Season 15, Episode 3 | 4 parts | First broadcast: 29 October – 19 November 1977 | Writer: Chris Boucher | Director: George Spenton-Foster
Cast
- Tom Baker as the Doctor
- Louise Jameson as Leela
- Wanda Ventham as Thea Ransome
- Denis Lill as Dr Fendelman
Summary
Drawn to a remote English priory by a reading twelve million years too old on the TARDIS instruments, the Doctor and Leela uncover a research team’s discovery of an impossibly ancient human skull that is the last relic of the Fendahl, an ancient entity of pure entropy said to have been destroyed by the Time Lords in Earth’s deep prehistory. As a local coven and Dr Fendelman’s obsessive research team unwittingly conspire to help the Fendahl reconstitute itself through the unfortunate Thea Ransome, the Doctor races to stop the resurrection of a being the Time Lords considered too dangerous to exist.
Interesting Facts
- The Fendahl is portrayed as a creature so dangerous that even the Time Lords feared it, one of relatively few classic-series threats framed as exceeding Gallifreyan power.
- The story blends science fiction with occult horror, folding in a rural witches’ coven alongside its archaeological and alien plot threads.
- Its title skull prop and the folkloric idea that human evolution itself was shaped by the Fendahl’s influence gave the story unusually cosmic, mythic stakes.
- Writer Chris Boucher, who had earlier created Leela, wrote this as his third and final Doctor Who television script.
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