Island of the Fendahl

The Further Adventures of Lucie Miller #1.4

Released: 10 July 2019

Listened: 9/21/21

The monster is spoiled right in the title, which is a bit of a shame: It’s the Fendahl, who hasn’t appeared since the Tom Baker era, because the Doctor destroyed it. Or did he? Turns out that’s the answer to the plot thread left over from the first story in this set. It helps if you remember “Image of the Fendahl,” because this story has a lot of references to it, which unravel rather slowly. There’s a spooky island, cut off from the mainland, with a few villagers and their strange customs. There’s an abandoned monastery, currently occupied by a cult. There’s a missing girl, and the police detective sent to look for her. And the scientist who seems to just be here to study caterpillars. Almost none of these elements are what they seem on the surface, and finding out where they all fit is most of the fun. The actual resolution, again, is mostly just OK. The Doctor seems a little harsher in this particular story, but he does spend a bunch of it under the influence of evil, so there’s that. Because this is an Alan Barnes story, Lucie gets all the best lines; clearly all the writers in this set really enjoy writing her dialog. Heard in release order, this is a really nice nostalgia trip. In the order of this project, it’s just a nice interlude between seasons.