The Stones Of Blood is the 100th Doctor Who story. It first aired October 28 to November 18 1978 and the 4 part story was the 3rd section of a longer story arc called The Key Of Time that run through the whole 16th series. The last episode of the serial was broadcast during the week that the BBC celebrated the Doctor's 15th anniversary on the tube. That episode would be the 490th in the series. Hardly anything today gets to 15 years and of course the Doc's nowhere near done. As usual the 4th Doctor is played by Tom Baker, Romana is played by Mary Tamm and K-9 is voiced by John Leeson. Both the Tom and Mary mention repeatedly that they really valued John playing the part in rehearsals. John would get down on the floor and act out the part while reading his lines. When they shot the series he'd be in off stage location where he could hear the action and read his lines into a mic. The serial is directed by Darrol Blake who directed a fair bit of British TV before and after his efforts on Doctor Who.
The Tardis is spinning through space and the Doctor and Romana are looking for the 3rd part of the Key Of Time. Their detector says it's on Earth in modern day. The Tardis drops them off near a stone circle. The place they used for the standing stones is the Rollright Stones near village of Long Compton on the borders of Oxfordshire and Warwickshire. They added some new stones and created moving stones as part of the danger. In one of the making of featurettes they talk about the horror element of the story and how much like a Hammer film it is. The writer of the episode David Fisher and the script editor Anthony Read went on to work on the Hammer tv series. The extra features on several of the serials spend a good bit of time on the violence and various creators have different views on what's too much. Things certainly got more violent and horrific when Terrance Dicks and Barry Letts left the program.
When the Doc and Romana arrive they meet a local archaeologist Professor Amelia Rumford who's played by Beatrix Lehmann and her cottage mate Miss Fey who's played by Susan Engel. Later the Doctor and Romana find some Druids that sacrifice animals and feed their blood to the stones. The Doctor is so annoying that the druids decide to feed him to the stones later in the story. Certainly it's not surprising, the Doc can be a handful. There's the usual running about and the getting knocked out. Giant glowing rocks scoot about killing people and crashing through doors. Even K-9 is no match for them. He gets damaged pretty badly at one point. Don't worry, he'll be ok.
The story turns from horror on earth to a space story when it's revealed that Miss Fey has a space ship in hyperspace. There's a bit of drama when the Doctor goes on trial for releasing a couple of bright lights from a cell on the ship. He figures it out and gets away. The baddie is locked up and the Tardis trio head off for the next part of the Key Of Time. All in all a fun episode.
The disc has two commentaries and a large bunch of short featurettes and extras. The commentaries were ok, the first has Mary Tamm and Darrol Blake and the 2nd has Tom Baker, Mary Tamm and Anthony Read. Getting Blood From Stones is a nice making of and Hammer Horror Fest is a short look at how scarey the program might be. Stones Free is a 2007 short with Mary Tamm doing a bit on the Rollright Stones. Model World is a short segment from the time the serial was made that features the spaceship model creation. Blue Peter has a nice segment on the 15th Anniversary of Doctor Who. Nationwide has a 1978 interview with Tom Baker, Mary Tamm and Carol Ann Ford. There are some deleted scenes, continuities, a photo gallery, info text and Radio Times PDF.
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