The Stones of Blood (TV story)

Searching for the third segment to the Key to Time brings the Doctor and Romana to present-day Earth, where the travellers have to contend with stone circles, Druidic rituals and a not-so-mythical goddess known as the Cailleach.

Plot

Part 1

The Fourth Doctor and Romana I are about to embark in search of the third segment of the Key to Time. The Doctor is excited to find that it is located on Earth, which Romana describes as his favorite planet. Romana has dressed herself in a fashionable outfit, including a pair of four inch heels that the dismayed Doctor believes will be unsuitable for walking. They prepare to embark when a voice tells them to "Beware the Black Guardian." At this, the Doctor reveals Romana was not sent on this quest by the President of the Time Lords, but rather by the all-powerful White Guardian, who wishes them to gather the Key to maintain galactic stability. They venture outside to find themselves near the Nine Travellers, a group of cromlech or standing stones in Boscombe Moor, Cornwall. On the way, they see heavy indentations in the ground, which intrigue the Doctor. Also interested in the location is aged archaeologist Professor Amelia Rumford, who is surveying the stones with her friend, Vivien Fay.

They find dried blood on the ground at the stones, and are alerted to the activities of a local druidic sect. The Doctor goes to meet its implied leader, de Vries. Romana, having difficulty walking in her heels, stays behind with Amelia and Vivien. De Vries lives in a large property nearby, Boscombe Hall, built on the site of the Convent of the Little Sisters of Saint Gudula. Inside, de Vries and his maid, Martha, are incanting to the Cailleach, the Druidic goddess of war and magic. The Doctor interrupts and is entertained briefly by de Vries until his host sees the opportunity to knock him out. De Vries and his mistress, dressed in a hideous bird costume, aim to sacrifice him to the Cailleach.

Meanwhile, Amelia and Vivien prepare to go back to Vivien's cottage. They invite Romana to join them for a cup of tea, but she opts to stay at the circle to wait for the Doctor. After the others have left, Romana hears the Doctor's voice calling out to her. She calls out for the Doctor. When he does not answer, Romana decides she should investigate - in her bare feet. Her high heels have caused her so much ilk she pitches them. Romana approaches a cliff edge, still hearing the Doctor call out. Something disturbs her, and she yells for it to keep back. She steps backwards and falls over the edge.

Part 2

Romana has managed to grab onto the rock face, and is clinging to the cliff just below the edge. Meanwhile, de Vries and Martha argue about the validity of sacrificing the Doctor, who is now awake and tied to one of the stones in the circle. The sacrifice is interrupted by the arrival of Professor Rumford, who frees the Doctor as the others flee. Neither of the Doctor nor Amelia knows where Romana is, however. After discovering her abandoned shoes, the Doctor summons K9 to help find her. They are successful. Romana is relieve to see K9, but is surprisingly mistrustful when she sees the Doctor. After they pull her up from the cliff, K9 calms her by assuring Romana it is indeed the Doctor. They conclude that it must have been a doppleganger of him who pushed her off the cliff. They assume that whoever it is must be in possession of the third segment of the Key to Time, and has found a way to utilize its shape-changing abilities. They decide de Vries can answer some questions, and set off for Boscombe Hall - after Romana is allowed to return to the TARDIS so she may change clothes and switch into a pair of sturdy boots.

When he gets there, he finds the owner and Martha have been crushed to death. The Hall is under attack by a pair of mobile giant stones like those from the Moor. The Doctor and K9 repel the attack, though the robot dog is badly damaged and needs repair in the TARDIS. More curious facts come to light: the Doctor works out that the stones need blood to survive. Romana has pieced together that the owners of the Hall and the preceding convent were all women. It soon becomes clear they all had the same face too — that of Vivien Fay.

Meanwhile, the woman in the bird costume has brought more stones (or Ogri, as she calls them) to life using poured blood. Romana ventures back to the stone circle and there finds Miss Fay in the costume. When challenged, she fires a weapon at Romana, causing her to dematerialise.

