The Stones of Blood

Part 1

So this is the last episode that I’ll have already seen prior to recapping, third of the six total episodes. It’s a kind of cute, weird story about British standing stones running around and eating people, then it gets really weird at the end and has nothing to do with any of those things. Also, more hooded conspiracies, this time involving proper human sacrifices! Yay!

Time tunnel! Written by David Fisher, if you care. And doubly so if you don’t. We get a pleasantly trippy shot of the TARDIS swirling around in nothingness, then zoom out to see it’s inside one of the segments of time, which are sitting inside the TARDIS. Confused yet? Good! Four is trying to fit the two pieces together, and making a proper mess of it, until Romana intercedes and sticks them together. When they have all the pieces, I think it just makes a cube. Also, I neglected to mention last episode, but Romana has ditched the Snow Queen getup in favor of a rather nasty pink satin romper-thingy over white leggings. Well, it was the sixties.

Wait … now I’m all curious where she got the new clothes, if not out of the TARDIS wardrobe. Oh wait, the Doctor has girl’s clothes in there too, right? Maybe it doesn’t bear dwelling upon. Anyway! Four sticks the locator into the TARDIS console and checks the new heading. He grins, and tells Romana she’s going to love it. Down in Wales or wherever, the spoooooky full moon comes from behind some clouds, lighting up some spoooooky menhir in a circle. A spoooooky guy in a hooded robe walks out. Not a proper druid though, as he hasn’t got the proper white cloak and big long beard. Actually, when the light hits his face we see he is not in fact spooky at all, but a sort of round-faced, very British-looking sort of fellow. The kind of guy who eats a lot of badly-cooked beef. He even has a silly little moustache. I want to call him Roger because he looks so much like a Roger, but I’ve just had one of those. Reginald’s too long, and Percy would be an insult to my beloved Hotspur. Tracy it is then.

Some of Tracy’s mates come out with flickering torches (the wood-and-oil kind) and surround a sort of altar in the middle of the circle. Someone comes in holding something small in his arms and kneels down, and they all start yelling “Cailleach! Cailleach!” over and over. It’s like a made-for-TV Lovecraft movie. Tracy takes some little bowls full of blood and pours a little on each menhir. They start glowing and making a noise that is supposed to be creepy, but actually sounds like the largest Maine Coon in the world purring happily. Awwww. A lady hooded monk of doom falls to her knees with her arms in the air in the traditionally approved “exhorting the evil ones” position, and tell the Great One that its time is near. Ph’nglui mglw,nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!

Four is watching the TARDIS core go up and down, up and down. This wouldn’t normally be hilariously funny, but he’s put his floppy hat on top of it. He knocks at the door to the rest of the TARDIS, where Romana is apparently changing. She yells at him and then comes out a bit later in a coral-colored button-up shirt and a plaid newsboy cap. “How do I look?” Four proves he’s experienced at these sorts of things by automatically saying “Ravishing,” without looking up. Oh, the pants are the exact same color as the shirt. Oh, Romana. She’s also wearing high heels, which Four tries to talk her out of, but eventually gives up and tells her to please herself. “I’m no fashion expert,” says the man in the 20-foot scarf, and quite rightly too.

Romana rushes back in with some more shoes, asking for second opinions, when the Doctor shushes her. Some weird, almost Dalek-y voice is saying “Beware the Black Guardian,” over and over. Romana wants to know what’s going on. “It’s a warning,” says Four, “and a reminder.” He goes into the room with the two segments in it and picks them up thoughtfully. “If she was meant to know,” he says to no-one, “He’d have told her.” Romana demands to know what he knows about their mission, because what if something happens to the Doctor? He relents, and says she wasn’t really sent on this mission by the President of the Gallifreyan Council. “The voice you just heard,” he says, “and the being you saw as the President, was the White Guardian, or more accurately, the Guardian of Light in Time.” He tells her that the balance of the universe is so upset that WG needs the Key to stop time everywhere so he can fix it.

