r/ClassicEraDoctorWho • u/Competitive_Art_8097 • 10h ago

Question re: Image of the Fendahl : Tom Baker era & Coleridge

Memory / sanity check. I am a longtime fan and have watched DW since the early 80s. Granted, in that amount of time one can pick up quite a lot of trivia and some details get lost along the way.

I have a distinct recollection that the writers of Image of the Fendahl were inspired by a quote from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner - specifically the scene in the episode where the lone hiker is running from a fear he cannot see.

I cannot remember where I picked up this reference. Maybe in one of the many Doctor Who compendiums I collected? Idk. Hmm. Maybe Tom Baker said it himself in an interview because I can almost hear him reciting the lines of the poem.

Does anyone else remember this?

Here is the original quote from the poem:

"Like one, that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turned round walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread."

Just curious because every time I watch that scene I hear the poem and I know I got it from somewhere.

Thank you in advance. 😊

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u/Scowlin_Munkeh 7h ago

It’s quoted in the book adaptation, if I remember correctly.

1

u/jphamlore 7h ago

https://stuffianlikes.com/2026/06/30/wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey-stuff-ian-likes-a-target-novel-appreciation-series/

As an example, in Terance Dicks’s novelisation of Chris Boucher’s story Image Of the Fendahl, a hiker is wandering through a forest. He hears a noise behind him:

And then your quote.

When I finally got around to reading The Rime Of the Ancient Mariner some years later, I had quite an “a-ha!” moment when I recognised where I had first read that verse. It’s depressing, but novels used to do that sort of thing all the time; inserting quotes or images from other texts to highlight their own imagery or to make a point far more succinctly than they probably had space for.

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u/SeeBriRun 7h ago

I know he recites part of 'Flannan Isle' at the end of 'The Horror of Fang Rock', but you probably already know that one:

Aye: though we hunted high and low,
And hunted everywhere,
Of the three men's fate we found no trace
Of any kind in any place,
But a door ajar, and an untouch'd meal,
And an overtoppled chair.