'Salem's Lot

‘Salem’s Lot, King’s second novel, is utterly brilliant.  Essentially a book of two halves, it takes the mythos and legends of vampires, and transplants it into a modern (well, the 1970s) small-town America.  As we gradually get to know and love – and hate – the locals, an impending sense of doom gradually creeps over us, as we build up to the explosive final scenes.

As with Carrie, much of this book is concerned with character.  As I said in the introduction to my King Quest, for King, character is all.  It is essential that we have an image in our minds of everything and everyone therein before we can truly engage with, or care about, the way in which the story ends.  ‘Salem’s Lot features a theme King will return to, time and again throughout all of his work – creating a town which lives and breathes, inhabited by an array of characters creating a full spectrum of society.  There are loveable characters, such as kindly teacher Matt Burke, and Eva, trying to manage her B&B, when every room is rented by older men with drink problems, right the way through to the bitter new mother, who beats her child to stop it crying, and the husband who flushes the pills down the toilet and then proceeds to rape his wife every night.  We have deformed men who run the town dump, mocked by everyone.  There are busy-body old women who sit in their houses with binoculars next to them, the phone at their elbow as they eat their meals.  Any human flaw is represented in one or another of these characters, and as such, we identify with their needs, their problems, and so we grow to care about them – even those most despicable of characters can somehow create a sense of empathy.

The main character, though, is The Lot itself.  In long, flowing narrative, King expands on his descriptions at points throughout the novel.  “In the fall, night comes like this in the Lot:” begins one chapter beginning only 100 pages from the end of the story.  As carnage is ensuing, and chaos breaking out, King takes a breath, and reminds us that this town should function like every other.  There are processes, protocols, for this time of year, ones which should be followed to the letter.  But as all hell breaks loose, it seems that only King is interested in these systems.  In ‘Salem’s Lot, one line rings true over all others: “There’s little good in sedentary small towns.  Mostly indifference, spiced with an occasional vapid evil”.  This summarises much of his work perfectly.

In the chapter “The Lot (III)”, we see this darkness within all of the inhabitants.  We are able to glimpse at the horror within each of them.  But we are not asked to judge, as the town does not judge.  We are not reading the book to make fleeting judgements of society.  Rather, we are here to learn.  We are spectators, as we must always be with novels.  We cannot interfere – as with Carrie, we know that many of these people will die.  Most, in fact.  Indeed, the only two who we know definitely survive are “the tall man” and “the boy”, as we see them in the prologue.  Which means that, regardless how these people live their lives, they are doomed.  Over the course of the 598 pages, we are to see the genocide of this small town, eaten apart by its own depravation.  Again, this theme will later be revisited, in stories like The Stand and Under the Dome.  There is little that anyone can do to change these events, although a brave few try.

Ben Mears is the aforementioned ‘Tall Man’, and he is what we presume is intended to be the main character.  Tall, handsome in a far-off way, he is the outsider to the town.  He has his own ghosts, but he is in the Lot to try to cleanse some of those demons.  In the first half of the book, we see his new-found relationship with Susan Norton; pretty, harmless, innocent.  We see him being regarded with curiosity and disdain by the locals.  We see him make new friends, drive around town looking for inspiration for his next book.  He is a writer.

Writers are one of the most frequently revisited characters in all of King’s works.  From Misery to The Shining, principle characters are authors, trying to understand the world around them as it falls apart.  This could be seen as laziness on King’s part – writing what he knows – but instead, he uses these characters as devices to understand the events happening.  Whilst a more literal man, a worker or engineer, would try and fail to appreciate the threat, a character like Ben gets it.  From the beginning, he understands the dangers.  He attempts to excuse it, looking for practical ways in which to test theories, hoping that he is wrong.  But deep down, he knows that he isn’t wrong, and that the whole world has gone to hell.

