Rating: 
Summary: Hi! I MAKE NO SENSE!!...
Review: I am the biggest Doctor Who fan I know. I own 45 vhs tapes full of eps that were taped off of public TV in the 80s and 90s. Oh how I had forgotten how bad this ep was until I watched teh DVD I just purchased. I never liked Sylvester McCoy. I am, being 37, your stereotypical Tom Baker fan, but SM was always just annoying whereas the other doctors were just different.. I did however have a vague recollection that there was a SM ep I liked and thought it was this one. Nope. It was Ghost Light. Acting is bad at best. Plot suffers from too little said to let you know what the hades is going on yet too much babbling about other personal issues that meant squat to fans of the show. ugh.. Buy the Two Doctors instead. Much superior. I wish I had. ugh.. bad bad bad.On the good side. Monsters looked good. From about 20 feet away.
Rating:
Summary: McCoy DOES try but.....
Review: I feel sorry for Sylvester McCoy. Because of bad management decisions at the BBC, he didn't get a proper regeneration sequence, his first season was horrible AND short since it wasn't written for him. He was saddled with two companions, one, Mel, who was an unbelievable annoyance and then Ace who eventually had some good moments but also had a mush-mouth and it was often hard to hear what she was actually saying. He only had 12 adventures to play the Doctor on TV at the time and about 8 of them were pretty bad. "Fenric" is one of his better shows but unfortunately that's not saying much. Sometimes, things are not clear in this story, such as the badguy being an old enemy of the Doctor and this really does seem to come out of nowhere. McCoy's Doctor being very secretive and manipulative? Never quite worked for me and I felt the show was at it's worst during his era. He did have some good shows, though, the best being 'Remembrance of the Daleks', 'Happiness Patrol' and 'Battlefield'. Fenric runs in place right after. Keep in mind, I don't blame McCoy but pretty much everybody ELSE involved at the time, right down to the sound man who apparently didn't know what he was doing either when you can't understand a lot of the incidental dialogue spoken by your two lead actors. Go buy ANYTHING form Tom Bakers 12th, 13th and 14th season or Colin Bakers 22nd season for the very best in "Who". Edited to add: the whole "must use voting button to EARN a voting button" is silly and I DID vote on another review so I don't know why they're not recognizing that. Goofy system.
Rating:
Summary: McCoy DOES try but.....
Review: I feel sorry for Sylvester McCoy. Because of bad management decisions at the BBC, he didn't get a proper regeneration sequence, his first season was horrible AND short since it wasn't written for him. He was saddled with two companions, one, Mel, who was an unbelievable annoyance and then Ace who eventually had some good moments but also had a mush-mouth and it was often hard to hear what she was actually saying. He only had 12 adventures to play the Doctor on TV at the time and about 8 of them were pretty bad. "Fenric" is one of his better shows but unfortunately that's not saying much. Sometimes, things are not clear in this story, such as the badguy being an old enemy of the Doctor and this really does seem to come out of nowhere. McCoy's Doctor being very secretive and manipulative? Never quite worked for me and I felt the show was at it's worst during his era. He did have some good shows, though, the best being 'Remembrance of the Daleks', 'Happiness Patrol' and 'Battlefield'. Fenric runs in place right after. Keep in mind, I don't blame McCoy but pretty much everybody ELSE involved at the time, right down to the sound man who apparently didn't know what he was doing either when you can't understand a lot of the incidental dialogue spoken by your two lead actors. Go buy ANYTHING form Tom Bakers 12th, 13th and 14th season or Colin Bakers 22nd season for the very best in "Who".
Rating:
Summary: The end of Doctor Who is clearly evident
Review: I liked Sylvester McCoy. He is a great actor and deserved better from the BBC Doctor Who management. There were some pretty bad stories throughout the 26 years of Dr. Who, but the Curse of Fenric (in my opinion) is one of the worst. Why? Other reviewers hit it on the head...incomprehensible. I still don't know who Fenric was. Supposedly he is an arch enemy of the doctor, from the time of the ice warriors and the dawn of the universe when it was divided by two forces good and evil. Ok!??? The problem here is multi-fold. The Doctor is at his best when the show is Sc-fi based, such as in The Arc in Space, Frontiers in Space, The Evil Planet etc. Even though the sets were cheesey, the stories were awesome. In the Curse of Fenric, we are stuck in 1943 England. The Russians invade as well as zombies, but then it is explained that they are vampires, Norse vampires led by the immortal Fenric....what? I have seen every Doctor Who episode that has been released (yes I am a Dr. Who fanatic) but this episode can be summed up in one word....Lame!
