The Curse Of Fenric

There are dangerous undercurrents in the river featured in this story, according to a sign post, and these are matched by the similarly strong passions and loathings that drive the characters. Much of the story revolves around the nature of such feelings: faith, love, hate and lust, for example.

The martial spirit of war is given voice by both Miss Hardaker and Commander Millington in different ways. The former assures the Rev Wainwright of how "right is on our side" and is suitably appalled at his doubts as to whether "rightness" and war can ever be compatible. Her unbending moral authoritarianism, couched in thoroughly religious terminology, is further indicated in her reactions to her two evacuee charges' interest in the bay at Maiden's Point, the more so when they disobey her injunction to stay away from the place ("You will burn in the everlasting fires of hell! You wicked, evil girls! ... there's no love in Heaven and Earth for you! Nothing but pitiless damnation for the rest of your lives!").

Millington seems to be driven by a similarly obsessive vindictiveness, even though his goals are primarily military rather than spiritual, and he is, at least for part of the time, simply obeying orders, even though it's obvious he fully supports them anyway. When not recreating a Nazi atmosphere in his office (ostensibly to know the enemy better, but he soaks himself in it to a suspiciously thorough degree), or lumbering dolefully through the camp to throw his weight about (eg pressurising Kathleen to get her baby off the premises or face being dismissed), he's busy conspiring in a mass murder plot, even against one of his country's allies, to say nothing of the extreme unrepentant ruthlessness suggested by his abandoning the soldiers in the tunnel to the Haemovores. The Ultima Machine plot suggests a fanatical anti-communist zeal, or at least a hard-nosed determination to wage war against a major world power that potentially threatens British interests, as does his "you always were [the enemy]" to the Soviet soldier he later tries to kill. The cruel irony of his demonstration of the poison to the Doctor (it kills doves, traditionally birds of peace, and is to be triggered by the word "love" - the plan is a total and deliberate negation of both ideals) and the indiscriminate slaughter he ends up authorising mark him out as, almost literally, death. He embodies the spirit of killing for its own sake.

Although in narrative terms the girls, Phyllis and Jean, are mostly just swimming at Maiden's Point, the symbolism of their wilful sampling of the forbidden is evident. There is a well established tradition in horror stories of female characters gaining an overt and predatory sexuality after becoming vampires and the "forbidden" nature of bathing at Maiden's Point that so arouses Miss Hardaker's ire in all its "Fire and Brimstone" intensity clearly represents sexual gratification. The conventional dichotomy itself is a bit suspect - it tends to suggest the old nineteenth century mentality that views women as either virgins or whores - although it will be seen that Jean and Phyllis are not blushing innocents even when we first meet them, are fairly rebellious throughout, and in the extended feature length version of the story they even have a line commenting knowingly on how the name Maiden's Point doesn't apply to them, a sentiment which Ace was originally intended to confirm also applied to her (presumably the BBC decided that wasn't quite oblique enough for a companion). It's a shame that the idea in the original script, that Miss Hardaker is partially overcompensating for having strayed sexually in her youth (so that the vehemence of her sentiments are also intended at assuaging her own sense of guilt), wasn't communicated in the transmitted version.

Having been transformed, the two of them are presented visually in a way which implies sexual forwardness. Hair worn loosely and luxuriantly, long fingernails, dark-eyed sensual make-up, lustful grins, and a predatory finger-beckoning body language. Their tempting the soldier to join them in the water is effectively a seduction and a trap, using carnal attraction as a weapon. It's a fate that almost befalls Ace, as they later remind her, and only the latter's sense of caution preserved her. Hence I would prefer to think that if the girls are being symbolically punished for anything when they become Haemovores are subsequently destroyed, it is for being foolishly incautious rather than wishing to mature sexually. It is notable that Ace attempts to use her developing sense of sexuality ("I'm not a little girl anymore") as a diversionary tactic when pretending to seduce a guard, which is presented as unexceptionable enough in the story.

Ace has strong feelings of love and hate, but the narrative (or Fenric) plays a clever trick on her by ultimately showing that she is focussing both feelings on the same person. Part of what defines Ace has been her attitude to her mother, who seems to have come to represent, for Ace, the old life that she is determined to reject and leave behind. Even the mere mention of her name arouses enough revulsion for Ace to hand Kathleen's baby back to her after learning she shares the same name. This initial hiccup doesn't stop Ace from ultimately loving the baby though, as her maternal instincts are brought to the surface (possibly also a slight hint of her increasing maturity), and forming a sisterly bond with Kathleen. Indeed, Kathleen and Audrey seem to be the two characters in the story whom Ace ends up most attached to, to the extent of staying and protecting them rather than dash off with the Doctor on his plans, and subsequently providing an escape route for them both.

So, when Ace learns that Audrey her mother and Audrey the baby are one and the same, it sets off an attack of personal anguish, because she cannot resolve the contradiction, and her feelings toward each aspect of her mother, resentment and love, haven't changed. Diving into the sea and swimming back to the surface represents a cleansing of all these tangled emotions clogging up her soul. She has, at least in theory, liberated herself from those extremes and put the repressed feelings and insecurities stemming from her childhood behind her. Hence the double meaning of the Doctor's final observation: there are no more "dangerous undercurrents", either in the sea or in her psyche.