Just then, the TARDIS arrives and Four rushes gleefully for the door. Romana mocks him for being so excited about his favorite planet. “How do you know that?” asks Four. “Oh, everybody knows that!” She says that it’s raining, of course. “Ah,” says Four, “That’s what the locals call a soft day!” Do they? “Anyone for tennis?” he adds, grabbing an umbrella (a sort of muddier-colored version of Six’s eye-searing rainbow one) and hopping out the door. Romana is confused, but he explains that it means, “Is anyone coming outdoors to get soaked?” Romana tries, and fails, to find the joke. Four tells K9 that he has to stay behind, probably because of the mud.
“K9,” Romana asks, “What’s tennis?”
“Real, lawn, or table, Mistress?”
“Never mind. Forget it.”
K9 makes a shuffling noise.
“Erasing memory banks concerning tennis!” he replies, “Memory erased!” Heee.

The TARDIS is parked in the middle of some grassy hills. The Doctor walks along for awhile with the umbrella over his head, then realizes it isn’t raining anymore.  “Looks like it’s going to be a nice day after all!” he says, closing the umbrella and chucking it cheerfully into a ditch. They follow the locator signal and find some deep depressions, which Four says must’ve been caused by something weighing at least three tons. Romana sees nothing unusual in that, but Four explains that they don’t have elephants in England. They head up a hill to a pretty authentic-looking ring of menhir. Romana wants to know what they’re for, and Four replies a sort of combination observatory and temple. “Observatory?” asks Romana, who is already taking off her shoes, “But they’re just stones, aren’t they?” Four is kind of exasperated. “Yes, they’re ‘just stones,’ but they aren’t really ‘just stones,’ you see, they’re aligned…” He tries to explain but Romana isn’t really interested, saying that Earthlings are awfully primitive. Four sighs in annoyance and gives up.

Romana starts looking for the third segment when she runs into an old lady who rather reminds me of Estelle from the Small Worlds episode of Torchwood. She thinks that Romana and the Doctor are surveyers come to look at the stones, which she calls Cornish Fougous. (FYI, from what I can gather on Google, they are not in fact a Fougou. Also, I take back what I said about realistic-ness, because after looking at some pictures, your average standing stone doesn’t seem quite so … nobbly as these.) She says a paper about them was presented in Cardiff. Hee! Crazy! Was it presented by a guy named Harkness, by any chance? Hey, he’s totally around here somewhere, isn’t he? In theory, I mean. For real-reals, Barrowman wasn’t even born yet I don’t think. She introduces herself as Professor Emilia Rumford, and says that they must’ve noticed the discrepancies in the different surveys of the area, and that she’s been studying the stones. She’s an archaeologist, apparently. Romana pretends to be interested, but the Doctor just looks bored. He introduces Romana and leaves them to chat about the Nine Travelers, as the stones are known. He wanders off. Prof Rumford tells Romana that there was a miscount, because there are more than nine stones in the circle. And some dried blood too, as Four has just found out.

“Almost as if something had its throat cut…” mutters Four, when a surveyor’s stake gets slammed down right in front of him. “It probably did,” says Rumford’s companion, who is carrying a bunch of equipment. She is introduced as Vivien Fey. Oh with the Arthurian stuff this episode. I’m sure Susan Cooper grew up watching this show.
“You move very quietly, Miss Fey,” says Four.
“I used to be a Brown Owl!” I am very confused until I realize this is basically Brownie Scouts in Britain. Owls are awfully quiet, though. Fey explains that probably the BIDS (British Institute of Druidic Studies) was messing about out here again, playing at sacrifices. “Nothing at all to do with the real Druids, past or present,” she says, “They all wear white robes and wave mistletoe and knives about in the air. All very unhistoric.” The ladies tell Four that the leader of BIDS is named Mr de Vries and lives just up the hill, but that he’s a pretty shady character. They don’t mention a first name so I’m sticking with Tracy.

Four heads off, Romana limping along behind him. When they learn the house is a few miles away, she balks and they have a good laugh at her, before the Doctor decides to leave her with the two ladies and go himself, then bring her some proper boots on the way back. “Typical male,” laughs Fey, who is gayer than a certain Starfleet captain for her hot half-borg underling, “Strands you here with two complete strangers while he goes off somewhere enjoying himself!” She and Rumford shanghai her into helping with the survey. While they work, a big black bird flops in and lands on one of the stones. Romana is sort of horrified, and even when Fey explains it’s just a crow, she thinks it “looks evil.”

