…Lord Skinsale and Adelaide 😂. Oh, and Vince too
10:49 I first watched this story with a group of around twenty friends. The Rutan got the loudest cheering and applause when it killed Adelaide - I'm not sure that was the reaction that the writers were hoping for. ^.^
Talons of weing chiang and horror of fang rock two back to back classic masterpieces. This season starts of with a bang then falls on its face with the invasion of time.
This is the first and so far only appearance of the rutans in the main series there is a Big Finish audio where the Sontarans and the rutans do battle but i can't remember from the top of my head what the name of that audio is.
Don't worry you'll get over Vince quite quickly as side characters often tend to be forgotten about and move on to other side characters in next stories. I'm glad for once we have an episode where no one survives except the main characters because that's realistic and not everyone can get out so lucky it's bad don't get me wrong it's bad for the people who did die in this but story wise it's a refresher. I have to say i did not feel any remorse for Adelaide what so ever she was really annoying, a spoilt princess and that constant screaming.
Wow… looks like you just got caught up with my viewing marathon… i just watched this over the weekend, sadly I just overtook you, so now we won’t be in sync… can’t wait til you reach season 20!!!
Doctor's future incarnations often got flak for seeming a bit too cold, callous, or unconcerned when humans couldn't be saved, and part o' me wonders how much of that might be due to like.. "generational memory" of these 3 annoying NPCs. But the reason to watch them is the potential threat they pose to the survival of others. (Also: Leela is the BEST.)
That was before the reveal that its' a shapeshifter, though. With the information the viewer has at that point, the Rutan's blob form could've been a separate entity that was just somehow puppeteering Reuben remotely.
It was such a stroke of genius to make the Sontarans' mortal enemy these slow-moving little blobs. The Rutans' ruthless intelligence and infiltrating techniques counter the Sontarans' brusque warmongering perfectly. You can't stop one and can't even find the other. They're evenly matched.
It's why Reuben the Rutan is unironically one of my favourite DW villains...that and Colin Douglas' creepy smile before he goes in for the kill. We're overdue for a Sontaran-Rutan war onscreen -and- another story where the entire guest cast gets killed off.
The Doctor Who novels have done a good job of further establishing what it is that makes the Rutans such a threat. They generally move around by wrapping their tentacles around them and quickly rolling everywhere like a large beach ball. The argument could be made here that Reuben was moving so slow in this story because, in his natural form, he was having to climb up a set of stairs, and he was scaling up and down a sheer wall, not its usual mode of transport. They are also essentially amoebas, and can reproduce at will at a very fast rate. One can quickly become two, with the resulting Rutan having all the memories of its progenitor, two can become four, four becomes eight, and so on.
Maybe. Very uninspired creation compared to the Sontarans though.
Loise Jameson had some colored contacts that were driving her crazy, so the whole thing about "going blind" was done as a way to explain why her eyes changed color.
And the Big Finish Gallifrey range picks up this throwaway line and makes it a whole character arc for Leela!
Just this once sesskaysay everyone dies!
And then they were none (except the Savage and her Scarf God)
What I love about Leila is while yes she's the violent companion, her characterisation doesn't stop there, she's just brimming with personality beyond that. She's full of wit and intelligence too, she might not be educated, but she is clever which often allows for her to provide insight the doctor couldn't. She just great and oddly adorable for a homicidal maniac.
Terrance Dicks, who wrote this one, didn't want to set a story in a lighthouse, and was "dragged kicking and screaming" into it by script editor Robert Holmes. This was Holmes' revenge for Dicks previously dragging him kicking and screaming into writing a story set in the middle ages: The Time Warrior, which introduced the Sontarans. And in a great bit of irony, the story that is revenge for the Sontarans' debut story introduces their mortal enemies, the Rutans.
The Doctor's poem at the end is "The Ballad of Flannan Isle", which is about a real lighthouse where three keepers disappeared, the events which inspired this story.
You're not awful, Leela is refreshing, a change from the majority of companions who come from contemporary England. Leela's change of eye color isn't just a weird little throwaway detail incidentally. During her first season Louise Jameson wore tinted contact lenses because the production team (for whatever reason) wanted the character of Leela to have brown eyes, but Louise found them very uncomfortable to wear and asked if she could stop, hence the explanation for why she's blue eyed going forward.
