Netflix!

[eve11]

I got a Blu-ray player and a netflix subscription for Christmas, which is fab. Last night, I watched the Curse of Fenric, as I realize Seven is the only Doctor I've not watched any episodes for (although I've listened to all the audios), and Fenric was the only Seventh Doc episode that was on instant download:



Wow, that was a bit crazy, wasn't it? After watching it, I'm pretty sure of two things:

1) There was a cool story in there somewhere
and
2) It would have scared the pants off me as a child

The murderous Haemavores, the storms, the rampant killing of characters they did try to get us to know, the surrounded-by-zombies claustrophobia, the leaving of soldiers to die... all added up to something that I would actually think twice about showing to anyone under the age of eight, to tell you the truth. There were some seriously adult themes in this one, culminating with Ace's love/hate relationship with her mom, and a very symbolic diving scene at the end.

At the same time, for at least the first 40 minutes of this episode I was shaking my head going... "Wait, what? What? Where? What the hell is going on?" Also did I miss a past episode where the Doctor trapped this Fenric thing with a puzzle, or was all of that done off-screen? Was there a past episode (that I missed) that dealt with Ace's relationship with her mom?

Really, can you imagine the writer's meeting for this one? "Okay guys, we have an hour and a half to tell a story. Let's make sure we incorporate all of the following:"

- Vikings
- Vampires
- Nazis
- Mentally unhinged commanders
- Code-breaking Computers
- Russian spies
- Killer fish aliens
- Oriental Treasure
- Poison gas
- a Firing Squad
- Vicars with a crisis of faith
- Creepy Swimming Holes with Bad Reputations
- Ancient evil bodysnatchers
- Scientists with a tumultuous past
- Secret Laboratories
- Babies

And I'm sure I've missed a few.

Also let's make sure we fully develop and grow the character arcs for:
- *the Russian Captain
- the Widowed War Bride
- *the Crippled Scientist
- *the Crazy Commander
- *the Vicar
- *the Killer Fish Alien
- *the Two Girls from London
- the Bolshevik and the English Soldier
- Ace

(*) We will also kill them off

We will also have a few other characters strewn around (like the old lady and the nurse) to further the character arcs of these guys. So, now we're off to tell a coherent story!

Right. So I think they might have bitten off a little bit more than they could chew with this one. Some things worked well, I think. But because there was so much going on, I don't think they had enough time to develop anything to the point where it made sense in the bigger picture. Why did the Russians let the Doctor and Ace go? Why did the Doctor not warn the Brits about the Russians (and thus let all those soldiers get killed)? What was up with the undersea welding clamshell things? How did the Doctor get from the poison hangar bay to the fish monster to tell it about fenric? What was that bit about the Russian dude also being a viking? Why did the fish monster kill the rest of the haemavores?

There were a lot of mini character stories floating around that seemed in one sense tacked on: the vicar, the war bride, the Russian commander's friend, the professor being humiliated at the hands of his nurse, the backstory between the professor and the commander. On the other hand, they certainly made it more impactful when each of those characters (aside from the war bride) met with an unsavory end. I must say, the Haemavores were genuinely scary, when they were not complete and utter camp (thinking about the girls luring that Russian into the water, lol). I loved the zombie-apocalypse feel that they had, and the shot of all of them rising up and coming out of the water was totally creepifying, as was their inexorable thinning of the human characters.

I would have liked to have seen more about the Doctor and Ace; I particularly liked the part where she challenged him about never telling her what really was going on, and how she kept undermining the Doctor's plans without knowing (explaining the logic diagram to the professor, giving up the solution to the puzzle at the end). But on the other hand, why try to cram so many stories into just that one story? It seems like the conceit was that all the pieces should have slotted into place at the end, but for me it still seemed like a bit of a jumble. Partly I think this was due to direction and editing, but part of it was just due to the fact that they threw the catchall drawer and the kitchen sink into this one.

Comments

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

Ah, welcome to the 7th Doctor era! Frequently brilliant, frequently WTFish, and very often both at the same time. Fenric is one of he highlights, really. There is, indeed a lot of stuff going on in that ep, which means that rewards thought and re-watching. Even if, yes, it is also a little bit of a mess. (It's the nonsensical solution to the chess problem that always trips me up a bit. Thematically, it's beautiful, but it in no way relates to anything I though I understood about the game of chess.)

To answer your question, there was no earlier episode with Fenric, no. (I heartily recommend the novelization of the episode, by the way, which was written by the same person who wrote the script and, unlike most of them, actually expands the story instead of just transcribing it. That does tell the story of the Doctor and Fenric's earlier encounter, as I recall.)

As for Ace's antagonism towards her mother, that was previously established, although it was not the focus of an episode before this one. I really do see Ace, by the way, as in many ways the prototype for new series companions. She, not Rose, was the first to feel to me as if she were as much the focus as the Doctor. Man, I love Ace, and Ace's interplay with the Doctor, so much.

[auntiemeesh.livejournal.com]

Those sound like good Christmas gifts. One of these days I'm going to get back to watching old Who. I think I've pretty much finished up Five, so it's on to Six for me.

[singeaddams.livejournal.com]

Many people appreciate the spoiler cut even if the ep is nearly 30 years old! There's so much Classic Who to wade through...whew!

a very symbolic diving scene at the end

I'm intrigued.