Another of the atypical Kingsian characters is that of Mark Petrie, the ‘boy’ of the prologue.  The boy is smart, world-wise and likeable.  He is a little effeminate, but deep, and courageous.  He is the sort of boy we all wish we had known – or indeed, been.  His fight with the school bully, Richie Boddin, has the readers praying that he wins.  Bullies like Boddin exist in every walk of life, every environment.  Not necessarily through physical harm, but regardless, they torture and taunt, believing, as Boddin does, that the “ground shook beneath his feet”.  Petrie’s courage seems to know no bounds – he knows what must be done, and so does it.  He visits the Marsten house, with a gun and a stake, and singlehandedly defeats Straker.  His understanding of the world, and his focus, are enviable.  Whilst hogtied in the lair of the vampire king, as it were, he simply thinks.  Practically and methodically, he frees himself, and is able to cripple the bad guy quickly and calmly.  This bravery of the young is revisited by King in multiple stories, from It, The Stand and The Body through to Dreamcatcher and Black House. 

As I mentioned, this is a slow-burner of a book, a book of two halves.  As the darkness is hinted at, but characters go on with their lives unknowingly, we are introduced to each of these characters.  Then the shit hits the fan, and the darkness takes over.  Each and every one of these characters commits the most heinous acts, fulfilling their darkest fantasies.  Characters get their comeuppance so quickly that we can barely breathe before the next murder.  Babies are slaughtered – “one leg stuck up grotesquely, like an inverted exclamation point” - dogs are mutilated, dark rites are performed in the nude with the corpses of children, a gravedigger desecrates a grave and opens a coffin to reveal the stench of death and the hunger of the Undead. 

It is unrelenting, as Ben, Mark and their small band of Van Helsings fight back, having to ram stakes through the hearts of loved ones, until the blood gushes “black in this chancy, lunatic light: heart’s blood”.  As Matt Burke lies bedridden, powerless to move, he sends his crew off to do the work of the Light – a writer, a priest with failing faith, a doctor forced by his own evidence to believe, and a boy who has just seen his parents murdered.  As the crew grows smaller, we cannot help but mourn them.  Each of these characters has shown such courage in the face of evil – or Evil, or EVIL, depending on your perspective.  That Matt dies of a secondary heart attack, rather than in battle, seems unfair.  For Jimmy Cody to plunge down the stairs onto knife blades, having survived the first vampire attack in the morgue, is unjust.  These people simply do not deserve to die. 

Through use of clichés, ones which are openly acknowledged and discussed, the reader is almost on the same page as the characters.  We know the stories of stakes through hearts, garlic, sunlight et al.  As such, Barlow’s ability to always be one step ahead cheats us too.  For such clichés to then be suddenly unfounded – with Barlow’s death, we expect his hordes of Undead to simply fade away, but no such thing happens, and they must be individually vanquished – throws us a curveball and leaves us desperately clinging on to the few facts that we do know for certain.  King has us guessing, right to the last, and that’s refreshing.  He doesn’t simply make do rehashing an old story.  It is fresh, and original, and absolutely horrific.

Carrie

Stephen King’s first release was actually the fourth written.  He binned his only copy, and it was at the bequest of Tabitha, his wife, that he dug it out, wiped it clean, and sent it to the publishers.  The three manuscripts written before Carrie have all, since, been published too.

These are three facts about King’s work that you do not need to know, but are bandied around frequently when talking about Carrie.  

Carrie is a short book, by King’s standards, but sets the template that pretty much every one of his stories will adhere to from there onwards.  It is by no means the best book he has ever written – it is tainted with a touch of inexperience, of an author trying to find his feet which remains apparent in his first few stories, but the Kingisms, the stylistic traits apparent throughout his writing, are there.  He is testing the water, trying new and inventive methods of storytelling.  The story, however, is magnificent.  That of an outcast, a young girl forced through her mother’s religious mania and inexperience of the outside world, who is pushed to the brink by bullying and ridicule, but who contains in her a power strong enough to wreak revenge.  