Again, Sylvester and the actress that played Ace are not at fault here. The script was a mess and should never have been aproved by the BBC. If the new series gets bogged down in stories like this, it won't last past one season. Go back to stories like the ones from Pertwee and Baker or there is no lasting future for Dr. Who.
Rating: 
Summary: I was thrilled and surprised at the quality of this story.
Review: I was reluctant to purchase The Curse of Fenric, because I used to have a copy of it dubbed off of television, and I was never a huge fan of the McCoy years. His era started off with a wimper, had a glorious but extremely short second season, and then finished with lots of mythological- fantasy mumbo-jumbo aimed at the level of a five year old. I bought this video because I was reading a few reviews of it on Doctor Who fan web sites and thought that my memory of it was perhaps mistaken. I had enjoyed it originally, but thought that it could never compare to some earlier programs I loved dearly. I watched Fenric again yesterday, for the first time in about 3 or four years, and was blown away by it! First of all, McCoy is absolutely brilliant as the Doctor - I say this as a veteran Who fan of 21 years. He has the uncanny ability to act bemused and whimsical one minute and serious and stern the next. The entire beginning sequence in which he and Ace infiltrate the military base is wonderfully carried out and illustrates Ian Briggs' skills as a writer and his sensitivity to the characters of the Doctor and Ace. The minister in the story is basically a good man. Much like the rest of us, he tries to understand the world, all the while knowing it might be horrific in the last analysis. His underplayed performance is really an asset to the production because it shows us how empty and drained he is by his experience of so-called Christendom, an emotional state that prefigures the very real evil awaiting all of the characters. I loved the use of Norse mythology in this story. The scene where the writings in the crypt are created through the control of one of the character's voices is chilling and reminds one of the traditional identification between being and speech, e.g. God said "Let there be light," and there was light. The added footage creates new dimensions to the story, illustrating that perhaps it would have worked even better as a 5 or even a six parter. The special effects were superb - some of the best ever in Doctor Who. I was amazed that this was the same season that produced Survival, an interesting but horribly enacted story with daft plot devices and vacuous characterizations. Now I can see more clearly than ever what John Nathan Turner was trying to do to salvage the program and make it more competitive with other higher budget programs. The script for Fenric is top-notch, and I cannot believe that the B.B.C. would have killed off such a lucrative show, especially considering Fenric was the penultimate show of the original program's run. Now we can only wonder about what might have been. I recommend this video to anyone who craves a good action adventure with an intelligent pen behind all the actions.
Rating:
Summary: Not the best of Doctor Who
Review: I'm a big Doctor Who fan, but I'm not a Who fanboy. If an episode doesn't catch my fancy I'll be honest about it. That's so here. "The Curse of Fenric" finds the Doctor (Sylvester McCoy, not my favorite Doctor) and Ace arriving in a World War II base in England. Here at this base a mad military officer is planning to use chemical gas on German cities to win the war. Meanwhile, Russians soldiers are landing in an amphibious operation to investigate what the British are doing. Also, a race of zombie/vampire/demons are about to rise again from the depths of the oceans. Oh yeah, and an old enemy of the doctor is trying to resurrect himself because he's spent thousands of years trying to figure out a chess puzzle. So when these three or four different storylines converge, you can imagine that all hell breaks lose. Like one reviewer said, this episode is pretty campy. Some may think the "more than faith" thing is a great story twist, but it really isn't - look in any vampire book and you'll see they actually SAY you need faith behind a symbol when combating these things. As for the vampire/zombie/two-bit extras, they pretty much kill people because those victims appear out of no where, fire a few shots, then just stand and stare and LET the vampires kill. A lot of these scenes are that corny: two vampires walk into a room full of women who scream...and then two British soldiers enter later to find voila! All those women are now vampires! Huh? So a large crowd of women let two slow-moving vampires affect them? They didn't try to fight back or escape or some thing? The quality in this part of the series always bugged me too. I really don't know what's going on because the sound is so bad - it sounds like most of the cast is on permanent whisper mode! And as a final quarrel, Ace pretty much screws over the situation two or three times. Good job Ace. Even if you were a fan of the series like I am, I would suggest you avoid this episode.