The Brass Section of Evil is playing, and something’s burning in a brazier on a little altar in someone’s basement. Wearing a different hooded robe this time (his wardrobe must look like Dumbledore’s low-budget cousin’s) Tracy raises his hands up and starts chanting “Cailleach, Cailleach…” Damn that’s hard to spell. Especially since they’re pronouncing it cally-ack. He says he’ll do her bidding. A big raven sitting nearby answers with a croak, and Tracy starts directing his prayers to it. More rigmarole with the sickle and fire. Whatever. The actors seem bored.

Outside, the Doctor heads up the drive, taking care not to slam his scarf in the gate, which is some insanely enormous concoction out of an Edward Gorey sketch, complete with stone urns that are nearly as big as the Doctor. He heads across the grounds to a big manor house and rings the doorbell. Rather incongruously in the smoky, dark basement, the buzzer sounds. Hee. Tracy is all excited, saying “the one foretold is here!” He starts tidying up his little altar, which looks like a sort of mockery of a Catholic altar. Also, he goes to put the lid back on the brazier and totally misses and drops the lid into the fire, has to fish it out, and makes it on the second try. Oh, Tracy. Oh, BBC. You really didn’t have enough film to do another take? Tracy keeps cleaning up and the doorbell keeps ringing.  I’d hurry, dude, that door isn’t going to keep him out for long, and you don’t really want a unescorted Time Lord wandering around your house.

And, true to form, Four is pulling a Goldilocks. “Anybody there?” he calls, wandering inside. By the time Tracy is dressed in normal clothes and headed up, the Doctor is in the main hall, biting his nails and mumbling “Nobody here but us Druids.” He heads over to investigate some paintings on the wall. Three conspicuous blank spots show where paintings have been removed. Tracy comes in behind the Doctor and explains one of the paintings is of a guy who surveyed the Nine Travelers, and addresses him as “Doctor.” “Mister de Vries!” bellows Four, pointing an accusatory finger without bothering to turn around. How dare you be in your own house, sir! Beat, and Four realizes something. “How did you know my name?” Tracy ignores this and tells him that the guy in the picture died when one of the standing stones fell on him. He says the three missing pictures are of Morgana Montcalm, who killed her husband on her wedding night, a recluse named Mrs Trefusis, and a Senora Camara from Brazil. Tracy’s trying really hard to be all creepy and mysterious, but see above re round jolly British face and harmless aspect. He’s not quite good enough of an actor to pull it off, poor guy. Tracy asks if the Doctor wants to go get a glass of sherry and they go off – this building is a super-weird combination of an actual British manor house, and they’ve built some crappy, BBC sets into the large rooms to make them smaller, but it just looks like some schoolkids will be putting on a play in there later.

In the field, Romana continues to be disturbed by the crows, or ravens, or whatever, which have been hanging around. Professor Rumford starts to pack up to go home, and they invite Romana along for tea but she declines, saying the Doctor won’t know where she’s gone. Fey hangs back to flirt with her a little, then tells her to bring the Doctor along when he comes, since she lives just nearby. Once they’re gone, Romana takes out the locator, but is getting nothing. She sighs, and the crows continue to flap around menacingly.

We get a very long closeup of a raven, looking around and blinking its little white bird-eyelids. The Doctor is staring at it and drinking his sherry. He asks Tracy how he knew his name, and sits down across from him. Well, not so much sits (Four never really sits) but rather hurls himself into the general vicinity of a chaise and hopes he makes it. He does, and lounges while Tracy replies that the Doctor hasn’t been so forthcoming either – what does he want with the stone circle? Four replies absently that he’s lost a key and is looking for it, and asks if Tracy’s a Druid. When he replies that he’s just a student of Druidic lore, Four flashes his gigantic teeth and him and says, “That must be very boring!” He says that there’s so little actual information on the Druids that maybe the whole thing was just made up by historians. “This is not laughing matter,” snaps Tracy, with all the viciousness of a damp dishrag. “Oh,” mutters the Doctor, “that’s a pity.”

