YMMV / Doctor Who S26 E3 "The Curse of Fenric"

• Awesome Music: Mark Ayres's softly brooding electronic score invokes a timeless sense of fearful wonder.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: The story completes the epic storyline of the struggle against the dark gods and cosmic forces the Doctor has been playing The Chessmaster against. The memory? Half a second of Sophie Aldred's knickers.
• He Really Can Act: Nicholas Parsons, known primarily as the host of the British version of Sale of the Century, delivers a superb performance as a vicar trying to cope with losing his faith.
• Ho Yay:
  • Two of the only survivors of the serial are a British soldier and a Russian soldier who decide there isn't any point to fighting anymore, and who are last seen with their arms wrapped around each other with big grins on their faces.
  • The novelisation outright states that Millington was in love with Judson, and their sourness towards each other is in part because it ended very badly.
• Improved by the Re-Cut: The story got a home video extended version that recuts the four original episodes into a continuous "movie" format, adds back some deleted scenes, and slightly changes the order of some other scenes. It's generally agreed by fans that the plot is much easier to follow in the recut than in the original episodic version.
• Les Yay:
  • Jean and Phyllis seem rather determined to get Ace to join them early on, and after they become Haemovores they tell her, "You should have come into the water with us. Then we'd have been together." This is another case where the novelisation goes a bit... deeper with things. Not only is there implied to be a past relationship between Millington and Judson as mentioned below, but it's pretty clear in the book that Jean and Phyllis were probably a couple as well, even before their transformation.
  • When Jean and Phyllis tell Miss Hardaker that they're going to Maidens' Point (they had agreed to meet Ace there), she gets angry and says, "I know what girls who go to Maidens' Point have in mind!" You expect her to follow this up with something like "You're going there to meet with boys!" But no, boys aren't mentioned at all in this little lecture; just "girls with evil in their hearts". In the novelisation, by the same author, it's not even subtle:
    ‘I don’t know why I let you talk me into doing these things. You’re always getting me into trouble.’ ‘’Cause it’s a laugh, that’s why. And anyway, if it weren’t for me, you’d still be a baby doll – know what I mean?’ Jean smiled slyly. Phyllis turned bright red and Jean laughed.
  • Ace definitely had a thing for Kathleen. Absolutely no sense of personal space, she's constantly taking time (when they really don't have much to spare) to run off and check on her and the baby... She even refuses to accompany the Doctor into a fight because she wants to stay and take care of them. Keep in mind that this is Ace McShane, who normally refuses to be left behind, hates "dark buildings", and loves a good fight more than anything, turning down the Doctor's request for help in order to barricade herself into a barracks with a sweet, gorgeous, intelligent recently-widowed army wife. Who happens to be her grandmother. And whom she promptly risks her life for to help her escape to London—sending them to her own family, no less.
• Moral Event Horizon: Millington locks two men up in a cellar, leaving them to their Haemovorey death.
• Narm: The scene where Ace shows some leg with a base guard is often greeted with derision due to the fact that Ace does so with a rather confusing monologue about moving faster than light, which is neither particularly effective as a flirting move nor as profound and clever as the writer clearly thinks it is.
• Questionable Casting: Nicholas Parsons was a pretty experienced actor, but hadn't done any TV acting work for over a decade and was best known as a game show host. Consequently, fans raised many an eyebrow when they found out that he'd be playing the plot-important Reverend Wainwright. The director wasn't aware of Parsons' resume prior to recording of the story, but when he noticed Parsons could actually act, a number of scenes were hastily rewritten to give his character more development.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The Haemovore makeup is not only quite...creative, but convincing and effective, too.

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