Doctor Who and the Horror of Fang Rock takes place on the cusp of the electric age (3), an era it sets up, through early conversations between the lighthouse keepers, as a battleground between traditional and modern outlooks. That puts the TV story bang in the same ballpark as the previous season’s opener ‘The Masque of Mandragora’, even down to the conflation of tradition with mysticism and of modernity with science. This time though, as Tat Wood and Lawrence Miles observe, it’s not so clear which side the programme’s on (4).

    The Doctor, as if it needs stating, is on the side of science – and if you want story-specific evidence for this, you could always start with the semi-regular lectures he apparently delivers at Leela in their time off (5) – but the story, in a way that seems to go generally unnoticed, is far less certain. For example, though Reuben’s tales of the beast of Fang Rock are glibly explained away by the Doctor (6), the events of the story could be granted a similarly prosaic explanation in retrospect by anyone not present. Indeed, the characters’ various machinations throughout the story, as well as sometimes implicating them in the circumstances of their own deaths, serve to offer up possible motives for the small cast to have killed each other off, especially once the Morse apparatus has been sabotaged to stop anyone contacting shore (7).

    Most obviously, lots of people could happily have done for Palmerdale: Harker attempts to strangle him, declaring ‘He deserves to die’ (8), and the possibility that he offed the lord is briefly entertained by the other characters (9); Vince burns Palmerdale’s bribe specifically to avoid suspicion for his murder (10); and Skinsale is immediately suspected by Adelaide (11) because of the threat Palmerdale’s survival might have posed his reputation (12). Further, if you want to take the view that no post-event investigator could know about the inside information Skinsale had provided Palmerdale (13), the old soldier dies surrounded by ‘a fortune’ in diamonds (14) that he’s taken from the lord’s dead body (15).

    It’s not just Palmerdale’s presence that could explain the carnage. Though Vince is clearly rather sweet, and rushes away rather than witness Leela changing (16), the implications of the ‘lonely life on the lighthouse’ and a woman’s presence being ‘quite a treat’ (17) are clear. Adelaide’s presence, her body to be discovered in the crew room along with that of her employer (18), could be used to construct an explanation of how and why those at the lighthouse all ended up dead.

    Focusing on some fictional investigative team might seem a bit obtuse (I mean, it is), but the story does itself draw attention to the ease with which one unknown detail can change the whole narrative – because the Doctor doesn’t know the alien threat can shapeshift, the possibility that Reuben has been replaced by an interloper escapes him and he encourages a course of action that locks everyone in the lighthouse with the threat (19). This is relevant because, in plot terms, the detail is utterly irrelevant – at no point are the blocks on the door a factor in anyone’s death, no one is trying to escape the Rutan at the point it catches them and the Rutan can casually scale the outside of the lighthouse to get at people anyway, as it does when it kills Palmerdale. All the Doctor’s realisation does is draw attention to how his mistake is based on one missing piece of information.

    Of course, the story isn’t actually suggesting the Doctor and his scientific outlook are wrong – the enemy isn’t the beast of Fang Rock, and the Rutan is defeated through a combination of the Doctor’s understanding its physiognomy (20) and employing the right tools to destroy mother ship (21). That doesn’t mean the story’s happy about this verdict though.

    It’s significant that the Doctor makes his key mistake at the precise moment when he’s being an absolute arse. Not only does he ‘shush’ Leela (22), he does so ‘reprovingly’ (23) and in tandem with belittling her as ‘Savage’, just before emphasising more strongly than on TV (24) that his plan is for everyone to be ‘sealed in this lighthouse till morning’ (25). It’s also significant that, with a scientific worldview being analogous here with the harnessing and use of electricity, the character that most firmly represents the modern age is the Rutan. Not only does it have an easy affinity with electricity, its dissection and study of its human enemies (26) is very scientific. It’s also utterly callous. On top of this, it’s difficult to ignore the fact that everyone in the lighthouse is electrocuted (27), and whether the Rutan or the new-fangled electric light and generator is the cause doesn’t change the detail that the tool of the new ‘age of science’ (28) does for them all. In other words, though science may well be a better path than mysticism, it’s also a disquietingly cold and inhuman one – science, electricity and modernity of inextricably connected with the alien threat.

    All of which continues the trend from Doctor Who and the Talons of Weng-Chiang and Doctor Who and the Face of Evil of putting a firm divide between the Doctor’s view and that of the assumed audience; he might not be in the wrong, but he’s far from sympathetic. The other half of that trend, a dismissive, almost contemptuous, narrative tone towards certain specific characters, also survives. For example, Leela’s ‘savage grin of triumph’ as she taunts the defeated Rutan (29) unfortunately allies the narrative with the Doctor’s tone towards her, while the reflection that ‘Her travels with the Doctor had civilised her a little—but she reverted to the primitive immediately when there was any hint of trouble’ (30) seemingly has no qualms about the detached prose voice echoing the Rutan (31). The novelisation also oddly takes the moment when Leela slaps Adelaide (32) and turns it into a running gag (33), managing to simultaneously further demean Adelaide and make Leela appear overly cruel.

    However, unlike its predecessors, Doctor Who and the Horror of Fang Rock just about gets away with these indiscretions thanks to the fact that, if you squint just enough, they just might serve a purpose. Back at the start, I suggested it wasn’t quite clear which side of the traditional/modern divide the story placed itself; without these moments of narrative condescension, its position wouldn’t be quite so ambiguous. The Doctor and the Rutan may conspire to make the modern age seem overbearing and threatening, but Leela’s nastiness and Adelaide’s unrelenting uselessness serve as reminders that ways of preceding times were often far from enticing themselves.

    The totem of those earlier eras is Reuban, and he’s shown up as ridiculous (34), xenophobic (35), ignorant and small-minded (36), petty (37), wilfully obtuse (38) and manipulative (39). Yes, he’s dignified, reassuring and rather lovable, in precisely ways the Doctor isn’t, and scrupulous in a manner that ensures he’s one of the few characters in no way responsible for his own death, but it’s difficult to envisage a brighter future engineered from his worldview. Oddly then, the story suggests no great appetite for the modern world but an acknowledgement that it’s an improvement, by-and-large, on what went before, in much the same way as the Doctor is increasingly being positioned as an occasionally obnoxious, slightly problematic figure who is none-the-less the agent of more good than ill. El Sandifer was right that ‘The Face of Evil’ was ‘the first real step since Planet of the Spiders to present the Doctor as fallible’ (40), but this might be the first story since Pertwee’s departure where the story serves as a reflection on the role of the protagonist.