Tracy starts ranting about the Goddess, the Cailleach, who is apparently in some ways (and in some ways not, in the manner of all Celtic deities) the same thing as the Morrigan (who is in some ways not the same thing as herself, which is why Irish folklore makes one’s head hurt). The Doctor goggles at something offcamera, and we see …. um … oh dear. Um. Someone in a sort of crow furry costume with a gold mask and feathery antennae and some sad little white feathers stuck all over. I’ll humor them and pretend it’s menacing. The Doctor isn’t bothering to pretend to be scared and strolls over to say hi, at which point Tracy smacks him in the back of the head with a paperweight. Time Lord down!

Back at the stones, Romana hers the Doctor yelling for her. “Doctor!” she says, exasperated, “Where have you been?” There’s nothing there, but Romana is convinced she sees something, and starts having a conversation with the imaginary Doctor. Barefoot, she follows him along a rocky path towards a cliff high above some nasty-looking waves. She turns around with her back to it, talking to the invisible Doctor, then screams as her imaginary friend apparently shoves her off the edge. Another literal cliffhanger!

part 2

It’s getting dark, and Romana is still hanging on the face of the cliff, which is crumbling slowly under her bare hands and feet. She yells for the Doctor, but he is unconscious and tied to the altar stone in the middle of the stone circle. The Sandford Neighborhood Watch surrounds him with lit torches (wood and oil kind) and Tracy raises his knife over his head, despite the protests of one of the other members. Four’s eyes pop open. “Hullo!” he says cheerfully, and looks up. “Oh. I do hope that knife’s been properly sterilized.” He asks them if their Cailleach rides a bicycle, and Tracy flips out, thinking his Goddess is being mocked, and holds the (rather nasty-looking) knife to Four’s throat. “It’s just…I can see a bicycle approaching, unless I’m very much mistaken.” Four starts yelling for help, and we see Rumford walking her bike home from Fey’s house. She hears him and speeds up into a flat-footed trot, yelling that she’s coming. The Druids scatter, and there’s an hilarious sound of car doors slamming and engines starting up off in the shadows as they peel away, leaving Four tied up.

Rumford finds the Doctor and wants to know what the hell he’s up to out here in the middle of the night. “Well,” Four mumbles, “You know how it is. I often get tied up in my job.” Not a pun, in his case. Just put a comma after the ‘up.’ Rumford whips out a pocket knife, and Four flinches, having just had a rather nasty close encounter with its larger cousin. Rumford cuts off the ropes. Four gets up and there’s a “I thought Romana was with you,” “But I thought she was with you,” moment. Romana’s still hanging onto the cliff, if you were wondering, although at this point she’s found a ledge for her feet and seems more pissed off than anything else. Four finds her shoes on the ground and Rumford tells him the moors are really dangerous at night. Ten would be getting spastic and screamy at this point, but Four’s preferred method of panic is to stand very still and quiet and look very, very, lost while he fidgets with Romana’s shoes. “Of course,” says Rumford, “If we had a dog…” Four startles. “Professor Rumford?” he says in this tiny little voice, “May I call you Emilia? Emilia, you are a genius.” His voice is breaking a little, and it’s clear at this point that Four was actually on the verge of tears there for a second. Awwwwwwww! I love him. Only Four would forget he has a deus ex machina in the TARDIS at all times in the form of K9. He takes out his little whistle and blows on it.

Four goes off the meet K9 on the way and make sure he doesn’t trundle onto any uneven ground, and leaves Rumford behind to wait. Rumford is beside herself she’s so excited to be having an adventure. “Yes, well,” mutters the Doctor, “Let’s hope it doesn’t get too exciting.”

A dark, shadowy figure comes around a tree somewhere on the moor and creeps along, then stops to grab about four feet of wayward scarf and fling it back over one shoulder. Hee. Four nearly trips over K9.
“Listen, listen!” Four hisses at him, channeling Navi from Zelda, “K9, you know how you’ve always wanted to be a bloodhound? Well-“
“Negative, Master!”
“Well – Yes you have! Yes you have!”
“Negat-“
“Hush! Now here’s your chance!” I love how pissed off he gets with K9, it’s hilarious. Maybe mostly because it’s gigantic, lanky Tom Baker sort of crouched down and yelling at this little tin box on wheels, shaking an angry finger in its face. Also, he tends to go from ‘perfectly normal’ to ‘completely and utterly pissed off’ and back again every two seconds during any given conversation with K9. He tells the little robot to find Romana, and K9 starts babbling about alpha waves. Four tells him to shut up already and go do it. K9’s casters struggle rather sadly on the long grass and he flails around for a bit. He says he’s found the direction she’s in, and in another schizophrenic moment Four first says happily, “Good dog! Good dog!” then when K9 doesn’t move snaps, “Well move!”

