Line #74 Recap/DoctorWhoS15E3ImageOfTheFendahl


1	[[WMG:[[center:[-''[[Series/DoctorWho Doctor Who]]'' [[Recap/DoctorWho recap index]]\
2	'''Fourth Doctor Era'''\
3	'''Season 15:''' [[Recap/DoctorWhoS15E1HorrorOfFangRock 1]] \| [[Recap/DoctorWhoS15E2TheInvisibleEnemy 2]] \| '''3''' \| [[Recap/DoctorWhoS15E4TheSunMakers 4]] \| [[Recap/DoctorWhoS15E5Underworld 5]] \| [[Recap/DoctorWhoS15E6TheInvasionOfTime 6]]\
4	'''[[Recap/DoctorWhoS14E1TheMasqueOfMandragora <<< Season 14]]''' \| '''[[Recap/DoctorWhoS16E1TheRibosOperation Season 16 >>>]]''']]-]]]
5	!Image of the Fendahl
6	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/fendahl_7543.jpg]]
7	[[caption-width-right:350:"[[WebVideo/WhatTheFuckIsWrongWithYou ...I think we're all going to Hell, now...]]"]]
8	->Written by Creator/ChrisBoucher\
9	Directed by George Spenton-Foster\
10	'''Production code:''' 4X\
11	'''Air dates:''' 29 October - 19 November 1977\
12	'''Number of episodes:''' 4
13
14	->''"What are you exactly -- some sort of wandering Armageddon peddler?"''
15	-->-- '''Adam Colby''' to the Doctor; not too far off the mark, really...
16
17	JustForFun/TheOneWith salt.
18	----
19
20	A Doctor Fendelman is studying a human skull which archaeologists estimate to be 12 million years old -- far older than it can conceivably be -- when the Doctor and Leela arrive. Fendelman is using a "Time Scanner" to study the skull, and it is this which has not only drawn the TARDIS to the lab, but also causing the skull to glow with power every time it is activated. His snarky colleagues (including Creator/BenedictCumberbatch's mum) are stumped as to how the skull can even exist.
21
22	The Doctor believes that the skull is in fact a relic of the Fendahl: a prehistoric creature that feeds off life force and is a legendary evil from early Time Lord legend. He's proved right when a local cult are transformed into Fendahleen, while Doctor Fendelman's partner, Maximillian Stael, is revealed to have been working with precisely this aim. One scientist, Adam Colby, has escaped the influence of the Fendahl and he, the TARDIS crew and some locals try to use rock salt to defeat the Fendahl. The Doctor [[LeaveBehindAPistol leaves Stael a gun when he's frozen in place by the Fendahl]], so he can [[BetterToDieThanBeKilled kill himself rather than]] [[FateWorseThanDeath be taken over]].
23
24	The Doctor explains that this fatal salt weakness of the Fendahl inspired a folk memory of throwing salt over one's shoulder for good luck. And that much of humanity's race memory ''might'' have to do with the Fendahl, and that the skull ''might'' be related to Time Lord crimes on the briefly visited Fifth Planet, and that Doctor Fendelman ''may'' be the descendant of an age-old evolutionary scheme to produce the perfect minion, but it could all be a coincidence, really. Also, Thea is painted gold as she becomes the Fendahl Core and starts floating about the manor in a ghost-like way while backed by pentagrams.
25
26	The Fendahl are defeated, and the Doctor throws the skull into a nearby supernova before getting down to the business of repairing K9.
27
28	!!Tropes
29
30	* AbnormalAmmo: TruthInTelevision variant — Tyler loads his shotgun with rock salt (in real life used as a painful but non-lethal alternative) at the Doctor and his grandmother's urging, which successfully takes down the Fendahleen.
31	* AdmiringTheAbomination: The Doctor amuses himself when he sees the skull for the first time.
32	** {{Subverted\|Trope}} later on when the Doctor is examining the dead Fendahleen. He comments that it is beautiful, but when Leela questions this he reveals he was actually talking about the way he killed it.
33	* AncientAstronauts: Fendelman thinks this is what the skull is. It's a litte [[EldritchAbomination more]] [[SealedEvilInACan complicated.]]
34	* ApocalypseMaiden: Thea Ransome, although most of the associated emotional turmoil is absent simply because Adam Colby never really figures out what is going on.
35	* BatmanGrabsAGun: The Doctor shoots a Fendahleen with a shotgun. Loaded with rock salt, granted — but he didn't have any way of knowing the load had been changed, and it was still a lethal shot.
36	* BigBad: The Fendahl.
37	* BreakingTheFourthWall: After Adam Colby leaves to help Mrs. Tyler with the salt as ordered by the Doctor, the Doctor turns to stare directly into the camera and as if addressing the audience says "Time's running out".
