It was with sharp intake of breath . . .

. . . that the Bishop stole himself and purchased two of the most expensive DVDs, pound for pound, that he is ever likely to shell out for. At ninety-four Australian dollars for the pair, ‘The Seeds of Death’ and ‘The Curse of Fenric’ come to the price of almost a whole season of new Doctor Who. The obsessive instincts of the collector aside, this may not have been the smartest money the Bishop has parted company with.

Your canonical critic had already watched ‘The Seeds of Death’, or done his best to watch it, and knew that it was bogged down by the usual things that bog the Patrick Troughton era down. Still, it has Pat Troughton, and Frazer Hines, and Wendy Padbury, quite possibly wearing a very short skirt. ‘The Curse of Fenric’, until now one of the few Who stories unseen by the Bishop, has Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred. And . . .

The first thing the astute viewer notices about ‘The Curse of Fenric’ is the plot. Much of it centres on ULTIMA, a translating machine a la Alan Turing, and it may well have gained some benefit from having been run through such a device itself. The Bishop does not know if it is extremely difficult to follow or if there is simply nothing to follow, but in either event we might expect the writer to invite us along for the ride, instead of waving manically as he speeds past. Ungainly pace aside, there is a sense that nothing really fits together, of a recipe that lays out the ingredients and neglects to work out how to cook them together.

The performances are, as they unfailingly were during the Sylvester McCoy era, among the worst acting jobs ever committed without irony to the screen. One gets a real sense these poor people thought they were doing adequate work, but an even realer sense that they were hooked on amobarbital at the time. Regards the regulars, the Bishop seems to have kind of gotten used to McCoy, as one gets used to the fact that trains rarely run on time—what can you do? With Aldred the task is much harder; the other cast members may as well be speaking Navaho for all she reacts to what they say. She is the very definition of hopeless, though slightly in her defence Ian Briggs may possibly have written his dialogue in Navaho, then translated it into English via Japanese, for all the sense it makes.

Admittedly, ‘The Curse of Fenric’ isn’t the worst Doctor Who story ever made. But it is still basically quite bad, really quite bad, and the Bishop has always wondered why so many Who fans see it differently. At first he suspected desperation; but now, having waded through it himself, he proposes that what many fans are actually regarding in this story is the large amount of money that seems to have been thrown at it—large by Doctor Who standards, anyway. The locations are pretty and the sets are remarkable by the standards of the show. The costumes and make-up convince, and the two girls playing vampires are unsettling in a Salem’s Lot kind of way—at least until they open their mouths and the Sophie Aldred’s voice comes out. The direction, if such a conceit should matter in Doctor Who beyond the camera facing the right thing at the right time, at least has a sense of élan. So too does the score; though, trying valiantly to tell us what the script hasn’t, it’s too much like a boorish party guest, herding the unwary viewer into a corner to wax overeager on its favourite subject.

As for the story’s supposed sophistication, the Bishop can certainly see that it was trying. But what it mostly amounts to is telling us that Ace hates her mother by telling us she hates her mother; that the vicar has lost his faith by having him say the words, ‘I’ve lost my faith,’; and that the Doctor’s battle with Fenric is a metaphorical chess game by having the two of them play an actual game of chess. Oh, and in case you missed it, the Doctor wears a dark coat. He also wears a nice pair of spats, though the symbolism of those is perhaps less obvious.