Romana looks up when she hears K9’s voice. “Fear is unnecessary, Mistress!” he chirps, “We are here to rescue you. The Doctor-Master is with me.” Yep, still creepy. Romana is upset about this. She starts yelling at the Doctor to go away – she still thinks he was the one who shoved her over. Four tells her to stop yammering and tosses one end of the scarf down. Hee, we’ve finally found a practical use for it! Romana decides to take her chances climbing the scarf, then immediately shoves Four to the ground once she’s climbed up, yelling at him. Four is slightly more bewildered than usual. Romana throws her arms around K9’s neck and says someone who looked exactly like the Doctor pushed her off the cliff. There’s some exposition from both of them that the third segment apparently has powers, unlike the first two, and can alter the appearance of things. “Somebody’s got it,” she says, “And has figured out how to use it.”
“Right.”
“So what’re we going to do now?”
“Go and get you a decent pair of shoes.”

Back at the circle, Fey has turned up with some tea and Rumford is worried about the Doctor. Everyone’s been running around all night and now the sun seems to be coming up. After a quick costume and shoe change, Romana is set to go and she and the Doctor finally start getting a signal from the locator. “That’s what I thought,” Four mutters darkly. They burst in on Fey and Rumford debating whether or not the Doctor is entirely incompetent, and scare the hell out of them with K9. The Doctor claims mechanical dogs are all the rage in New Jersey, which seems to make perfect sense to the two women (and makes me feel vaguely insulted on behalf of New Jersey although I’m not sure why). Romana’s got the locator out again and the signal’s going crazy, but Four quietly tells her to put it away before Fey or Rumford can see it. He sends Romana off to read Rumford’s notes and says he’s heading back to the de Vries house.
“What!” yelps Romana, “After what he did to you?”
“Because of what he did to me!” Now now, Doctor, this is a family program. Your kink is not okay. “It seems to me,” he continues, “That Mr de Vries is a very very worried man and worried men often sing worried songs come along K9.”

He leaves Romana with the cougars, who try to get Romana to ride on the back of the bike the Professor is driving. She tries to refuse politely, but they’re not having any of it, and they depart as Fey is saying “Oh, nonsense, it’ll be a new experience! Don’t be afraid …” Oi. Why is everyone always trying to seduce the Time Lords?

Back in his basement, Tracy is having a fit because the raven is gone. He flings himself down in front of the altar, screaming for mercy. Off in the distance, the largest Maine Coon in the world starts purring and he screams louder. “Too late!” A giant, pulsating glowy thing slides past the window. Tracy orders his assistant (Martha, though not as cool as some Marthas I could mention) to run and save herself. Crashing and crunching noises ensue as we cut to Four and K9. They are wandering up the drive, which is still pretty dark even though I assumed it was nearing dawn now. There are some cool shots of the dark creepy manor house and the Doctor in profile. Someone screams, and the Doctor starts running.

He arrives in the front hall to find everything smashed up and destroyed. Tracy’s legs are sticking out from under some junk. He goes to investigate closer, and claps one hand over K9’s eyes. “Dead,” he mumbles. Martha as well. K9 finds some sand on the ground and starts to follow the trail. They end up in a sort of study, also smashed up, with some weirdly rickety doors that are standing open. Four shuts them and starts to look around, when K9 shouts a warning. One of the big glowy blobs from before smashes in through the doors and knocks Four down. K9 starts blasting the hell out of it with his laser. It retreats, K9 following, and the Doctor slowly comes to. Four must have a skull like a steel plate, or else all these concussions are just building up until he finally becomes Six and goes crazy. “K…9?” he calls in confusion. There’s a violent crashing noise outside, and the noise of K9’s laser. Four jumps up and rushes rather unsteadily to the rescue.