(2) Speaking of the Doctor, he’s in an incredibly dark and abrasive mood throughout this story. I’ve already said in previous comments that I think Pyramids of Mars and The Seeds of Doom are the stories the Doctor has felt most alien in the hands of Tom Baker, but after watching this again, I would now opt for his performance here instead. I love how the Doctor is almost totally separate from all the human subplots and he’s only really involved with the main, alien plot, which shows that he’s above all our petty human concerns and doesn’t think it’s worth his time to get entangled in any of that stuff. He dutifully tries to save all the humans from the Rutan, but that’s only out of a moral obligation. He has no interest in trying to save the humans from themselves. The Doctor’s reactions to their deaths speaks volumes. Vince aside, he doesn’t shed any tears once the worst happens to them because he’s acutely aware that they represent the worst of humanity and were all responsible for their own deaths He’s aware of the bigger picture and knows his main concern is saving the entire world, not a bunch of selfish humans. The fourth Doctor is the closest any Doctor has come to feeling like a true alien, his nearest and only competition in this respect is the seventh Doctor. In some ways he’s just as alien as the Rutan. The Rutan isn’t interested in any of the worries and petty foibles of the humans either. Its sole interest in the Earth is as a way to get the upper hand in the eternal war with the Sontarans and is casually willing to destroy our planet and kill us all as collateral damage even though we have no stake in the war one way or the other. Perhaps the scene that best shows the parallels between the Rutan and the Doctor is that chat they have on the staircase in part four. A Rutan and a Time Lord on a planet foreign to both of them, have a confrontation and seem completely unconcerned with the hysterical humans around them. It’s interesting how the Doctor probes and mocks the Rutan to try and provoke and get a reaction out of it, because it makes it seem as if this entire affair has been a grand game to him, just as it has been to the Rutan.
It’s also interesting how cautious the Doctor is here, wanting to keep everyone in the dark as to the true danger they’re in for as long as possible, but that only puts them in further peril. All this leads to one of the best cliffhangers ever at the end of part three, when the Doctor makes the mistake of looking for Reuben outside the lighthouse, where he lies dead, rather than inside, and realises he’s locked the monster in with them instead. An incredible way to raise the stakes going into the final episode. I love the Doctor in this story. I think these four episodes are a fascinating example of how to write the lead character of your show. I also think it's important to note that we’re shown the POV of the Rutan several times and see the lighthouse through its eyes. This means that we’re aware and know more about the danger than the characters in the story. This very effectively increases the level of tension in several moments of the story and allows a moment like the part three cliffhanger to happen and work so well because the audience is already aware of the Rutans’ ability to shapeshift before the Doctor. It’s simple writing, but incredibly hard to pull off well in practice.
I’m also really glad that this story finally introduces us to the Sontarans’ mortal enemies, the Rutans, after being mentioned in both the previous Sontaran stories we’ve had so far. I think the one Rutan we have in this story makes for a really interesting foe and considering its efficiency and strategic brilliance that enabled it to eliminate all the humans one by one, I can totally believe these creatures are worthy adversaries for the Sontarans. It’s just a shame the on-screen realisation ends up being a big green blob, which doesn’t do justice to how interesting the Rutan is as a monster, but at least they effectively conceal how rubbish their true form looks by either keeping it hidden and in the shadows for most of the story or have it shapeshift.
After the grand extravagance of The Talons of Weng Chiang, this is on the other end of the spectrum. This is a story with very little in the way of flashiness. To oversimplify it, Horror of Fang Rock is a standard base under siege story that introduces a bunch of characters and kills them all off one by one by a mostly unseen menace to gradually increase the jeopardy and sense of uncertainty. It’s Doctor Who stripped back to its basics, but the execution of that basic formula is what makes it so good. If anyone knew how to write a story like that, it would be the legendary Terrance Dicks. The former longtime script editor throughout the third Doctor’s era (he script edited most of Troughton’s last season too and even co-wrote The War Games with Malcolm Hulke) and he makes a very successful and triumphant return to the show after a couple of years away. It’s a shame that he won’t be sticking around as a regular writer after this and won’t be back to write another story for a few seasons. I do find it interesting that the story that first made mention of the Rutans was The Time Warrior, when Terrance Dicks was script editor and Robert Holmes was the writer, and here there’s a total role reversal. Just shows how Doctor Who is constantly changing and evolving. Horror of Fang Rock is also one of the few stories where just this once, everyone dies! Aside from the Doctor and companion/s of course. It’s one of the last hurrahs for the gothic horror tone that had become the norm over the previous three seasons too, before the show moves towards a much more lighthearted and comedic tone after Robert Holmes leaves as script editor later in the season. Overall, Horror of Fang Rock is excellent and it knows exactly the story it wants to tell and executes it with brilliant efficiency.
