Doctor Who: The Stones of Blood (1978)
This review of the 2002 US DVD release of Doctor Who: The Stones of Blood was originally posted to the Doctor Who Ratings Guide in October 2002.
The Stones Of Blood was never one of my favorite stories, but thanks to its recent release on DVD I’ve had time to rewatch it and reevaluate it. It’s still not one of the best stories, but it’s average enough, though a few bits of sloppy plotting do prevent it from being a more satisfying adventure. It’s a good bit of fun, but nothing more serious than that.
The first thing that many reviews and commentators mention is how wonderful Beatrix Lehmann is as Professor Rumford. Well, I’m not going to break with convention here. She is indeed absolutely fantastic. She has an excellent rapport with Tom Baker, and she plays well off of Mary Tamm’s slightly aloof but naive Romana. In fact, by the time we get to episode four, she even has great chemistry with the K9 prop. A wonderful actress, a great performance, and I couldn’t help but wish that the Doctor had ditched Romana and finished the quest for the Key To Time with the slightly batty, but quick-witted elderly professor. It would have made The Armageddon Factor much more interesting anyway.
The story marches forward at a relatively fast pace. Perhaps a little too quickly, as there are several plot elements that are dropped, never to be addressed again. We begin the adventure with a story about modern-day druids practicing blood sacrifices to their weird god, but by the time we reach the ending, this has been completely discarded in favor of Tom Baker fooling around in a barrister’s wig. All of the effective atmosphere, gloom and mystery are lost as soon as the action switches to the over-lit spacecraft, and it’s only Tom Baker’s tomfoolery with two glittery alien-props that give the conclusion any redemption.
By the end, there are a few too many questions that were never properly addressed. Why was the Cessair of Diplos going around impersonating Celtic gods? What were her followers doing? Why did she have followers? How did her followers know of the Doctor’s impending presence and why would they care? Why was an alien with a fully functioning hyperspace craft and the powers of the Key To Time segment just sitting around on Earth for four thousand years? Each of these unanswered questions (and the many others that the story provides) could be explained away given a sufficiently wily and creative mind, but the story simply doesn’t address them, and I found that to be mildly annoying. Unexplained motivations never sit well with me, and I just couldn’t figure out what on Earth the Cessair of Diplos was doing. Doctor Who doesn’t always have the most thoughtful or realistic villains, but they usually at least have a plan of some sort, even if it is just an insane desire the rule the universe. But here the villain is causing havoc for no good reason that I could see. She was bad merely because the script required her to be bad.
Still, there is a lot to like about The Stones Of Blood. The opening episode is sufficiently gloomy. Despite their obvious limitations, the eponymous Stones actually manage to be genuinely creepy as they stalk their way noisily through the English countryside. There’s a lot of fun to be had watching the Doctor uncover the mystery, even if it doesn’t make much sense. Viewers won’t soon forget the Doctor’s assurances that electronic dogs like K9 are all the rage in Trenton, New Jersey. Those little sparkles of humor shine like the electronic effects of the alien Megara. Mystery and suspense hold up the first half of the story, and their absence in the second half are just barely replaced with the bizarre humor of the Graham Williams era.
As the only serial of Doctor Who that Darrol Blake directed, there are a few aspects of the production that stand out as being slightly different from the norm (if one could indeed conceive of Doctor Who as having a norm). Unusually for this time period, the entire production is shot entirely on video, including the exteriors. The advantage of this is that there isn’t a sharp contrast between the studio and location scenes. The disadvantage of this, of course, is that everything was shot on cheap BBC video.
From the creative side of the direction there were several small things that I enjoyed. There’s a particularly noteworthy sequence that occurs early on in the adventure concerning the Doctor’s initial encounter with the Cailleach. The sequence is quite underplayed. Tom Baker is merely walking across a room in an almost casual manner. The shots leading up to this moment have been fairly run-of-the-mill close-ups of people talking intermixed with views around the room. But suddenly the camera switches to a shot of the Cailleach herself in all her feathered glory. There’s no dramatic music, no build-up, and it works as a very surprising scene because the viewer simply isn’t expecting to see this. If you’ve let yourself be drawn into the scene as it was unfolding, it’s quite a shock to see something completely unexpected like that. It surprises me every time. Little touches like this really help the overall adventure.
The commentary track, consisting of Mary Tamm and director Darrol Blake is well worth listening to. The pair discuss the location, the casting, and a host of interesting topics. It’s intriguing to hear the story from the director’s point of view, and I really like listening to his approach to directing Doctor Who. The production notes are again quite good and highlight a lot of the changes that went into the script between David Fisher’s pen and its life in front of the camera.
When you throw this disc into the player, just try not to think about it too much. Watch it for the great interactions between Professor Rumford and everyone else. Watch it for the eeriness of the Stones as they chase their victims. Watch it for the funny dialogue that’s usually coming from the mouth of Tom Baker. Just don’t watch it expecting it to be a tightly plotted adventure, or you’ll be disappointed. Turn your critical mindset off and enjoy.
