Production Code: 4V

First Transmitted
1 - 03/09/1977 18:15
2 - 10/09/1977 18:15
3 - 17/09/1977 18:15
4 - 24/09/1977 18:15

Cast
The Doctor - Tom Baker
Leela - Louise Jameson
Adelaide - Annette Woollett
Ben - Ralph Watson
Harker - Rio Fanning
Lord Palmerdale - Sean Caffrey
Reuben - Colin Douglas
Skinsale - Alan Rowe
Vince - John Abbott

Crew
Director - Paddy Russell
Assistant Floor Manager - Bill Hartley
Costumes - Joyce Hawkins
Designer - Paul Allen
Film Cameraman - John Walker
Film Editor - unknown
Incidental Music - Dudley Simpson
Make-Up - Jackie Hodgson
Producer - Graham Williams
Production Assistant - Peter Grimwade
Production Unit Manager - John Nathan-Turner
Script Editor - Robert Holmes
Special Sounds - Dick Mills
Studio Lighting - Bob Gell
Studio Sound - David Hughes
Title Music - Ron Grainer and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, arranged by Delia Derbyshire
Visual Effects - Peter Pegrum
Writer - Terrance Dicks

Plot outline from Wikipedia

On the way to show Brighton to Leela, the TARDIS lands on the island of Fang Rock off the south coast of England. Noticing that the lighthouse isn't functioning properly, the Fourth Doctor decides to investigate, as well as to ask for directions as the TARDIS seems to have gotten 'lost in the fog'. Upon arrival at the lighthouse, and after introducing themselves, the Doctor discovers the dead body of one of the keepers, Ben. The other two keepers, old superstitious Reuben and the keen young Vince Hawkins, report that a light fell from the sky near the island. They also explain the electricity flow to the lamp on the lighthouse has become erratic and the Doctor deduces something is feeding on the flow. Reuben does not help matters with his constant references to the mythical Beast of Fang Rock which reputedly once terrorised the lighthouse. As the Doctor and Leela explore, something moves Ben’s body out of the lighthouse and onto the island, and they witness a curious electric crackling which seems to have killed fish nearby.

The loss of the electric light due to the unexplained draining of power from the generators causes a luxury yacht to crash on to Fang Rock. The four survivors are brought to the lighthouse: the bosun Harker; an MP named Colonel James Skinsale; the owner, Lord Palmerdale; and his highly strung secretary Adelaide Lessage. Over time it emerges Palmerdale has bought government secrets from Skinsale and was desperate to reach the stock exchange to make a killing – hence the reason the ship was travelling at such a pace.

Harker and the Doctor retrieve Ben’s body and the Time Lord deduces it has been used as an anatomy lesson for an alien life-form. He determines that their best protection is to secure the lighthouse to keep the creature out. Reuben then disappears for a time and then reappears a changed man, which the others put down to shock. But the pattern of death now speeds up. Palmerdale is killed in the lamp room by a glowing alien presence on the outside of the lighthouse, and then Harker is killed when Reuben corners him in the boiler room. From the alien light emanating from Reuben it is clear he has become possessed or transformed by the alien creature. The Doctor finds Harker’s body and then Reuben’s own – the latter cold for some time – which means the creature in Reuben’s form has chameleonic properties.

The creature now stalks down and kills the others in the lighthouse. Adelaide dies first, then Vince. With its presence now revealed, the alien among them sheds its disguise: it is a Rutan, a chameleonic life form, whose scout ship crash landed in the sea and is trying to summon its mother ship. The Rutan ship is seemingly unstoppable, but the Doctor, Leela and Skinsale come up with a plan. First they kill the Rutan Scout — but not before it kills Skinsale — and then the Doctor uses Palmerdale’s diamonds as a focus for a light beam, and convert the lighthouse into a high-energy laser which the Doctor destroys the Rutan mother ship. The blinding flash even turns Leela’s eyes from brown to blue. The Doctor quotes Wilfrid Gibson's poem Flannan Isle as they take their leave.

Analysis by Cuisle

The Doctor : "... the localised condition of planetary atmospheric condensation caused a malfunction in the visual orientation circuits. Or to put it another way, we got lost in the fog."

A very atmospheric story. Even if the first special effect, of the space ship crashing into the sea looked a little like a bad light effect against a still photo of a lighthouse at night, it set the scene well enough.

So take a group of mismatched people: the lighthouse keepers, the upper class snobs from the yacht, The Doctor and Leela. Stand them on a lighthouse with no contact with the outside world. Through in something picking them all off one by one. It is pure Agatha Christie Doctor Who style.

Unusually for a Doctor Who everyone except The Doctor and Leela dies eventually in this story. Some of them we feel little sympathy for. Palmerdale was a high class crook, Skinsale died because he couldn’t resist trying to grab the diamonds. Adelaide was so annoyingly hysterical the general feeling was that it was quieter without her. The saddest deaths were those of Reuben, whose identity was taken by the Rutan and Vince, who trusted Reuben as a friend and guide and did not, therefore, even try to defend himself against the alien disguised as him.