Louise Jameson (Leela) has praised the performance of the actress who played Adelaide. Jameson said it's very difficult to sustain a performance at that level of hysteria over an extended time. Annette Woollett certainly managed that. I don't think I've ever been so pleased to see someone slapped. I love this story.
Classic Who reactions on this channel are an essential part of my Saturday here in Melbourne.
So many good moments in these, including my favourite cliffhanger with part threes "I've made a terrible mistake".
I was at a convention , over 10 years ago now, where Adelaide's demise was met with a standing ovation.
As has been mentioned all the incidental characters die.This is the first time that this has happened in Classic Who but i'm not going to tell you if it is the last.
One of my all-time favorite stories. Well written, directed and acted with one of the series' best cliffhangers when the Doctor realizes he's made a big mistake.
(1) Horror of Fang Rock is a superb, tense story and it’s yet another fan favourite, that’s three in a row now! The last time this happened was way back with The War Games, Spearhead from Space and The Silurians coming one after the other. I love the lighthouse setting and how tight and small all the sets are and the use of fog and the dark, moody lighting. It all comes together to make for an extremely claustrophobic and creepy atmosphere that permeates this whole story. Characters like Reuben are a big part of creating that atmosphere too. Right from the start he’s established as a superstitious old timer and accuses the Doctor and Leela of being foreign spies and suggests the possibility of vengeful ghosts or the return of a legendary sea monster that supposedly left another crew all dead. These are all simply misdirections because it’s obvious from the beginning none of what Reuben is saying can be true and that he's just paranoid, but it still contributes massively to this story’s cloud of unease and menace.
Most of the characters in this story have their own distinct personalities and unique way of reacting to the situation they’ve found themselves in and I love how they’re utilised within the plot. They’re all selfish to varying degrees and have their own motivations, which leads them to act in ways that drive the plot forward and ultimately cause their own deaths. Just to give some examples, at the start of the story, Ben and Rueben are debating the merits of electricity vs oil with Rueben coming down heavily against electricity. Ben is so steadfast in his belief that electricity is superior, he nonchalantly goes down to fix the power once it starts to go wrong, which ultimately gets him killed. I’ve already mentioned that Reuben is an old man stuck in his ways and his refusal to adapt to modernity makes his fate of not only being killed, but to be quite literally replaced by that same electricity so darkly ironic. As I've already mentioned though, Ben and Reuben are far from the only characters like this. There's also Palmerdale and Skinsale, whose squabble led to Skinsale wrecking the telegraph to protect his honour, cutting the lighthouse off from the outside world and leaving them all even more isolated than they already were. Their selfishness had a direct impact on everyone else and ultimately became the primary reason for not only both of their deaths, but arguably every other human character. Palmerdale tried to make an underhanded, secret deal with Vince (perhaps the only good-hearted human character in this whole story) and because of his fear of getting caught in the act, he went to the edge of the lighthouse and gave the Rutan the chance to get him. As for Skinsale, his greed forced him to stop and try to retrieve the diamonds from the floor instead of doing the sensible thing and escaping with his life, which gave the Rutan the perfect opportunity to kill him.
Some people think the Palmerdale/Skinsale subplot is strange, unnecessary and feels shoehorned into in a story like this, but, along with Ben and Reuben (and a few other characters I haven't mentioned), their uncomfortably ironic fates say so much about their characters and make the story more than just a simple runaround with a monster of the week. The juxtaposition between Palmerdale/Skinsale's subplot and the main plot is the point. It highlights how shortsighted and clueless the humans are to deal with a threat like the Rutans. It ties into perhaps the main theme of this story, which is human pettiness and our inability to put our personal concerns to one side and focus on the bigger picture. Their refusal to listen to the Doctor and continuing to squabble among themselves, instead of focusing on the imminent threat and defend themselves lead to all their deaths. This story is famous for being one where all the characters die besides our leads, but there's a very good reason for that within the narrative. Of course, all the characters dying one by one helps to make the threat more palpable and increase the sense of tension and danger, but there's more to it than that. Horror of Fang Rock is not a pointless massacre, it’s a commentary on human weaknesses, while also of course being a great base under siege and monster story.