One of the few failings of the book is his use of ‘extracts’ from other books.  All of these extracts, whether taken from autobiographies of survivors or scientific studies into the phenomenon, are written in King’s own voice.  His standard narrative is a third-person, the reader’s eyes and ears into what is happening, occasionally interrupted by the thoughts of a character in (brackets) and he writes effectively.  However, when he adopts the tone of a professor, or a specialist, one can still sense his tone creeping through.  Use of rough allegories to prove a point do not ring true with the formal format of the text.  In some of his later works, most notably Dolores Claiborne, he writes as a continual monologue from one character’s perspective.  In these works, the format works.  In Carrie, however, and particularly noticeable in the autobiography by Sue Snell, the text reads as though it is spoken.  The reader struggles to believe that a book would ever be published written in such a rambling prosaic style.

Similarly, when the text is written from the perspective of Carrie herself, there are times when her pop culture references do not ring true – in a reference to the game of Monopoly, where she makes a flippant remark about “Lose all your points, go to jail”, it is difficult for a reader to connect this with the image drawn of the eponymous hero/villain of the piece.  A girl denied even a full length mirror – for “vanity” is a sin – and who spends her free time at a sewing machine, with no television, and only the ‘Vic’ for music – exclusively hymns, of course – it is difficult to picture her understanding the rules of a board game like this, which surely Margaret White would liken to Jesus and the cash lenders.  

King’s use of metaphor and simile throughout are painfully well-managed, and the reader is instantly able to draw an image of Carrie White, the victim throughout, with the animal imagery he uses – “a patient ox”, “bovinely” staring about her, “an ape” and, most aptly, like “a hog in the slaughtering pen”.  Indeed, that her downfall and subsequent retaliation comes because of the “pig blood for a pig” seems somewhat portentous.  Throughout the first section of the book, we are drip-fed information – we know who dies, that Sue Snell survives, that there is a ridiculously high body count, that Carrie is responsible – but not the precise how of it all.  

This is precisely where King comes into his own.  This gradual release, this slow-burn of information, begs the reader to keep up with him.  It is how, over the many, many years in which he has been published, King has managed to engage so many committed readers.  What may seem like irrelevant references tend to come back to the fore at some point.  Little of what is written is irrelevant.  In fact, the entire second section of the book – “Prom Night” – mixes events up, chronologically, asking the reader to connect the events.  A second explosion is caused, it turns out, by another gas station exploding, witness accounts show information which, in Carrie’s line of events, hasn’t yet happened.

His use of punctuation may, on one hand, be seen as inexperienced too.  Like with narrative voice, we could be forgiven for thinking that some of his sentence structures are somewhat slapdash.  But it is in these rushed, flowing accounts, post-modernist in style, that really create a sense of justice for Carrie’s actions.  As they are throwing sanitary towels at her, chanting “plug it up!”, Carrie shrinks into herself, reliving “All those years...” and, for two pages, there is simply a list of events, of horrific incidents of bullying and victimising, listed one by one in vague detail, but precise enough for us to want to reach out and hug her, much like Miss Desjardin.  

A key question, one which is morally ambiguous, is who exactly the ‘villain’ of the piece is.  In the clique world of High School, there is always an outcast – usually ungainly, unattractive, whose habits or hobbies make them socially reprehensible.  In Carrie, this is Carrie White, whose oppressive mother has drilled all of her disgusting, religious xenophobia into her daughter – all those who do not follow her religion (one so vehemently against everything that they no longer go to any church, as their faith is not devout enough) are sinners.  This means that everyone is bathed in sin, and hold no hope of salvation.  The world is a corrupt pit of iniquity, deviance and corruption.  So solid are her beliefs that Carrie has no friends, no one to talk to.  She cannot socialise, interact, function, in society.  Margaret White is so steadfast in her beliefs that she emotionally, and physically, abuses her daughter frequently to scourge the sin from within.  So thorough is her mother’s negligence that she is unaware of menstruation, and the book opens with the sanitary towel incident as she screams that she is “bleeding to death”.  It is painful to read, impossible to imagine, yet King manages to balance this evocation of negligence with the disgust felt by the teacher.  Carrie is a victim, not a villain, in every sense of the word.  