Part 3

Meanwhile, after dispensing with one of the stones pursuing them, the Doctor and Professor Rumford reach the stone circle. Miss Fay tells them Romana will be safe if the Doctor stops interfering. She disappears. The Doctor now identifies the stones as Ogri, a life form from Ogros in the Tau Ceti system. Two of them are still missing and moving around the countryside. Two innocent campers help quench their taste for blood.

The Doctor calculates Romana and her captor must be in hyperspace. He builds a projecting device which he uses to transmit himself there. He arrives on a hyperspace craft which seems to be a prison vessel, and he frees Romana. He soon breaks a lock on a sealed door, releasing two floating globes. They are Megara, justice machines, dispensing the law as judge, jury and executioner. They contend that as the Doctor broke the seals, he has transgressed the law and should be eliminated.

K9 and Amelia have meanwhile been tasked with protecting the projector used by the Doctor to cross the dimensions, but find themselves under attack from two Ogri. Vivien returns to Earth and destroys the device but spares her friend. She takes the Ogri back to the hyperspace vessel with her and there tells the Doctor and Romana she has destroyed their linking device between the dimensions, leaving them trapped in hyperspace forever!

Part 4

The Megara destroy one of the Ogri that threatens them. The Doctor has been tried in his absence by the Megara, an abrupt and unfair process dependent on the word but not the spirit of the law. He successfully petitions to conduct his own defence in an appeal. He puts Romana in the witness chair to establish that he broke the seal because he feared for the safety of the Megara. This also sets a precedent for the use of the truth assessor. He tries to draw Vivien Fay into the trial and get the Megara to subject her to the truth assessor, which will reveal her true identity to the court as the person whom they were originally set to put on trial 4000 year ago. When he calls "Vivien" to the stand, he argues she should be attached to the assessor like Romana. The Megara, however, deny his appeal, on the grounds that she was not a direct witness to the crime for which he stands accused.

Nevertheless, the Doctor comes closer to the truth about "Vivien". He argues successfully to put one of the two Megara on the stand, who tells the court the nature of the journey that has kept them in hyperspace for four thousand years. They are on a mission to find and try Cessair of Diplos, a criminal wanted for murder and the removal and misuse of the Great Seal of Diplos. The Megara states the seal has significant powers: transmutation, transformation and the ability to establish "hyperspatial and temporal coordinates".

Amelia and K9 have repaired the projector and use it to beam Romana back from the hyperspace vessel — and the one surviving Ogri, which chases them. They find incriminating data at Miss Fay's cottage — cookery books in which a number of recipes containing citrus fruit juices have been crossed out; Amelia says that Miss Fay was allergic to citric acid. Romana and the Ogri return to the spacecraft to await the verdict.

Cessair is turned to stone.

At the close of his trial, the Doctor is convicted and the Megara fire executing beams at him. He drags Vivien into the beams' focus. The energy is divided between them, do both survive. This forces the Megara to examine her to see if she is badly hurt. The Doctor suggests they must examine her mind to check for damage. They find she is indeed Cessair of Diplos. She is charged with her crimes when she wakes, and the last Ogri is confined in a cell aboard the ship to be returned to its own planet. Cessair is sentenced to confinement for fifteen hundred years and perpetual imprisonment, the sentences to run consecutively. Before she is turned into a stone on Boscombe Moor, the Doctor grabs her necklace - the Great Seal of Diplos, which is in fact the third segment of the Key to Time.

As the Megara bring up the matter of the Doctor's delayed execution, they suddenly return to their ship as it is about to leave. The Doctor set the controls to so, prior to his leaving the ship. The Doctor, K9 and Romana return to the TARDIS, thanking Amelia for her assistance. He uses the tracer to turn the third segment of the Key to Time to its proper form. As he struggles with putting it together with the other two, he looks over to Romana, reminded of her boasting of being good with such puzzles.