I also love how the meek and cowardly character of Adelaide contrasts with Leela’s bravery and level headedness and is used to highlight her best attributes. It’s interesting that Adelaide, a woman who compared to Leela comes from a much more advanced age, still believes in old superstitions and relies on an astrologer. Leela’s response to that is to say she too used to believe in that stuff, but the Doctor has shown her a better way and to believe in science. This shows how far she’s come and the influence the Doctor has on those who travel with him. I love how innocent and humble she comes across too. There’s no arrogance or a sense that Leela thinks she’s better than Adelaide because of this. To her it’s just a simple truth of life that she now tries to live by. The fact that it’s Leela that gives the Doctor the idea to turn the lighthouse into a giant laser beam is perfect and is also a brilliant and ingenious way to make use of the location of your story. Leela still has much to learn though, as demonstrated by her gleefully celebrating the death of the Rutan, which is very clearly abhorrent to the Doctor. She’s such an interesting and layered character.
Ben's dead! And so is everyone else.
I'm enjoying how much you're into Leela so far. :) Her outfit from this story would be a nice casual cosplay (sweater, belt, pants, boot with a knife holster).
I believe Terrence Dicks said he designed the Rutans for this story to be the complete opposite of the Sontarans. Since they were a clone race and all look alike, he made the Rutan amorphous blobs who could shape shift into any form. Sontarans are masters of weaponry while Rutans have inborn killing abilities. With this being there only television appearance, I don't think I've ever seen or heard a story where the 2 races appeared together until the 6th Doctor's LOST STORIES audio: The First Sontarans.
Leela is easily one of my favorite companions. I don't condone violence, but her gloating over the dying Rutan was fantastic!
Terrance Dicks who wrote the script originally wanted to have Harker and Adelaide escape but the script editor changed it to have everyone die so the Doctor could quote Wilfrid Gibson's poem "Flannan Isle" at the end as a kind of epitaph. Although I'm with you: if anyone had survived it should have been Vince.
Him and Harker should've survived.
I also like to think Holmes saw how awful those three were and just went "fuck the lot of them they're all dying"
The British class system shows its colours here. And maybe everywhere. Isolated by events out of their control, the first instinct is self-preservation. And I feel like we've had a lot of that recently.
16.5 years on when the eps were on this app and site, Leela slapping Adelaide still gives me life
Great story made better by having the villain be a Rutan. It expands the lore and establishes a strong presence in continuity moving foreward. A perfect world builder.
The cliffhanger for episode 3 is brilliantly eerie and the ending shot of the Doctor reciting poetry over a shot of the lighthouse, knowing it's abandoned with nothing but corpses creates a bleak ghost like tone.
NEXT EPISODE oh just you wait....
To put things into perspective, that £100 that Palmerdale was so willing to bribe poor Vince with would be near enough equivalent to over £15,000 today. No wonder Vince was bricking it over someone thinking he'd killed Palmerdale over it. Must have torn out his soul to burn it.
The first time I heard of the Rutans was when they released Doctor Who The Adventure Games: The Gunpowder Plot, where we finally get to see Sontarans fightings Rutans and vice versa and the redesign they gave the Rutans was brilliant
Of all of the "Base Under Siege" type stories this is the best. A brilliant claustrophobic setting and a fantastic cast of characters, both sympathetic and unsympathetic. I would class it alongside the Masque of Mandragora as a minor classic of the Baker era. A story that really bears up to repeat viewings.
Leela is my favourite classic Who companion. That slap makes me laugh every time! 😂
Something subtle here and one of the reasons why I love the Doctors relationship with Leela is when he told her the Colonel died when honor. Because the truth of the matter is…he didn’t. He was greedy and going after the diamonds. But he didn’t want Leela to have that memory of him…so he gave him honors.
A nice little callback to the Time Warrior.
I have to admit, the thing I am most excited about is the next reaction because of what happens in that story.