Margaret White is presumably the villain, the evil mother whose own religious ideals are what force her to act as she does.  That said, as we find out moments before her death, she was a victim of rape, resultant in her husband drinking.  Her fears of nightclubs and bars, hothouses of iniquity, are, to some respect, justifiable.  Whilst her treatment of her daughter is abhorrent, one almost pities her, seeing her behaviour as a method of coping with what the Lord has decided are her sins.  To have been given a daughter as a result of the forced sexual act, but one cursed with the gift of telekinesis, is a bitter pill to swallow.

Chris Hargensen is likewise villainously drawn, an evil caricature of the Popular Girl at school, vindictive and nasty, and disgusted by anyone from outside of her social sphere.  That she is in a relationship with Billy Nolan, a sadist of the highest order who, for kicks, drives his car, “his God”, into stray dogs, is what makes her also pitiful.  He is a despicable creature, a woman-beater, high school dropout, who lives fast and plays hard.  It is his idea to bleed the pigs at the farm – “pig blood for a pig” – yet he doesn’t even know Carrie White.  Indeed, he doesn’t even care who he hurts.  He feels no remorse over the news that the entire town is being destroyed around him – he even hopes that those he hangs around with get caught because they were stupid enough to leave finger prints on the buckets.  That he and Chris die in his ‘God’, his car, whilst attempting to run Carrie down in the parking lot is fitting – the bumper, which has so often dripped with the blood of the innocent, ploughing into the front of the bar would no doubt seem a fair act to Margaret White.

The only virtuous, utterly innocent person in all of this is Tommy Ross.  Tommy is created as a wholesome, bright, Popular boy, one willing to extend a caring hand to those in need.  He is willing, at Sue’s request for her atonement, to take Carrie to the prom, to forsake his loved one to make another human being feel accepted.  As we see, through his eyes, Carrie’s acceptance and then her appearance for the dance, we feel elated.  Whilst we know what is to come, that she feels happiness, however briefly, touches the reader.  As he realises that she was “far from unattractive”, it pulls on our heartstrings.  It is therefore a bitter irony that the first person to be injured and killed – although not by Carrie herself, importantly – is Tommy, as the bucket falls, the rim splitting his head open before fire engulfs his unconscious body.

The event, the dousing of blood, is one of those truly iconic moments, one which almost everyone knows of – in De Palma’s film, the image is truly terrifying, but in the book, it is made so much worse.  So much more real.  And this is because of the different perspectives.  At first, we see nothing.  It is told to us from Chris’ perspective, a jolt on the wire, the silence, and then the laughter.  Next is a witness, telling of the laughter, and then the fear.  The image of Carrie, coated in blood, eyes closed, before opening them and creating a ludicrous yet horrifying image, the whites of her eyes standing proud from her slicked face.  The description of the stench.  And finally, Carrie tells us from her perspective.  The pent up ridicule, the thought that they ‘got her’ again.  What strikes me about this scene is that, again, it would seem appropriate to Margaret White – she has been espousing the virtues of sins “drowned in the blood of a repentant heart” from the beginning.  

Margaret’s death is almost touching – despite the years of pain and misery Carrie has suffered at her hands, and the fact that she has just buried a knife up to the handle into her shoulder, she elects to allow her mother a soft passing, intoning “slower...and slower...” as her heart stops beating.  This is a far cry from the martyrdom and crucifixion in the film, but somehow it feels more apt, I think.  When Carrie begins to think of her gift, unsure of the origin of her telekinesis, she makes a decision – whether it is from “the lord of light or the lord of darkness, she did not care which.”  

The book starts and, excluding the faux reports in the epilogue, ends with blood.  Carrie’s telekinetic powers realising their full potential with the onset of puberty at the opening, and her death, covered in the blood of the innocent, and “now much of it was her own” blood, leave a nasty taste in the mouth... and that’s just how it should be.