Cast

Doctor Who - Tom Baker
Romana - Mary Tamm
Voice of K9 - John Leeson
Professor Rumford - Beatrix Lehmann
Vivien Fay - Susan Engel
De Vries - Nicholas McArdle
Martha - Elaine Ives-Cameron
Voice of Megara - Gerald Cross, David McAlister
Campers - James Murray, Shirin Taylor

Crew

Writer - David Fisher
Assistant Floor Manager - Carol Scott, Nigel Taylor
Costumes - Rupert Jarvis
Designer - John Stout
Incidental Music - Dudley Simpson
Make-Up - Ann Briggs
OB Cameraman - Trevor Wimlett, Mike Windsor
Production Assistant - Carolyn Montagu
Production Unit Manager - John Nathan-Turner
Script Editor - Anthony Read
Special Sounds - Liz Parker
Studio Lighting - Warwick Fielding
Studio Sound - Richard Chubb
Theme Arrangement - Delia Derbyshire
Title Music - Ron Grainer
Visual Effects - Mat Irvine
Producer - Graham Williams
Director - Darrol Blake

References

Astronomical objects

Diplos is in orbit around a type G star in the Tau Ceti System.
Ogros is in the same star system as Diplos.

The Doctor

The Doctor indicates that he has met Albert Einstein.
When asked if he is from outer space, the Doctor says no, indicating instead that it is better described as "inner time".
When Professor Rumford makes a negative remark about physicists, the Doctor seems offended.

Individuals

Vivian Fey is Cessair of Diplos (aka the Cailleach).
The Doctor informs Romana that it was the White Guardian who sent her, not the President.

Galactic Law

The Ogri aided Cessair of Diplos in contravening article 7954 of the Galactic Charter.
According to Megaran Legal Code, theft of the Great Seal of Diplos is punishable by perpetual imprisonment.

K9

K9 erases all memory banks concerning tennis after Romana casually tells him to "forget it" in response to a question.

Minerals

The only crystals Amelia Rumford finds in the house are Epsom salts.

Organisations

The Doctor mentions the Galactic Federation.

Species

The cells in the spacecraft contain a dead Wirrn and a non-functioning Kraal android. (A Sea Devil was also to have appeared, but shots of the creature were lost at the editing stage.)
The Ogri are from the planet Ogros.

Theories and concepts

Hyperspace is a "theoretical absurdity", according to Romana.