The poem at the end is about a famous disappearance of some lighthouse keepers and the empty lighthouse that was left behind. As a kid I thought it was about The Mary Celeste, which would have tied it to another Doctor Who story. Maybe that's why it made sense to me. lol
[NODS] Flannan Isle (think that's the right spelling...?)
@@therealpbristow Yes, that's the one. I found out the name of it back in the late 80s through the old Doctor Who Fan Club Of America. Haven't read it in years.
@@ooklathemokfan I got lucky: It showed up one day as a poem to study in English class. Or maybe it was on the page facing the one we had to study...? I remember thinking "OMG, THAT'S IT!!!", and then "But it's not called '*The Ballad Of* Flannan Isle', just 'Flannan Isle' ... OMG, did the Doctor *get it wrong*?!?". =:oD
That would have been round about 1979/1980, just a couple of years after the story aired. I'd recorded the sound track from the original transmission in September 1977 (though I think I missed part one, because of being hesitant about spending hard-earned pocket-money on cassettes... silly boy!). It instantly become of my favourites to listen to, and I used to quote that little snatch of poem at the end to people to other kids at school whenever I wanted to sound literate and mysterious. ( I was only 12! =:o} )
I do say the Rutans been shape changing creatures, were awesome villains and also it is nice to see the arch-enemies of the Sontarans appear onscreen the Rutans been jellyfish in shape are so awesome.
I always remember this story for two reasons, and both of them occurred at the same viewing. I was watching this story with several friends, and we had reach the point where we had all gotten so extremely annoyed with that one lady in the lighthouse that we actually clapped and cheered when Ruben killed her.
The other was when they were frantically searching for the diamonds, and when they were found, one of my friends quipped, "Where else would you hide diamonds, but with the family jewels!" We all busted out laughing when he said that!
The Doctor Who novels have done a good job of further establishing what it is that makes the Rutans such a threat. They generally move around by wrapping their tentacles around them and quickly rolling everywhere like a large beach ball. The argument could be made here that Reuben was moving so slow in this story because, in his natural form, he was having to climb up a set of stairs, and he was scaling up and down a sheer wall, not its usual mode of transport. They are also essentially amoebas, and can reproduce at will at a very fast rate. One can quickly become two, with the resulting Rutan having all the memories of its progenitor, two can become four, four becomes eight, and so on.
The Rutans have always been the sworn arch-enemies of the Sontarans and it's a shame they haven't featured in another story since.
New Who really should bring the Rutans back
'Shakedown' is an hour long Sontarans Vs a Rutan spin off, low budget but starring Carol Ann Ford (Susan) and Sophie Aldred (Ace), 2 actors from Blake's 7 and featuring Michael Wisher (Original Davros). It's only about an hour long and the Sontarans look a little... different, but when that happens eg Alien/Aliens the monster looks different, for copyright and merchandise rights reasons. We've had grey and Brown looking Sontarans, these are very yellow. Personally I like it. Maybe worth a watch? :)
Yeah, there really needs to be a Sontarans vs Rutans episode. You'd think it would've happened at some point since the Sontarans were introduced (and Rutans mentioned) in 1973, but no... although Doctor Who: The Adventure Games did that with The Gunpowder Plot (featuring the Doctor, Amy, Rory, and Guy Fawkes). A bit slow-paced, but the Doctor's solution at the end is brilliant.
They did get a mention in Flux
@@julianblake3140 They brought them back in one new who novel. It had the Sontarans and Rutans fighting each other on a human colony with the tenth doctor in the middle. I can't remember what else happens in the book I haven't read it in awhile.
And thus potatoes and lettuces have been at war with each other ever since.
As a side effect of the blinding flash Leela's eyes turn from brown to blue..... which was done as Leela hated wearing the brown contact lenses.....and by doing this Louise Jamison agreed to play Leela for another series (season).
The tension between Baker & Jameson came to a head during the filming of this story. Tom felt that the Leela character was too violent and he kept stepping on her lines and entrances during filming and lead to multiple takes (Baker would skip ahead and try to write Leela out of the scene on the fly). There was a confrontation between the two and things got noticeably better after Fang Rock. Louise is not the only actress who ran afoul of Tom, but things did improve.
They get along great now though. I think Tom has done more Big Finish stories with Louise than anyone else!
@@AtariDad I think Louise is one of the few from that era still alive. Although you are right...she speaks very fondly of him during the interviews and vice versa. I am glad they managed to work things out.