Next Time – Vampires and authors in ‘Salem’s Lot

An Introduction

Stephen King is easily one of the most prolific and successful writers of our, or any other, generation.  With almost 80 completed works, and no doubt many more already roughly penned, his talent for producing stories which chill and excite, terrify and confuse, is inestimable.  Many of his books, novels and short stories have made their way onto the big and small screen.  Where film and TV adaptations do not always work, however, is in the portrayal of the central characters.  

For King, character is everything.  Regardless of their motives, and how despicable many can be, each one of his characters is given a voice which allows them to jump out of the page, searing themselves into our cerebrum, allowing us to truly understand them, and therefore, to judge them.  In film, it becomes impossible to fully appreciate this, as the key tool he uses 

(can you call it a tool? sure...)

is the use of indented thought, interrupting the text within brackets.  Often, the narrative is interrupted by a character’s attempts to justify their own modus operandi, and their actions, in such a way that we truly get them.  We can either like them or loathe them, but it is due to this device, rather than broad strokes with either a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ brush.  Short of using first person narrative, a tool rarely used in cinema as it can be distracting and frustrating, there is no way to get this across to the viewer.

Another key character, in every one of King’s tales, is the location itself.  This creation of back story, of specific locale, is one of the most important features of his writing.  Castle Rock, Derry and the outlying provincial towns are the specific location of almost every one of these stories, and as such, as we progress through them, it is impossible not to visualise King’s Bangor, Maine, as a true place, where each of these characters, with all of their baggage and issues, live each day of their lives, waiting for the ‘next big thing’ to happen.

People say that they prefer films to books – as an English teacher, this disgusts me to my core, but as a fan of Stephen King, it is even more fundamentally shocking.  Whilst his writing can be challenging, there is little that can be more rewarding than ploughing through one of his epics, like The Stand or Under the Dome, or indeed the entire Dark Tower series, and feeling the characters, the texts, the events come to life in your own mind’s eye.

Much of King’s genius stems from the fact that he is able to write such cleverly interconnected tales.  He spins delicate webs which one cannot help but get caught in, and then, much later on, revisits these strands, these characters.  A murderer from one novel is the ‘boogeyman’ story told to terrify children in another.  An incident involving a malevolent creature in one book reappears, however fleetingly, in another, as the graffiti ‘Pennywise Lives’ is seen.  Never has his work been more meta-textual, however, than in the Dark Tower books, where, over seven epic novels, numerous characters, events and places are revisited, even including an author by the name of Stephen King trying to figure out the ending to a story, as the power of the Dark Tower forces King to complete its tale.

So, that’s my justification for this mission of mine.  His work has influenced my life for nearly 2 decades, and I have read everything he has ever written, as and when I could get my hands on it – some, grubby second-hand copies, smelling of stale tobacco and arriving by air mail from America.  Others, like my newest additions, pristine, un-thumbed, until I buried my head into them and devoured every word.  

To start from the very beginning – from Carrie, no less – through to his latest release – 11/22/63 at the time of writing, but two books due for release very soon, including a sequel to The Shining and a story set in a theme park – and trace the way in which his genius has grown, his style has matured, and his references have become more and more relevant as he adds to his bibliography, is a challenge which I cannot wait to embrace.

The Curse of Fenric (Special Edition)

The Curse of Fenric – Special Edition is something which I have always found to be a bit of a troublesome prospect.  For some reason – probably the purist in me – I generally prefer the original version of things.  Directors’ cuts and the like have never overly appealed to me, usually because I find them too self-congratulatory – Avatar, for example, or the god-awful new versions of the original Star Wars movies.  Often, they are simply money-spinners – Lucas’ epics, for instance, are now incredibly rare in their former glory, instead only being made available in the newer reboots, with new-fangled FX and sound.  Not that there is anything wrong with that, per se.  Only that I personally feel it is robbing future generations of the magic of the original movies. 

