Season 16, Episode 3 | 4 parts | First broadcast: 28 October – 18 November 1978 | Writer: David Fisher | Director: Darrol Blake
Cast
- Tom Baker as the Doctor
- Mary Tamm as Romana
- John Leeson as the voice of K9
- Beatrix Lehmann as Professor Amelia Rumford
- Susan Engel as Vivien Fay / the Cailleach
Summary
Searching for the third segment of the Key to Time, the Doctor and Romana arrive at an ancient stone circle in the English countryside, where blood sacrifices and animate, blood-drinking stones called the Ogri are being controlled by the ageless, otherworldly Vivien Fay in her guise as a Celtic goddess. As modern archaeologists unwittingly stumble into millennia-old supernatural machinery, the Doctor discovers the true nature of the circle stretches far beyond Earth’s own mythology.
Interesting Facts
- This serial coincided with, and was partly promoted around, Doctor Who’s fifteenth anniversary on air.
- Its second half unusually relocates the action aboard an interstellar prison ship, giving the story an abrupt tonal shift from folk horror to courtroom science fiction.
- The animate megalith monsters, the Ogri, were created using large fibreglass props moved by production crew hidden beneath them.
- It was among the first Doctor Who stories to foreground older female characters, notably the sharp, capable archaeologist Amelia Rumford, in substantial guest roles.
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