Rating:
Summary: Not the best of Doctor Who
Review: I'm a big Doctor Who fan, but I'm not a Who fanboy. If an episode doesn't catch my fancy I'll be honest about it. That's so here. "The Curse of Fenric" finds the Doctor (Sylvester McCoy, not my favorite Doctor) and Ace arriving in a World War II base in England. Here at this base a mad military officer is planning to use chemical gas on German cities to win the war. Meanwhile, Russians soldiers are landing in an amphibious operation to investigate what the British are doing. Also, a race of zombie/vampire/demons are about to rise again from the depths of the oceans. Oh yeah, and an old enemy of the doctor is trying to resurrect himself because he's spent thousands of years trying to figure out a chess puzzle. So when these three or four different storylines converge, you can imagine that all hell breaks lose. Like one reviewer said, this episode is pretty campy. Some may think the "more than faith" thing is a great story twist, but it really isn't - look in any vampire book and you'll see they actually SAY you need faith behind a symbol when combating these things. As for the vampire/zombie/two-bit extras, they pretty much kill people because those victims appear out of no where, fire a few shots, then just stand and stare and LET the vampires kill. A lot of these scenes are that corny: two vampires walk into a room full of women who scream...and then two British soldiers enter later to find voila! All those women are now vampires! Huh? So a large crowd of women let two slow-moving vampires affect them? They didn't try to fight back or escape or some thing? The quality in this part of the series always bugged me too. I really don't know what's going on because the sound is so bad - it sounds like most of the cast is on permanent whisper mode! And as a final quarrel, Ace pretty much screws over the situation two or three times. Good job Ace. Even if you were a fan of the series like I am, I would suggest you avoid this episode.
Rating: 
Summary: A Confusing Mess
Review: I've always had problems with this story and I had to by the extended version on this DVD to make sure I wasn't just going nuts. It IS one of the better McCoy stories, and that's the good news. The bad news is that it's still awful. There's WAY too much going on in this story to have it make sense in the short amount of time television gives you to explain it. There's tons of subplots, various theories about what's actually going on in the story, too many characters, and the whole thing just comes off as a pompous mess. I was hoping that an extended version might help to explain it. It does, but it only scratches the surface of explaining what's happening. Would have made a great book, but it was a crappy script for this show.
Rating:
Summary: Two versions - quite different
Review: If this DVD set is the same as was released in the UK last year, then you are getting TWO different cuts of Curse of Fenric - one, a restored version of the "episodic" version (as the story was originally broadcast), and a redo cut as a movie, with extended or extra scenes, which fits much more closely to the original script and director's intent. Little things are cleaned up as well - like how it rains and is dark in one scene, then obviously fake rain and bright sunshine in the next. The re-do on the effects help bring Fenric into the 21st Century. The whole recut is fantastic and is much better than the episodic version is (all due to time constraints and having to fit into a 25-minute time slot). This is also a good introduction to Who as a series for someone who hasn't ever seen it before - better than the Five Doctors, in that there isn't that much backstory needed before viewing. Overall, worth every penny!
Rating:
Summary: The apex of the best season for many years.
Review: If you gave up on the McCoy era after some of the dreadful episodes of his first season as the Doctor then this video is a must-see, as 'Fenric' is so much better than trash like 'Time and The Rani' that it's difficult to believe the two stories are from the same series. 'Curse of Fenric', set in World War 2, has a plot involving Norse mythology, blood-drinking humanoids from a future in which the Earth has been poisoned by chemical weapons, and an ancient force trapped in a bottle. The well-written and believable characters, the gloomy and grittily realistic settings, the fast-paced action scenes and the dark, brooding atmosphere make this one of the series' all-time greats. The music is suitably eerie and the Doctor/Ace companionship is at its best.
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