Thankfully, The Curse of Fenric – Special Edition doesn’t do the same.  For one thing, the original is still readily available on the DVD release, sitting in the foreground on Disk 1, where it belongs, much like the SE versions of Enlightenment and Planet of Fire.  Secondly, and perhaps surprisingly, this new version is brilliant.  Absolutely fantastic, in fact.  Rather than working to the detriment of the original, it builds upon what was already a firm base – probably Sylvester McCoy’s greatest work as the Doctor, in fact – and enriches the story.  Many of the additional shots are barely noticeable; a lingering shot on Parsons’ priest here, an extra shot of the Haemovores there.  Rather than distracting from the action, they genuinely do build on the tension.  The third thing about SEs in general is that they take what originally happened in an episodic format, and transfer it into what is essentially a movie.  Sometimes this works, and sometimes it doesn’t.  In Planet of Fire, for example, I didn’t feel that it worked.  Here, however, it genuinely does feel epic enough to be pulled off.  There is enough gothic horror, tense military sequences, multi-lingual exposition and, most importantly, terrific performances to create an outstanding piece of Doctor Who history.

Enough of that though.  When I bought the DVD upon its release, I watched the episodic format, for the first time in years.  Since then, I have rewatched this version of the serial 3 or 4 times, but never brought myself to slip the second disk in.  And what a fool I was.  When I was younger, this serial terrified me.  And it still has that same effect now.  The Haemovores emerging from the sea made me nauseous, as the pure virgins gently beckon the soldier to his early grave.  The floating corpse by the longboat, suddenly opening his eyes.  Judson stepping up from his wheelchair, eyes glowing.  Each of these are outstanding moments of horror, which thrilled and horrified me. 

From the outset of the episode, and the arrival of the Doctor and Ace, it is evident that something is amiss.  The Doctor is still more aloof than usual, as he considers everything – as far as the Cartmel master plan is concerned, this is the perfect serial to watch to see how this idea came to the foreground.  The moment in which he takes complete control of the soldiers who surround them, and then completing the necessary paperwork in front of Judson and Nurse Crane, is brilliant, and always makes me laugh.  However, despite the obvious design being to push the Doctor into darker waters, as a more manipulative and secretive character, this story is predominantly one about Ace.  Now, the Seventh Doctor has never been my favourite.  Entertaining, yes – but I never felt that McCoy had the gravitas to pull off some of the more heavyweight stories, and yet the scripts for his more comedic serials didn’t give him the chance to thrive either.  Likewise, I had always found Ace to be a one-dimensional caricature of the hip, street-wise 80s child that she represented.  Sophie Aldred was good, but again much of the material didn’t help her to thrive.  Here, though, she shines.  The inner aggression, darkened eyes, sultry, sexually-aware teenager has the chance to make a difference, and to truly interact with the plot.  It was during Season 26 that both Aldred and McCoy really started to get into their stride, with better scripts allowing stronger performances from each of them.  

The basic premise is that an evil entity, Fenric, lost a game of chess to the Doctor, leading to his permanent exile from the real world and imprisonment within an ancient flask.  The Doctor is entirely aware that they will have to rematch, and decides that the 1940s is exactly the time to do so – with Ace in tow as one of the many Wolves of Fenric, descendants of the Vikings and puppets to his will.  Other Wolves include Captain Soren, Dr. Judson, Reverend Wainwright and Commander Millington.  Each of these characters plays some role in the protection and release of Fenric, some knowingly, others unknowingly. 

What is most interesting is that each of these characters is so well-rounded.  In most serials of Doctor Who, you have a lead character that is given emphasis – Mavic Chen, Tobias Vaughn, Professor Travers, Count Scaroth, Sharaz Jek and the like – in addition to the Doctor and his companions, but often most other characters are broadly drawn.  In The Curse of Fenric, though, every character is given these extra dimensions, this subtlety to their character, yet not weakening the plot or the pace at which it is told.  Indeed, it is testament to McCoy and Aldred that in such a strong supporting cast, they are not overshadowed; rather, they thrive on the cast working with them.  