38	* BritsLoveTea: Specifically, tea and fruitcake bring Mrs. Tyler back from the brink.
39	* ChekhovsGun: Mrs Tyler's protective charms are filled with rock salt.
40	* TheChosenOne: Thea, in a very twisted way.
41	* {{Cult}}: Led by Stael to summon the Fendahl. Stael thinks it'll make him a god. His followers seem to know much more.
42	* DeadpanSnarker: Adam deploys considerable more wit and sarcasm than his colleagues.
43	-->'''Adam:''' ''(turning around to see Stael with a gun)'' Dr. Fendelman, I think you have an industrial relations problem.
44	-->'''Adam:''' Yes it's been mentioned. (when accused of nearly getting people killed)
45	* DescriptionCut: Leela assures Jack that the Doctor can help resolve the brewing situation.
46	-->'''Leela:''' Oh, he's very difficult sometimes, but he has great knowledge and... gentleness.
47	-->'''Doctor:''' ''(imprisoned in a storage room and kicking a box in frustration)''
48	* DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu: The Doctor blowing up the Fendahleen and throwing the Fendahl into a supernova.
49	* EldritchAbomination: The Fendahl. Everyone who saw it died of fright, and that was only a crippled ghost of its true self 12 million years dead, which had been manipulating human lineages for millennia to ensure its release. In the Franchise/DoctorWhoExpandedUniverse, the Time Lords deliberately created a predator capable of feeding off the Fendahl — the Memeovore, or Devourer of Concept, a malign void which could reach across time and space to feed on the stuff of thought and hungered to [[OmnicidalManiac devour all eternity]], from the Big Bang to the end of time. Those who looked at it saw an endless procession of grotesque images, as their mind struggled to comprehend the incomprehensible. [[TooDumbToLive And then the Time Lords released it to use for warfare]].
50	** Not everyone who saw the Fendahl was lucky enough to die of fright. The Core transformed some of them into Fendahleen (the other components that, together with the Core, make up the Fendahl). The leader of the cultists who completed the process of creating the Core had worse luck than that. He was still alive, still human, and seeming still sane... but what he saw when he looked into the eyes of the Fendahl caused him to request the means to kill himself. How bad it was is evidenced by the Doctor giving him those means.
51	* EvilIsNotAToy: Stael thinks he can use the Fendahl to become all-powerful. It doesn't quite work.
52	* FamilyUnfriendlyViolence: The script concerns the Doctor fighting a manifestation of the death wish itself, with the characters inside the siege struggling with despair and suicidal ideation as a result of its effects, and the Doctor defeats it by blasting it in the face with a shotgun. There's a definite attempt to avoid showing the audience anything too grisly but it somehow makes it [[NothingIsScarier even worse]].
53	* {{Filler}}: [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools Put to chilling effect.]]
54	* GoalOrientedEvolution: The skull from the Core of the Fendahl had, over millions of years, subtly altered a life form on the planet it landed on until that life form was suitable for creating a new Fendhal and had a subgroup manipulated into actually creating it. The human who learned he and his species existed only to spawn the rebirthed Fendahl was not happy.
55	* GothicHorror: This was the last time the series did this before being LighterAndSofter under Graham Williams.
56	* GreenRooming: Introduced in the previous story, RobotBuddy K9 promptly breaks down for the duration of the story, as the script for this one was written before K9 was added to the cast.
57	* HurlItIntoTheSun: How the Doctor eventually disposes of the Fendahl Skull.
58	* HypnoticEyes: Sorta. Looking into the Fendahl's eyes makes escape impossible.
59	* ImADoctorNotAPlaceholder: During a discussion, Fendelman presses Thea for her thoughts on the skull's implications.
60	-->'''Thea:''' I'm a technician, not a human paleontologist.
61	* JoggersFindDeath: Played with. A hiker gets murdered by the Fendahleen, then his body gets found by a man walking a dog.
62	* LeaveBehindAPistol: The Doctor leaves Stael when he's frozen in place by the Fendahl, so he can [[BetterToDieThanBeKilled kill himself rather than ]][[FateWorseThanDeath be taken over]].
63	** The original script called for an on-camera suicide.
64	* LifeEnergy: The Fendahl consumes "the full spectrum of Life Energy", causing rapid decay of the corpses it leaves.
65	* MadeOfIndestructium: The skull, although the Doctor seems confident that tossing it into a supernova will finally kill it. ''ExpandedUniverse proves him wrong.''
66	* MeaningfulName: Dr. Fendelman, who has no idea that it is his hidden genetic destiny to aid an ancient and malevolent life force known as the Fendahl; the name is an in-story indication that the Fendahl has been meddling with humanity for a long time.
67	--> '''Dr. Fendelman:''' Fendel-man -- man of the Fendahl! I have been used! You have been used! ''MANKIND HAS BEEN USED!!''