Story notes

This is the third of six linked serials that comprise the whole of Season 16, known collectively as The Key to Time.
This story had the working titles of The Nine Maidens and The Stones of Time.
Gerald Cross also provided the voice of the White Guardian in Part One. He was uncredited on-screen, but was credited as 'Voice of the Guardian' in Radio Times.
Director Darrol Blake originally offered the role of Vivien Fay to Honor Blackman, who declined the part as she felt Beatrix Lehmann had all the best material. Blake then asked Maria Aitken, who wasn't interested. Susan Engel was finally hired for the part. Blackman would later appear in the Sixth Doctor serial Terror of the Vervoids, the third segment of The Trial of a Time Lord.
The fifteenth anniversary of the programme took place on 23 November 1978, five days after the broadcast of part four. To commemorate this, Anthony Read asked David Fisher to write a new scene (expanded by Darrol Blake) featuring Romana I and K9 surprising the Doctor with a cake celebrating his seven hundred fifty-first birthday (and a new, identical scarf). However, producer Graham Williams vetoed this idea as being too self-indulgent and the scene was never shot. Blake had already ordered a cake, and this was eaten by the cast and crew.
This is the one hundredth Doctor Who story.
This was the only story between Frontier in Space and the end of the series' initial run not to have the special sounds created by Dick Mills. Mills suffered a brief illness and Elizabeth Parker provided the sound effects instead. However, due to an oversight, Mills was still credited on-screen.
Exteriors in this serial were videotaped rather than filmed, which is something that occurred only rarely before 1986. According to comments on the 2007 DVD release, director Darrol Blake made the decision to use only one medium because of a dislike of the discontinuity created by the constant switch between filmed exteriors and videotaped interiors. Although not discussed, the fact "exteriors" taking place at night were actually shot in the studio probably made it necessary from a practical point of view, too.
In the original script, the Doctor would have been seen at the end of part one leading Romana to the cliff's edge and pushing her off. Tom Baker refused to perform this, saying that it would upset young viewers to see "the Doctor" behaving in this manner, and adding that the "possessed Doctor" had been done to death. As a compromise, Baker agreed to let his voice be used calling "Romana!". (DCOM: The Stones of Blood)
The location used for de Vries' house was actually a business college. As a prank, during location filming some students removed the TARDIS prop and relocated it to the nearby quarry. (INFO: The Stones of Blood)
A frequently recounted, humorous, behind-the-scenes incident occurred during location filming (and is told yet again by John Leeson in the Getting Blood from the Stones featurette on the 2007 DVD). Tom Baker was filming on location with the remote-controlled K9; Leeson was in a van some distance away, providing K9's voice over a loudspeaker for Baker to act to. During a break in filming, using the two-way radio set up for feeding Leeson's voice to the set, Baker was seen by onlookers to be sitting down with K9 and doing the Times Crossword puzzle; Leeson discussed the puzzle with Baker, remaining in character as K9.
According to the Getting Blood from the Stones featurette on the 2007 DVD release, the scene in which the Doctor and Romana embrace while preparing to be transported back to Earth constituted one of several visual in-jokes perpetrated by Tom Baker to play up his Doctor's utter asexuality, as the Doctor acts oblivious to being in close quarters with the lovely Romana. A similar scenario occurs in the catacombs during The Ribos Operation.
Romana gives the TARDIS wardrobe a workout in this episode, appearing in three different outfits during the story (if one includes her costume held over from The Pirate Planet). During her audio commentary, Mary Tamm mentions that at least one scene had to be shot twice because she was wearing the wrong outfit the first time round.
Director Darrol Blake explains during his audio commentary that the Megara were operated by two puppeteers (one of whom was John Thirtle) who were dressed in black and shot against a black background so that only the lights would show. These were then superimposed over footage of the other actors on set. The lights themselves were connected to the microphones of voice actors Gerald Cross and David McAlister so that they would burn brighter whenever one of the characters spoke.

Ratings

Part one - 8.6 million viewers
Part two - 6.6 million viewers
Part three - 9.3 million viewers
Part four - 7.6 million viewers

Myths

The BBC received over eight hundred complaints for the graphic portrayal of headless corpses in part two. While it is plausible the BBC received some complaints there has never been any factual (i.e. news reports) evidence revealed to say they received as many as 800 complaints.

Filming locations

The exteriors of this story were filmed on location at the Rollright Stones, a real megalithic site in central England. An actual legend of the site states that it is impossible to count the stones. As the serial ends, the Doctor notes that the number of stones in the circle has changed (due to the removal of three Ogri and the addition of Cessair's imprisoned form) and suggests Professor Rumford write a monograph about it. In 2007, Mary Tamm returned to the site to tape a featurette for the DVD release of the story in which she interviewed local historians about the site.

Brewery Row, Little Compton, Warwickshire
The King's Men, Rollright Stones, Little Rollright, Oxfordshire
Little Rollright Quarry, Oakham Road, Little Rollright, Oxfordshire (Location of the "cliff" that Romana falls off)
Reed College (now known as Reed Business School Ltd), Little Compton, Warwickshire
Manor Farm, Oakham Road, Little Rollright, Oxfordshire (Location of the TARDIS' arrival)
BBC Television Centre (TC3), Shepherd's Bush, London

Production errors

If you'd like to talk about narrative problems with this story — like plot holes and things that seem to contradict other stories — please go to this episode's discontinuity discussion.