He adored Lis Sladen and didn't think they needed to replace her. He suggested the Doctor either have no companion, or have a sentient alien cabbage perched on his shoulder that he would talk to. He thought kids related to Sarah (and Lis) and wouldn't do to a murderous savage.
It was Louise that convinced Tom to do Big Finish
Everybody dies, Leela! Just this once everybody dies!
It's always surprised me that the Rutans have never returned in the series, as they're such a strong enemy and can hide in plain sight.
Especially that they've never even appeared together with the sontarans, since they've were named as their enemies way back in The Time Warrior.
Perhaps they could team up with the farting Slitheen, in an episode called "Tootin' Rutans" ;)
Next week is the big folks. All 94K subs need to come and see because next week is very important, for Jess's Classic Doctor Who journey.
Sesska: "I just don't want anything to happen to Vince"
Everyone who knows the story: . . . "crickets"
The Rutan are an alien I've been wanting to see return in NuWho for years! I'd love to see how it would be rendered now. Hmm, who's coming next story?
The screemy panic woman was hilarious, like a character off Airplane. Leela was triumphant in this episode. Poor Vince but as was know, Ben's dead.
I remember catching the ending of episode 3 after school on the Horror Channel nearly 10 years ago and I remember the 'oh no' and 'get her out of here.' You can tell the Doctor and the audience were getting really sick of the character.
No one does structure like Terrance Dicks. His stories should be taught in all creative writing courses.
Ah yes. This is the episode where she got rid of those dang coloured contacts with the blind thing.
Leela's slapping Adelaide.... A fan favourite moment, which Louise Jameson hysterical comments on in the DVD commentary. Adore this story.
Your reaction to this story was hilarious!
Couple of fun facts for this one, the Rutans were first mentioned in a conversation between Jon Pertwee's Doctor and Lynx in The Time Warrior, but this is the first time they are actually seen. Another is that up to this story Louise Jameson was made to wear red contact lenses to give a brown look, as they were under the impression the "Leela" meant 'dark-eyed beauty', these lenses were so uncomfortable for her that they wrote in the explosion causing the pigment dispersal so that she could stop wearing them.
Louise wouldn't sign on to come back for the next season until they got rid of those contact lenses.
I love Leela’s reaction to Adelaide’s fainting.
I forgot how much I like Leela. “Come out, old one!” 😂
Love this story, so dark everybody dies haha. Finally we see a rutan! The race that has always been at war with the sontarans, first mentioned by the third doctor in the time warrior and then by the 10th doctor in series 4. They rele need to come back, preferably in a story with the sontarans
I remember when Leala slapped that women it was very satisfying the first time I watched it,glad you had the same reaction.
This story is considered one of the greats and a real classic.
The end of par 3 still manages to send a chill down my spine. "Leela I've made a terrible mistake"
The poem quoted at the end of the episode was "The Ballad of Flannan Isle." cool stuff!
Vince was adorable. Ben was creepy....that smile. Adelaide is HILARIOUSLY over the top. (slap) we still laugh about this plot/story to this day. One of our favorites.
Unfortunately we won't be seeing the Rutans again in the series but they have appeared in novels, comics, audio and a live action spin off Shakedown: Return of the Sontarans.
Louise gets to revert to her natural (and actually very attractive) blue eye colouring, after months of wearing purple contact lenses. The sacrifices people make...
I'd forgotten that she said "Come out, Old One!" Random Lovecraft reference!
Head canon: Leela is worthy to wield Mjolnir. ^_^
Don't feel bad or guilty about it that's why we love Leela 😊 it was a nice refresher and i really wish we had more companions like Leela in NuWho but that would never happen in the current climate we live in today as RTD is far too politically correct and refuses to give us alien companions or other century companions.
Terrance dicks juxtaposition of Adelaide and Leela in this story is a master stroke. Leela finally snapping and hauling off and slapping Adelaide for being useless and hysterical will never get old to me.
This is superb. A wonderful, claustrophobic bit of gothic horror. It’s bleak, the setting is bleak, everyone else dies, Leela is delightfully savage (her gloating over the dying Rutan is epic). It’s also highly class conscious. You can tell its sympathies are with the working class Vince and Harker. Great stuff 10/10 from me.