Also important to the story is the way it depicts characters using their own personal faiths, which here function as personal talismans to ward off the danger posed by the Haemovores. Captain Sorin's own faith in the Russian revolution sees him through matters safely until his status as Wolf of Fenric is revealed, and this, along with the relatively sympathetic (by Cold War standards) depiction of the Soviet soldiers, has led to some speculation of a possible political subtext. However, Sorin's emblem merely demonstrates his belief and nothing else. It proves nothing one way or the other about whether that belief is justified, any more than it would do in the case someone using a crucifix or a swastika for the same purpose. Politically, the story has nothing to say about the USSR, and all you would learn about it here would be what its military uniforms and national emblem looked like, and the fact that it was an ally of the UK in the second world war.

The issue is worth examining, because of course, Wainwright's Bible doesn't ultimately save him in the same way, and he is overcome much earlier than Sorin. He is no longer able to muster the same confident belief in Christianity that Sorin has in the USSR. There was a belief held in the 1930s and 40s that conventional religion had failed and was dying, with Marxism in the process of taking its place, as a superior secular creed, that would eventually displace Christianity because it was fated to genuinely bring about the perfect society in the real physical world, without having to hold out hope for a kingdom of heaven in the next world. It was believed that the new age of ruthless power politics, in which might and strength were all that mattered, had rendered religion obsolete and irrelevant. This is mirrored in Wainwright's guilt and self-doubt about British bombs killing German civilians. He cannot find it in himself to condone the slaughter of innocents which he feels himself to be complicit in, and is losing his faith in Christianity because it seemingly cannot provide an answer to this moral paradox, at least to his satisfaction. Wainwright's dilemma is that he is a man unable to hate sufficiently for the evil times he lives in. Miss Hardaker is able to use Biblical authority for her own militant interpretation of events, but he does not share her worldview. When Jean and Phyllis, as Haemovores, affirm to him "We were lost the day we were born", (implying a predestinarian worldview, held by some Christian sects, that only an elect group will be saved, and that everyone else is damned from birth) he insists, "No, no-one is lost". He wishes to dispense forgiveness and hope rather than unyielding condemnation.

Wainwright is someone who has moved halfway to the kind of worldview that Ian Briggs seems to be advocating. The novelisation refers (notoriously, for some) to Christianity as "the 2,000 year-old lie", and at would appear that, for Briggs, Wainwright's problem is that he hasn't managed to move on from a dualistic "good versus evil" philosophy, even though it is clear that he is unsatisfied and no longer convinced by it (Indicated by his plaintive "I used to believe there was good in the world" to Ace. Also, his cry of "I believe in good!" is not sufficient to ward off the Haemovores, proving that he does not have enough faith that either he himself or the world he inhabits are living up to that ideal). Hence he is stranded in the midst of vicious forms of sectarianism (political and religious) which all seem alien to him. The character's loneliness is also expressed by the scene where he stands at the pulpit in an otherwise empty church and reads aloud from Corinthians ("I put away childish things"). Briggs, presumably, believes he should put away the "childish" Manicheanism of viewing Good and Evil as anything other than theoretical concepts.

I would have to say though, that if that, or something similar to it, is Briggs' intention, then I find it problematical, because while the rejection of narrow sectarianism is commendable in itself, such a worldview has its own dangers, specifically that it can lead to a species of moral relativism in which even the most obviously wrong actions can be rationalised away as part of a natural "balance" or the like. The appeal for everyone to co-operate, embodied in the only way one can win the chess game the Doctor sets Fenric, as well as the way that Millington is only overcome by the British and Soviet soldier joining forces ("War...a game played by politicians"), is well-intentioned in itself but ultimately over-simplistic because it does too little to address the causes, or the nature of, such disputes. It is perfectly possible for people to support wars independently of their rulers' wishes, and it is by no means always the case that those outside of governments have nothing to win or lose in the event of one being fought. People can sometimes fight on when attacked by an aggressor and the alternative is far worse, for example. And to support a cause need not always necessarily involve surrendering to unthinking nationalism. Sometimes one cause can be demonstrably more moral or worthy than another, one outcome better or worse than another, with the difference being of crucial importance to many.

As a TV production it is of a reasonably good standard for its era, although the videotaped-in-broad-daylight look that predominates means we probably lose some of the potential atmosphere. Night filming might have brought some interesting results. That said, the opening sequence is highly effective, with a very bleak and misty quality, and the bobbing underwater shots of corpses, wreckages and coral have a beautifully eerie feel. Recording in and around a genuine church helps give its scenes an authentic look, and there's a nice sense of scale in the shots of Ace preparing to abseil down, as we get a lurching view of how far up she is. I was never very keen on the Haemovores as monsters, and I still find them somewhat underwhelming. Costuming is fine but there are some oddities, such as Millington's moustache. He should be either clean shaven or with a full beard and moustache according to the regulations he would have been living under at the time.

The acting is also generally good, with Nicholas Parsons in particular giving a touching and sensitive performance as Wainwright, possibly the most sympathetic character portrayal of the season, if not the era. Dinsdale Landen's Dr Judson is appropriately stuffy, fussy and cantankerous. Alfred Lynch is gaunt and forbidding as Millington, and Tomek Bork manages a forceful screen presence as Sorin. Sophie Aldred is possibly given more to do in this script than any other, although she seems to be more at ease in the quieter, rather than the more melodramatic, scenes. Sylvester McCoy delivers one of his better performances, at his best when he's at his most contemplative, restrained and subtle. His stone-faced bluffing in the scene where he appears to betray Ace is also all the more effective for its minimalism.

A thought-provoking and fairly well made story, it deserves credit for touching on a great many themes and concepts, even if it arguably attempts too many subplots or ideas for it to do full justice to in the end. For all its faults, though, the story is a highly accomplished revisiting of the horror genre for the series.