When the Doctor and Amelia are first chased by the Ogri, two crew-members are quite clearly visible in the doorway manipulating the creature. One appears in the right side of the doorway just after the Ogri enters, the other can be glimpsed behind the Ogri itself, pushing it forward.
At minute 12 of part four, when Romana calls Professor Rumford into the kitchen, a boom microphone is visible at the top left for a few seconds.
In the Getting Blood from the Stones featurette on the DVD release, director Darrol Blake claims you can see one of the Ogri prop's wheels when it falls over a cliff.
When the Doctor and Amelia are on the cliff being chased, a van can be seen in the background right after she says, "We're trapped."

Continuity

The Doctor and Romana are still on their quest to find all six segments of the Key to Time. (TV: The Ribos Operation)

The Doctor recaps their mission for Romana, and reveals that she was actually sent on the mission by the White Guardian, rather than the Lord President of the High Council of Time Lords as she had thought.
The Doctor also tells her that there is a Black Guardian who may be out to thwart their quest.
The Doctor and Romana are also just putting away the second segment of the Key, which they have recently retrieved. (TV: The Pirate Planet)

Modified Ogri appear in PROSE: Legacy.

Home video and audio releases

DVD releases

This story was released along with The Ribos Operation, The Pirate Planet, The Androids of Tara, The Power of Kroll and The Armageddon Factor as Doctor Who: The Key to Time. This October 2002 release was only in Region 1. Extras include commentary by Mary Tamm and Darrol Blake, a photo gallery and production information subtitles.

It was released with the same stories as Doctor Who: The Key to Time, an extras-laden box set limited to 15,000 in its initial UK release on 24 September 2007, later followed by wide release in Region 1 on 3 March 2009 as The Key to Time - Special Edition.
A vanilla release was issued as issue 67 of Doctor Who DVD Files.

Contents (2007/2009 version):

Commentary by Tom Baker, Mary Tamm, Susan Engel and David Fisher.
Commentary by Mary Tamm and Darrol Blake (carried over from the 2002 set).
Getting Blood from the Stones - Cast and crew look back at the making of The Stones of Blood, including Mary Tamm, John Leeson, Susan Engel, David Fisher, Anthony Read, Darrol Blake and Mat Irvine.
Hammer Horror - A short featurette considering the influences of horror films on Doctor Who stories over the years.
Stones Free - A 2007 featurette in which Mary Tamm visits the Rollright Stones to meet experts on this ancient stone circle.
Deleted Scenes - Deleted footage from Part 2.
The Model World of Robert Symes - An excerpt from a 1979 programme looking at the modelwork for The Stones of Blood.
Blue Peter & Nationwide - The two BBC magazine programmes celebrate Doctor Who's 15th anniversary. The Nationwide segment includes interviews with Carole Ann Ford, Mary Tamm and Tom Baker.
Continuities - Off-air continuity links from the story's original BBC1 transmission.
Radio Times Billings - Original listings from Radio Times (DVD-ROM PC/Mac)
Coming Soon Trailer - Planet of Evil (2007 UK version only)
Production Subtitles
Photo gallery (2009 Region 1 version)

Notes:

Editing for the DVD release was completed by the Doctor Who Restoration Team.

DVD Region 1 US cover
DVD Region 2 UK cover
DVD Region 1 US special edition cover
DVD Region 4 AUS cover

The Key to Time boxed set covers

DVD Region 2 UK The Key to Time cover
DVD Region 1 US The Key to Time cover
DVD Region 4 Australian The Key to Time cover

Video releases

VHS UK cover
VHS Australian cover
VHS US cover
VHS US 'The Gateway Collection' cover

Digital releases

The story is available for streaming in the US through Hulu Plus or Amazon Instant Video in the UK.

External links

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