Unfortunately the great run of gothic horror stories and brilliantly designed and plotted stories can’t continue….. can it?
I just adore this story. I can find Classic Who hard to get through, but this was one of those stories where I had a lot of fun and watched it all in one go. Not perfect but very enjoyable.
Disappointingness of not actually seeing the Sontarans is because it has now gone for 2 whole seasons, this the twelfth story! without any recurring creatures. We have had the Master once but not any of the encountered other species.
Hinchcliffe planned and commissioned this sorry, that's why it's still a violent one, but it's the first produced after he left. Of interest that after 12 stories, we return to one that at least mentions a recurring alien.
Watched this when I was 6 on OG broadcast. Terrifying.
6:30 why Leela is in my top 3 all time favorite companions in Doctor Who 😂
Another classic ‘Hinchcliffe/Holmes Horror’ story (despite the fact Phillip Hinchcliffe had left by this stage. And…definitely some good companions that got away here…Lord Skinsale and Adelaide 😂. Oh, and Vince too
Such a great story!!!!!
10:49 I first watched this story with a group of around twenty friends. The Rutan got the loudest cheering and applause when it killed Adelaide - I'm not sure that was the reaction that the writers were hoping for. ^.^
"I don't care...I really don't care" lol!! i am so glad i watch your channel- made my morning.
This is Who's "And then there was none."
This has it's origins in a real life mystery the unexplained disappearance of the keepers of the Flannan Isles lighthouse in the Outer Hebrides.
"Well sir, at least you died with a fabulous head of hair" :D
Leela's slap is her BEST moment in my opinion!
Talons of weing chiang and horror of fang rock two back to back classic masterpieces. This season starts of with a bang then falls on its face with the invasion of time.
When Leela slapped the screaming woman, she spoke for the audience. What a loud smack.
'At least he didn't go up and kill Vince.'
Yeah, about that ...
Glad you enjoyed this one
Very Hammer Horror story.
Thank you for another great reaction! Absolutely perfect! 🎉
This is the first and so far only appearance of the rutans in the main series there is a Big Finish audio where the Sontarans and the rutans do battle but i can't remember from the top of my head what the name of that audio is.
Don't worry you'll get over Vince quite quickly as side characters often tend to be forgotten about and move on to other side characters in next stories.
I'm glad for once we have an episode where no one survives except the main characters because that's realistic and not everyone can get out so lucky it's bad don't get me wrong it's bad for the people who did die in this but story wise it's a refresher.
I have to say i did not feel any remorse for Adelaide what so ever she was really annoying, a spoilt princess and that constant screaming.
Wow… looks like you just got caught up with my viewing marathon… i just watched this over the weekend, sadly I just overtook you, so now we won’t be in sync… can’t wait til you reach season 20!!!
Vince :( I'm with you on that, no fair!
Such a good story
Just this once Rose, everybody dies!
Everybody Dies!!!!!
I look forward to the Invisible Enemy reaction
If you can find it track down "Shakedown" Sontarans and Rutans together...a great watch with a familliar cast
Doctor's future incarnations often got flak for seeming a bit too cold, callous, or unconcerned when humans couldn't be saved, and part o' me wonders how much of that might be due to like.. "generational memory" of these 3 annoying NPCs.
But the reason to watch them is the potential threat they pose to the survival of others.
(Also: Leela is the BEST.)
Just this once, EVERYBODY DIES!!!
5:34...But the glowy thing isn't just outside, you've just seen it go back inside the lighthouse and change shape back into Reuben 🙄🙄🙄
That was before the reveal that its' a shapeshifter, though. With the information the viewer has at that point, the Rutan's blob form could've been a separate entity that was just somehow puppeteering Reuben remotely.
I got a movie for ya... "The Howling"... thats all I'm saying,...
At least you were NOT rooting for the Rutan!
Ben is dead? Oh no, didnt anyone notice?
Ben is still dead.🤣
BEN IS DEAD!!
So everybody dies... grim ending when you think about it
I do like that everyone dies in this. It's almost a relief.
Search up Max Headroom Doctor Who
The lady and the Lord are MEANT to be annoying....that said,she is one of the most annoying characters ever in the show ever!🎩
The end of the golden age of classic who
Wait, Ben is still dead?!
This one if the few stories I think when no 'NPCs' survive