Doctor Who: The Stones of Blood (1978)
Review by Doc Ezra
Film:
DVD:

Written by David Fisher
Directed by Darrol Blake
Starring Tom Baker and Mary Tamm

Features:

• Commentary by Mary Tamm and Darrol Blake
  
• Pop-up production notes
  
• Photo gallery
  
• Who’s Who character and cast info
  

Rating: NR, suitable for most audiences

Anamorphic: N/A

My advice: Rent it

In this third installment in the Key to Time series, the Doctor and Romana actually get to take a little visit to the Doctor’s favorite planet – Earth. What looks to be a pleasant stroll into the English countryside turns a bit odd when the pair encounter a professor, conducting a survey of a circle of standing stones known as the Nine Travelers. Except there’s more than nine of them. Curious, the Doctor consults their Key detector, only to get contradictory and confusing readings.

An investigation into the history of the stones reveals a twisted set of druidic cultists, offering blood sacrifices to the Cailleach, the Celtic goddess of war, death, and magical power. Professor Rumford’s assistant Vivian dismisses them all as eccentric but essentially harmless, but the Doctor soon finds himself on the altar stone, moments away from certain doom, when he is rescued by the professor and Romana. Further investigations lead the Doctor to a frightening conclusion – an evil alien presence has anchored itself in hyperspace within the stone circle, and for thousands of years, cultists have been feeding it sacrifices.

Finding their way into the enemy vessel, they discover it to be a prisoner transport ship, stuck in hyperspace, with its law enforcers stuck in stasis. Despite freeing them of this imprisonment, the Doctor finds himself on trial for his life, as the unyielding “justice machines” decide whether or not to execute him for tampering with their stasis, or listen to his pleas and examine the real culprit, the interstellar criminal responsible for the gruesome rituals in the name of the Cailleach.

This Who story is interesting, if a bit on the predictable side. The performances are, aside from the leads, on the ham-fisted side of mediocre (especially the faux Cailleach). The tale presents an unorthodox (to say the least) view of both the druids and one of their darker mythological figures, but scholarship on the subject has admittedly come a long way since the late 70s. The “justice machines” are exceedingly annoying, and exactly the sort of gross misapplication of principles of logic in sci-fi that the original Star Trek series was famous for employing every time Kirk needed to outwit a supercomputer.

The DVD presentation is as solid as all of BBC’s Doctor Who releases to date, with a nice commentary track featuring Tamm and Blake. The pop-up production notes are, as always, copious to the point of insanity, running large blocks of text across the bottom third of the screen through virtually the entire set of episodes. Picture and sound are as clean and clear as one can expect of late 70s BBC originals, so no complaints there at all.

If you’re following the Key to Time sequence, you’ve got to have this one. It’s not the strongest story in the series, but if you’re a fan of the Doctor, it’s certainly solid enough. If you’re not heavily invested in the cycle, then this one might bear a rental before committing fully to a purchase.