The first serial of the 15th season of Doctor Who finally allowed viewers a glimpse of an alien race that they had previously only heard about.

The Rutans are the mortal enemies of the Sontarans.  Their war has gone on for centuries, with neither race getting the upper hand (or tentacle, as the case may be).  Nearly every episode in which the Sontarans appeared involved an attempt to turn Earth into an outpost against the Rutans.  In Horror of Fang Rock, a Rutan travels to Earth and tries to do the same thing against the Sontarans.  Luckily, the Doctor (Tom Baker) and Leela (Louise Jameson) are there to stop it but not before every other character in the serial has been killed.

Horror of Fang Rock takes place early in the 20th Century, at an isolated lighthouse on an island in the English channel.  Other than The Doctor, Leela, and the Rutan, the characters consist of two lighthouse keepers and the four survivors of a shipwreck.  They’re all noble English stereotypes, with names like Lord Palmerdale, Colonel Skinsale, and Adelaide Lessage and none of them survive the horror of Fang Rock.

When I first saw this serial as a kid, it actually left me feeling rather depressed.  It certainly didn’t seem like everyone deserved to die.  Even my mom, who rarely watched the show with my dad and me but who did sit through the first 25 minutes of Horror of Fang Rock before finding something better to do, was surprised when I told her that no one had survived.

When I recently rewatched this serial, I better appreciated just how efficiently Horror of Fang Rock is put together.  It mixes traditional gothic imagery (like the fog-covered island and the dark lighthouse) with aliens and it does a good job of it.  The Rutan itself turns out to be a glowing green mass.  It looks convincingly evil and extraterrestrial.  As soon as it appeared, I understood why the dull-witted Sontarans never seemed to be sure how to defeat the Rutans.  The Rutan was a creature totally unlike the usual humanoid aliens that populated Doctor Who.  It also made sense that only the Doctor and Leela would be able to survive a confrontation with the Rutan because the Rutan was so alien that rest of the inhabitants of the lighthouse had no idea how to respond to it.

At the end of this serial, the Doctor causes the Rutan mothership to explode.  Leela looks straight at the explosion and, as a result, her brown eye turn blue.  Louise Jameson’s eyes were always blue but they weren’t considered to be the right color for the savage character she was playing so, for her first few serial, she had to wear extremely uncomfortable contact lenses.  One of her conditions for returning for Season 15 was that she would no longer have to wear them.  The show’s producers gave in and that was the right decision.  By the time Horror of Fang Rock came along, Baker and Jameson had moved pass their initial awkwardness and were now a strong team.

holds up well as one of the few Doctor Who stories to actually be as scary as the show’s critics claimed.  Tom Baker and Louise Jameson are at their best and the Rutan proves to be the rare Doctor Who alien to live up to the hype.