The Curse Of Fenric is the 155th serial and it first aired October 25 to November 15 1989. It's the 2nd last serial of the 26th season. Sylvester McCoy is the Doctor and Sophie Aldred is Ace. The story was written by Ian Briggs and it was directed by Nicholas Mallett. The Wikipedia says that Producer John Nathan-Turner did some uncredited direction. Andrew Cartmel is the script editor and Mark Ayers is the music composer.
The Tardis pops up at a WWII British naval installation near Maiden's Point on the Northumbrian coast. It's all rocks and sea, very sparse and forbidding. The military is there to intercept German coded messages and translate them using the ULTIMA supercomputer. Think the Enigma Machine and Alan Turing. Ian Briggs said he based Dr Judson on Turing. Here Judson is using the computer to translate some ancient runes found in a nearby church cellar. Unfortunately the runes are part of the curse of Fenric and that whole bit of business turns people into evil vampire-like Haemovores.
Russian commandoes have come to take the ULTIMA back to Moscow. They come up against the British and the monsters and hardly anyone survives. The leader of the British forces, Commander Millington, has something going on with Dr Judson. They want to use the power of Fenric to conqueror the world. Of course the Doc has an opinion on that and since it's his show you can guesss what will happen.
Some of Ace's back story is revealed, she hates her mother and doesn't like to swim. The baby in the show turns out to be her mother. Fenric is revealed to be an ancient evil that the Doctor has faced before. He had beaten him with a chess problem. This time he'll beat him with something a bit stronger. The Doctor reveals that he had created the time storm that put Ace on Iceworld where they would later meet. It's a fairly dense story with lots going on. There's a good villain who gets his in the end. The monsters are ok and there's a good bit of action and running about. Sadly now that the show has become more interesting they will stop it.
There's a commentary with Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred and Nicholas Parsons who played Rev Wainwright. It's a 2 DVD set that has more than the normal share of extras and they were the usual interesting lot. The first disc has the 4 part serial as it was transmitted, the second disc has a Special Edition of the story, taking out repeat credits and adding 12 minutes of material that was originally trimmed for time. The 4 part version runs 97 minutes and the SE is 103 minutes long. The music has been redone and the effects people fixed up and added to the material in the serial. It looks really nice and it's a better version of the story.
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