When a tussle with a sonic time scan leads the TARDIS back to Earth, The Doctor and Leela discover strange happenings in a nearby lab run by the secretive Dr Fendelman. By night an eight million yearold skull glos with a devastating power, leaving destruction in its wake. Already two people lie dead in mysterious circumstances.
The Doctor is appalled. Can the Fendahl, the creature from his childhood fairytales, really be emerging from its twelve million year hibernation? And if so, can he stop its energy-draining progress through the Earth’s population? The very safety of the planet depends upon it…
NOTES
This story introduced a new version of Leela’s famous leatheroutfit. It was noticeably lighter in colour than the last. The new version was created because the original was wearing out. Furthermore, it had caused Louise Jameson some problems because it was a leotard. The new version, by contrast, was actually a dress. Producer Graham Williams had also instructed the designer, Amy Roberts, to make Louise look sexier in the new outfit. The original leotard appears briefly at the end of Episode 4 (mainly to facilitate the punchline to a joke in episode 1) and would return in the next story, The Sun Makers, before the new version came back for Leela’s final two appearences.
K9 appears only briefly, in the opening and closing TARDIS scenes, he is suffering from circuitry corrosion and stays in the TARDIS. Image of the Fendahl had been written before it was known K9 would be joining the series on a regular basis. John Leeson was not recruited to voice the character, who had no dialogue.
According to the 2009 DVD release documentary After Image, Anthony Read was brought on as script or to help in the transition during Robert Holmes’ departure from the role. Only Holmes received screen credit.
This was the first television work Wanda Ventham had done since the birth of her son, Benedict Cumberbatch, the previous year.
Louise Jameson claims the reason her hair is done up in this episode is because a BBC hairstylist had mistakenly cut six inches off her hair just prior to filming. Her final scene in the story was filmed some five weeks after this incident, by which time her hair had grown long enough to allow her to wear it down for a single scene.