The Rutan, of course, is a traditional enemy of the Sontarans. While Sontarans had appeared twice before, this was the first time we had seen Rutans. And they are a stark contrast to their mortal enemy, being a sort of jelly fish shaped creature that kills using stored electrical energy. Apart from the anti-matter creature in Planet of Evil the aliens in the Baker era were generally of the type of costume that an actor could dress up in. This was a rare departure into non-humanoid creatures. It worked generally well enough. The scenes with the creature in its default form on the stairs are genuinely menacing.

The Doctor’s eventual solution to the Rutan menace is an interesting one, using the beam from the lighthouse augmented with diamonds to create a laser beam that took out the ship. In 2006, moonlight refracted through a telescope and augmented by a diamond killed the werewolf in Tooth and Claw. When The Doctor says it with a diamond he does it in a unique way.

Mention must be made of two particular quotes from the story. The first is this chilling admission from The Doctor.

Leela, I've made a terrible mistake. I thought I'd locked the enemy out. Instead I've locked it in... with us!'"

How many horror stories are based on just such a premise?

And of course, that poetry that Tom Baker recites so chillingly at the end of the story.

And looked, and looked, on the untouched meal,
And the overtoppled chair.

The lines come from a poem called Flannan Isle by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson about a mysterious disappearance from a lighthouse not unlike Fang Rock.

"THOUGH three men dwell on Flannan Isle
To keep the lamp alight,
As we steered under the lee, we caught
No glimmer through the night."

A passing ship at dawn had brought
The news; and quickly we set sail,
To find out what strange thing might ail
The keepers of the deep-sea light.

The Winter day broke blue and bright,
With glancing sun and glancing spray,
As o'er the swell our boat made way,
As gallant as a gull in flight.

But, as we neared the lonely Isle;
And looked up at the naked height;
And saw the lighthouse towering white,
With blinded lantern, that all night
Had never shot a spark
Of comfort through the dark,
So ghostly in the cold sunlight
It seemed, that we were struck the while
With wonder all too dread for words.
And, as into the tiny creek
We stole beneath the hanging crag,
We saw three queer, black, ugly birds—
Too big, by far, in my belief,
For guillemot or shag—
Like seamen sitting bolt-upright
Upon a half-tide reef:
But, as we neared, they plunged from sight,
Without a sound, or spurt of white.

And still to mazed to speak,
We landed; and made fast the boat;
And climbed the track in single file,
Each wishing he was safe afloat,
On any sea, however far,
So it be far from Flannan Isle:
And still we seemed to climb, and climb,
As though we'd lost all count of time,
And so must climb for evermore.
Yet, all too soon, we reached the door—
The black, sun-blistered lighthouse-door,
That gaped for us ajar.

As, on the threshold, for a spell,
We paused, we seemed to breathe the smell
Of limewash and of tar,
Familiar as our daily breath,
As though 't were some strange scent of death:
And so, yet wondering, side by side,
We stood a moment, still tongue-tied:
And each with black foreboding eyed
The door, ere we should fling it wide,
To leave the sunlight for the gloom:
Till, plucking courage up, at last,
Hard on each other's heels we passed,
Into the living-room.

Yet, as we crowded through the door,
We only saw a table, spread
For dinner, meat and cheese and bread;
But, all untouched; and no one there:
As though, when they sat down to eat,
Ere they could even taste,
Alarm had come; and they in haste
Had risen and left the bread and meat:
For at the table-head a chair
Lay tumbled on the floor.

We listened; but we only heard
The feeble cheeping of a bird
That starved upon its perch:
And, listening still, without a word,
We set about our hopeless search.

We hunted high, we hunted low;
And soon ransacked the empty house;
Then o'er the Island, to and fro,
We ranged, to listen and to look
In every cranny, cleft or nook
That might have hid a bird or mouse:
But, though we searched from shore to shore,
We found no sign in any place:
And soon again stood face to face
Before the gaping door:
And stole into the room once more
As frightened children steal.

Aye: though we hunted high and low,
And hunted everywhere,
Of the three men's fate we found no trace
Of any kind in any place,
But a door ajar, and an untouched meal,
And an overtoppled chair.

And, as we listened in the gloom
Of that forsaken living-room—
A chill clutch on our breath—
We thought how ill-chance came to all
Who kept the Flannan Light:
And how the rock had been the death
Of many a likely lad:
How six had come to a sudden end,
And three had gone stark mad:
And one whom we'd all known as friend
Had leapt from the lantern one still night,
And fallen dead by the lighthouse wall:
And long we thought
On the three we sought,
And of what might yet befall.

Like curs, a glance has brought to heel,
We listened, flinching there:
And looked, and looked, on the untouched meal,
And the overtoppled chair.

We seemed to stand for an endless while,
Though still no word was said,
Three men alive on Flannan Isle,
Who thought, on three men dead.