68	* OmnicidalManiac: The Fendahl.
69	* PaperKeyRetrievalTrick: Used to escape the store cupboard.
70	* PivotalWakeup: Thea after turning into the [[HumanoidAbomination Fendahl Core]].
71	* PowerGlows: The Fendahl skull glows when scanned.
72	* PrettyLittleHeadshots: Dr. Fendelman has the world's tiniest bullet hole in his head after getting shot.
73	* PstandardPsychicPstance: Thea assumes this stance everytime she connects to the Fendahl.
74	* PsychicPowers: Mrs Tyler has some psychic powers, due to living on a time fissure for all of her life.
75	* SaltSolution: Salt is deadly to the Fendahl, and that effectiveness is — in-universe — the origin of the superstition that throwing salt over your shoulder wards off evil.
76	* SealedEvilInACan: The Fendahl.
77	* SecretCircleOfSecrets: A local black magic cult learn of the coming of the Fendahl and the leader believes that he can control it and use it to dominate others. This ends badly.
78	* ShirtlessScene: Limited -- Adam Colby somehow manages to completely unbutton his shirt while tied to a pillar.
79	* ShoutOut: Creator/ChrisBoucher took inspiration from the work of archaeologist Louis Leakey, who had been excavating human remains for many years until his death in 1972. Boucher named Colby's dog Leakey as a tribute to him, although he later realised that people would miss the reference and assume the name came because "he pissed all over everything!" (Creator/TerranceDicks' subsequent novelisation of the serial in fact gives both reasons for the name.)
80	* SilentAntagonist: The god-like entity of the Fendahl does not speak because Creator/ChrisBoucher decided that one could not write dialogue for God.
81	* SmartBall: There's a funny bit where Leela translates a string of the Doctor's {{Technobabble}} into plain English for the sake of the guest character he's failing to communicate with. This involves her displaying technical knowledge about chemistry jargon that she doesn't show again.
82	* SoundOnlyDeath: The Doctor hands Stael a pistol, and heads to the stairs. When he reaches the top, we hear a single gunshot. The Doctor looks back, then rushes out, and the shot cuts to Stael lying dead. The next time Stael is mentioned it's a reference to his suicide.
83	* SpeaksFluentAnimal: The Doctor bids a herd of cows good morning and asks them if they know where the {{Macguffin}} is. If his claims in later stories that he can understand any animal are true, they don't have anything useful to tell him.
84	* StarfishAliens: The Fendahl: a hive-like, partially noncorporeal alien which included a possessed skull, a floating golden woman and invisible life-sucking slug things amongst its aspects.
85	* StickEmUp: Jack Tyler threatens Leela with a walking stick.
86	* TarotTroubles: While waiting for the Doctor to return from a fact-gathering excursion, Mrs Tyler does a tarot reading, and is disturbed when [[TarotMotifs The Tower]] (which depicts a tower being violently destroyed by lightning, and is considered a bad omen) turns up in the spread.
87	* ThirteenIsUnlucky: The ritual requires thirteen people participating: the Fendahl Core and twelve Fendahleen.
88	* TimeAbyss: The Fendahl might not qualify, considering that it has technically been dead for 12 million years.
89	* TomatoInTheMirror: Thea Ransome, briefly, before she is chloroformed by Max Stael.
90	-->'''Thea:''' (''hysterical'') You haven't asked who planned it, Adam. ''I'' planned it -- I did!
91	* {{Ultraterrestrials}}: The Fendahl. Its skull crashed on Earth long before humans existed and psychically guided human evolution for thousands of years so that it could have a suitable host.
92	* TheVoiceless: The Fendahl does not speak. Creator/ChrisBoucher had been similarly resistant to writing lines for [[Recap/DoctorWhoS14E4TheFaceOfEvil Xoanon]] on the grounds that one could not write dialogue for God.
93	* WasOnceAMan: Thea gets turned into the Fendahl core, and the acolytes end up becoming Fendahleen, though Maximillian throws a wrench in the works by committing suicide before he can transform.
94	* WeaksauceWeakness: Rock salt is deadly to Fendahleen.
95	* WhamLine: The Doctor assess the situation:
96	-->There are four thousand million people here on this planet and, if I'm right, within a year there'll be one. Just one.
97	* WholePlotReference: The story's plot is a combination of two famous works by Creator/NigelKneale -- ''Franchise/{{Quatermass}} and the Pit'' (unnaturally ancient artifact reveals dark secrets about alien manipulation of humanity) and ''Film/TheStoneTape'' (scientific experiments in a creepy old house awaken an EldritchAbomination).
98	%% * TheXOfY

Context Recap / DoctorWhoS15E3ImageOfTheFendahl