The Stones Of Blood: Ranking - 154

    The Stones Of Blood

(Season 16, Dr 4 with Romana I, 28/10/1978-18/11/1978, producer: Graham Williams, script editor: Anthony Read, writer: David Fisher, director: Darrol Blake)

Rank: 154

'I know you've been watching a lot of news reports about invasions of aliens so I thought I would get you away from the television and out here camping in a field far away from anything. What? No those aren't Zarbi, they're just normal ants. That sound in the sky? It's not a Slitheen spaceship, it's a plane. The spider in your sleeping bag? That doesn't have enough eyes to be the Racnoss it's just a spider. No come on now, don't be silly, that can't be a werewolf howling - they only seem to be in Scotland for some reason. Honest, there's nothing here in this field except us. some bugs and some ancient standing stones that have been here for centuries...Wait...Aagh!...'

 

 More antics with the ‘key to time’ with the Doctor investigating ‘The Stones of Blood’. Which sounds like a medical procedure, but don’t worry it isn’t. And while fans often call it the ‘gruesome horror’ one of season 16, the title’s actually a joke: there’s no blood on screen...because the standing stones drink it all dry! Yes, they find human plasma a tasty treat but don’t like leaving a mess so this story has about the most composed de-composed chewed up bodies you’ll ever see as the Ogri don’t like leaving a drop. Wait, did I say standing stones? I meant...walking standing stones of course. Only DW would come up with a horror story about blood that doesn’t show blood and standing stones that walk. This is a story that’s always had a bit of mixed reputation, most fans enjoying Tom Baker clashing horns with distinguished actress Beatrix Lehmann and not the horror moments involving the ancient monuments coming to life or the ‘comedy’ bits involving the spaceship court and the Cessair of Diplos. I confess I’m quite the other way around. Standing stones that move are totally the sort of thing DW should be doing and while the props aren’t that convincing when moving they’re pretty impressive standing still. The big horror scene in the opening, a rare case of DW killing off innocent bystanders who are recognisable normal people rather than mad professors or comedy yokels, is really well done, making you think this story is going to be scarier and more horrifying than it turns out to be. Goodness knows how DW got permission to set their fakes up amongst the Rollright stones in Oxfordshire either (though the setting is Boscome Moor, Cornwall confusingly) but they did – and they blend in with the landscape so well they fooled more than a few visitors to the site when they were left there between shots. There is a genuine legend surrounding them, which I wish the script made more play of, that its impossible to count the stones because they keep changing in number when you’re not looking – so maybe they are Ogri after all? While the rather wacky Human Vivien turns out to be an alien in a twist everyone saw coming (|I mean, ET is less alien than she is in human form) more interesting is her background as a criminal on the run from the Megara, balls of light who are pedantic justice enthusiasts, kind of the Judoon without the rhino skin, more interested in killing the Doctor for interfering than in tracking down their real criminal. Tom Baker, perhaps eager to show off to a star in Beatrix that for once he really respected, shines in these scenes, out-legalising the most pedantic alien legal system in the universe, even if he inadvertently causes one of the better cliffhangers of the era in the process by accidentally talking himself out of the right to oxygen. David Fisher’s script isn’t the best DW ever had but it has some great lines and the standing stones are a great idea even if its probably nicked from ‘Children Of The Stones’, shown over on rivals ITV the year before. It’s the much lauded Beatrix Lehmann who rather lets the side down for me in her final ever role, the famous actress wandering around in a haze and not re-acting in any ‘normal’ human way at all, so much so I can’t be the only viewer to assume at first that she was an alien too. With our only real Human guest cast acting so weird and this being a story where the companion’s a timelord as well as the Doctor this is another of those stories that throws gobbledegook science at us as if its going out of fashion and risk treating its audience as a bunch of Human simpletons who don’t know what’s going on. Which, y’know, is arguably true but the best Dws do usually let me in on what’s happening – this story is a party it feels like I didn’t want to attend and wasn’t invited to anyway. One thing I will say though that rarely gets pointed out: it’s impressive though, for a TV show in 1978, to have 3/4s of the lead characters (who have something like 95% of the screen time between them) all women and have the plot centre round them, not the Doctor. In the end result though this is more a story to admire than love and like pretty much all the key to time season (except maybe the ‘Armageddon Factor’ finale) there’s a great little story in here somewhere with a lot of promise and parts of it are first-rate; its just that getting a brilliant coherent whole out of it is like, well, getting blood out of an Ogri.

+ An actual night shoot at a brilliant location, ‘Stones Of Blood’ really does look the business, especially in the early scenes when the Ogri standing stones are looming out of the darkness and you can’t quite see what they look like. Even back in the studio and under bright studio lights, though, they look highly impressive...at least until they move.

- Aww, they took out what would surely have been the best scene, the Doctor’s birthday, a nod of the scarf to the fact that this was the show’s 15^th anniversary (a record for a scifi series back then; its still mighty rare now). The 4^th Doctor would have had a birthday cake and a new scarf (that looked just like the old one because...continuity) in a scene cut from the shooting script at the last minute for being ‘self indulgent’. The cast ate the specially ordered birthday cake anyway at the wrap party. Personally I think it sounds rather sweet (the scene I mean, not the cake). If you think a one minute long scene is self-indulgent wait till you see what actually made it onto the screen in the 1980s...