Back in Fey’s cottage, Romana is sorting through some papers while Rumford brings her yet more tea. Do Brits really drink this much tea? Because Rumford’s mentioned and/or drunk it in pretty much every scene she’s been in so far. No wonder no-one’s trying to sleep. “Vivien’s making some sausage sandwiches,” Rumford tells her. HA. I couldn’t imagine Fey having anything to do with a sausage. “Nothing like sausage sandwiches, when you’re working something out.” Or someone. Oh, God, I can’t take this episode. It’s too much. It all sounds so incredibly dirty when they say it, then I write it down and it doesn’t look dirty at all.

Romana and Rumford are discussing gorsedds when Fey pops in to inform them that the three gorsedds in England are Stonehenge, Bryn Gwyddon, and Boscombe Moor (where they are now). Also, the town they’re in is apparently called Damnedonium. What the hell, writers. Romana realizes that the ground the stones stand on has always been owned by a woman, including the three whose pictures are missing, right back to the Middle Ages when it was under the name of the Mother Superior of some convent. Fey’s getting all shifty and smirky. Since the de Vries house is built on the site of the old convent, Romana wants to go check it out. Fey says she’ll stay behind so Romana can have her bike, and they head out. Rumford grabs some big chunk of wood and brandishes it like a sheleighly as she goes out.
“What’s that?” Romana asks Fey
“Oh, it’s a policeman’s truncheon. She brought it when she lectured in New York, in case she got mugged.”
“And did she get mugged?”
“No, she got arrested. For carrying an offensive weapon.” Outside, Rumford can be heard bellowing Tally-ho. People actually say that? Romana seems intrigued that she’s actually found people crazier than the Doctor.

Romana and Rumford enter the wrecked hall of the de Vries house. “Great Scott!” says Rumford. Again … people say that? They head into the study, where Four is sitting dejectedly on the floor next to a smashed-up K9. He’s attempting to give it mouth-to-mouth. K9 manages to stammer out that the alien who attacked him was silicon-based and globulin-deficient. Four pulls some piles of shredded paper, wires, ribbons and circuit boards out of him. He takes Romana aside and shakily tells her that he might have to put K9 out of his misery. She rattles off some technobabble that might save him, and Four shrieks, “BRILLIANT!”
“You really think so?”
“–What?”
Back to normal, Four hands over what’s left of K9 so Romana can go back to the TARDIS and fix him. He explains to Rumford that the creature that attacked him and killed de Vries and Martha lives on globulin, ie is a plasmavore, ie a bloodsucker. This one, however, hasn’t got a straw, for which I’m kind of thankful.

The furry is back, a cup of blood clutched in its long, red-stained talons. It pours the blood on one of the standing stones, which starts purring and pulsating with light. “Ogri,” says the bird-thing, “You shall do my bidding.”

Rumford and the Doctor are searching the house for clues about the Cailleach. Rumford protests that she’s just a legend. “Yes, I know,” says Four, “And so was Troy, until dear old Schleimann dug it up.” He says there are no statues or images of her anywhere … and no pictures. He starts yelling about the missing paintings, and finds a carving of a crow on the mantelpiece. Pushing it to one side opens a secret passageway in the wall. Four dives through and immediately falls down the stairs beyond.

Back in the TARDIS, Romana hooks K9 up to some kind of robot life-support system. She heads outside to see two large crows sitting on top of the TARDIS. The corvids have the phone box! Down in the de Vries basement, Rumford comes down the stairs in a slightly more dignified way and flicks on the light to find Four in a tangle at the bottom. He collects himself and finds the three paintings, which are all of a woman who looks like Vivien Fey. Well, actually the third one looks a bit like Patrick Troughton, but they’re all her.

Romana has crept up to the circle, which has a sort of red light coming out of it. Fey suddenly pops out and grabs her, dragging her into the circle. She’s wearing the feathery outfit, which is much scarier without the mask. It might only be creepy to me, though, because it looks kind of like a Green Man costume I wore once. Fey grabs a really long sort of wand thing and shoots Romana with it. Romana vanishes. From here on out, stuff gets weird.