 

Dinsdale Landen’s portrayal of Judson is spot on.  The disillusionment he suffers as a result of his accident is excellent, as is his loathing of his reliance upon Nurse Crane.  The scenes between him and Alfred Lynch’s Millington are equally superb, with an underlying homoerotic tension between the two which is palpable, as is the references to Millington’s responsibility in the accident which led to Judson being bound by his own “chains”.  Whilst Lynch can, at times, seem a little camp and overtly ‘nasty’, this drive works in the favour of the character – he is a man so driven by purely selfish means that he doesn’t care who he has to shove out of his way to get them.  That Fenric possesses Judson, rather than Millington, is an excellent touch, as we see that all of his drive was for nothing, as Fenric could not care less about Millington.  Indeed, the only weaknesses within the cast are Jean and Phyllis, whose 1940s lingo is painful – one more ‘baby doll’ and I may well have thrown the remote through the screen. 

These conversations are equally the main weakness within Briggs’ writing.  Another weakness is the rather old-fashioned discussion about good and evil, and how Fenric is, in fact, “an evil from the dawn of time”.  Through this, it reinforces the idea of the Doctor as Time’s Champion, but it simply doesn’t ring true with the mythos of the show up to that point, and indeed since then.  The other scripting weakness is the scene in which Ace flirts with the soldier on guard.  Her lack of lyrical fluidity had been reinforced since her introduction in Dragonfire.  She is rarely capable of stringing together anything of beauty, rather using words like “ace!” and “brilliant” to show her appreciation of the amazing, dreadful and wonderful things she sees.  So to hear her whispering things about “undercurrents” and the like felt rather out of place with her characterisation up to this point.  This may be as a result that, despite being one of the most terrifying episodes of the serial, it is, after all, a children’s TV show, and so Ace talks with a childlike poetry which does not do justice to the character.

Of course, that is all simply nit-picking for faults.  Overall, Briggs’ script rings true in almost every way.  Hardakre’s disgust at the wanton nymphs living with her, the priest’s difficulty to with his own faith, Ace’s “tell me!” speech, are all incredibly realistic and effective, adding a sense of urgency to proceedings, as we are desperate to discover how this game will play out.  The most powerful moment in the piece, however, must be the sequence between Fenric and the Doctor, where he must destroy Ace’s faith in him to win.  The cold, cruel uttering of “kill her” is breathtaking, even when you know his reasons for doing so, and the gradual destruction of Ace’s faith, through the reference to her being an “emotional cripple” and a “social misfit”.  It’s a heart-breaking moment, and one delivered perfectly.

Faith is the predominant idea to be criticised by this piece, and the faults that lie therein.  That a priest can lose his faith during the time of war so readily, and that it takes such harsh words to push Ace away from the Doctor, highlights that faith, no matter how strong, can readily be destroyed by any person wishing to push hard enough.  Nicholas Parsons is something of a revelation, despite evidently being cast purely to cater to J N-T’s fixation with celebrity cameos.  He delivers his lines, and performs, like a man wracked with guilt and haunted by the acts of evil which surround him – the central theme of the piece. 

The other theme is that of maturity – the events which lead to a person’s maturation.  Ace has grown hugely since her introduction in Dragonfire, with events affecting her in a number of ways.  The throwaway reference to Ghost Light, and the hatred she feels for her mother, are pushed to show how she is able to mature into the young woman who refers to herself as no longer “a little girl”, able to use her womanly wiles to get what she needs.  The evacuated ‘children’, Jean and Phyllis, similarly, are shown to mature, as a direct result of going against Hardakre’s advice to avoid losing their innocence.  By entering the water, they lose all sense of innocence and are consumed by desire.

All told, this serial simply further emphasises the tragedy that the scrapping of Doctor Who happened at all.  Whilst the series had waned somewhat in the years up to Season 26, due for the most part to weaker scripting and stunt casting, McCoy’s Doctor, and Aldred’s Ace, had really begun to come into their own with the parts, and the show was beginning to find its feet.  Had we not been given the poorer additions to the series, like Delta and the Bannermen and Paradise Towers, then who knows where the series would have gone?  If this is any signpost to the future which never happened, then it surely would have been fantastic.