[leaper182.livejournal.com]

I will admit that the Seventh Doctor was my second absolute favorite. I vaguely remember two scenes from the Horns of Nimon that we ended up watching at 2am on PBS when I was a kid, so I can't say that Seven is my first Doctor. As for Seven being my second absolute favorite, Two won me over quite a bit, so he and Seven are vying for the top spot.

My Doctor Who fannishness aside, I freely admit that Seven's storylines were full of, "HUH?" I mean, if you look at "The Happiness Patrol" (which is apparently an allegory for the Thatcher years?), it looked as though someone took a hit of marijuana, snorted a few lines of cocaine, and then sat down in front of a typewriter or a word processor or whatever and thought, "This is the coolest shit EVER."

Ace's relationship with her mother doesn't really get fleshed out, mores the pity. "Curse of the Fenric" was filmed second, but was supposed to be aired before "Ghost Light", which takes place in a house that Ace had burned down to the ground 100 years in the future. "Ghost Light" is full of WTFery, and we never get to see Ace burn it down. Just the rampant WTFery.

There was a lot that was thrown into this story that never really gets explained, but I did like Seven being his chessmaster self with Fenric, and then the scene where he breaks Ace's spirit. It's quite epic, really.

If the two of them had been given more stories that (A) made sense, and (B) were actually kind of cool ("Battlefield" really felt like a return to what Doctor Who used to be like, to me), I think the show could've kept going, but we know about DW's thorny history, so let's skip those details. Raar.

Either way, Seven and Ace are really quite awesome, and while I haven't had a chance to get to know them in the BF audio series outside of one or two stories, they really are one of my favorite teams. I just wish their storylines weren't so full of crack on the show. Blah.

(It'd be interesting to see Eleven bump into a very old Seven and Ace, but at the same time, Moffatt doesn't seem inclined to do that kind of thing, mores the pity.)

(Granted, I totally want Eleven to swing by 1700s Scotland/America/wherever, pick up Jamie McCrimmon and take him around the galaxy again. I miss Jamie like burning.)

[penwiper337.livejournal.com]

Yes, the Seventh Doctor era is... interesting. They had all these grand sweeping ideas that ran into zero budget, cramped timeslots, and were filtered through 80s design sensibilites, so it's a miracle that they're watchable at all. "Ghost Light", for instance, makes "Curse of Fenric" look like a Dick and Jane story in terms of making sense. That said, I really do enjoy a lot of Seventh Doctor stories, and I would highly recommend both "Remembrance of the Daleks" and "Battlefield".

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

One of my favourites! XD I love it quite a bit, not as much as Remembrance of the Daleks or Happiness Patrol or Survival, but it's up there, somewhere... I totally agree about there being a hell of a lot happening - I think it rewards rewatches, as do quite a few of the Seven stories, which is arguably a failure on the part of the writing. It's positively transparent compared to Ghost Light mind you! ;D

Another thing I strongly agree with is that there should be more Seven n Aceiness - there should ALWAYS be more Seven n Aceiness! ;D

I think Remembrance might be a good one to watch, though, if you want to get into Seven. It's ace, as Ace would say, with Daleks and fake-UNIT and stuff, and possibly clearer on a first view than some of the ones that came after.

People say Season 24's bad - I agree it is subpar compared to S25 and S26, but it has its moments.

I am, however, an enormously biased Seven fanboy, so take anything I say on the subject with a healthy pinch of salt! :)

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

Glad you're getting into Seven. I don't know which version of the story is being streamed but I suspect it was the original broadcast version - the expanded version on the DVDs adds some deleted material and reshuffles some scenes that were already in the broadcast version, and I think it's a lot more coherent.

[clocketpatch]

SEVEN AND ACE! SEVEN AND ACE!!!

I love those crazy kids to bits (and their audios are damn excellent too. Gotta love Hex).

To possibly make you less (or more) confused some explanation:

Fenric ties back to Ace's first episode Dragonfire. Basically, Ace got caught in a time storm in her bedroom and got transplanted to an alien planet in the future where she met the Doctor etc. etc. He said he'd take her home, she got very put out, he winked and said he'd take the long way.

Then in Fenric it's explained that Fenric was the one orchestrating the time storm so that the Doctor and Ace would meet so that she would, uh, do something to make the Doctor lose his cosmic chess game.

Oh, and the baby is Ace's mother. xD

...there is coherency in there somewhere, I swear, though it's masked by an awful lot of WTF, as is most of the best Who. Seven and Ace are what make it worth watching though. Like Ten and Donna, they just come together to make everything better.

If you're looking for more Seven, my favourites are Remembrance of the Daleks (Ace is bad ass! It's really scary! Seven is also bad ass! The butler from Fresh Prince of Bel-Air randomly shows up to have a philosophic discussion with Seven!) and Survival (It has the Master! It also has people in really dorky cat suits!)

:D

Sorry for the ramble rant. Seven and Ace made me do it with their awesome.

[ladymercury-10.livejournal.com]

Haha, you have identified characters I didn't even realize were in the story, there were so many people in this thing. Also, I never figured out why the Russians were actually there in the first place, let alone why the Doctor didn't warn the British that they were. :P