Lethbridge-Stewart: Beast of Fang Rock, by Andy Frankham-Allan
Second paragraph of third chapter:
Hamilton pulled in a few favours and Fang Rock was once again off-limits for all but essential personnel and Owain, who Lethbridge-Stewart had asked to remain at the lighthouse, along with the BBC cameraman, one James Ratcliffe Saunders. Meanwhile a D-Notice 05, covering United Kingdom Security & Intelligence Special Services, was given to BBC-3. All those on the rock, including the keepers and the chap from Trinity House, had been held for a few hours while statements were taken; they were all released with a stron warning to keep their silence on what they’d seen. Hamilton had made calls to the Royal Navy, and HMS Warspite had been pulled from her usual duties and sent to comb the waters surrounding Fang Rock for any sign of the UFO.
Allow me once again to boost this series of novels about the life of Alastair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart in the year(s) between his encounter with Yeti in the underground and the foundation of UNIT in time to deal with the Cyberman invasion. Here he and Ann Travers are sent to investigate strange goings-on at Fang Rock, the lighthouse which saw a set of mysterious deaths at the turn of the century which themselves followed previous odd happenings decades earlier. It turns out that the Travers family has a connection to events, and that the timelines of the three periods are intertwined in unexpected ways.
It’s very daring of Frankham-Allan to take this approach, with the Brigadier and Ann turning into the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of Horror of Fang Rock (with the important difference that they were not actually in the original story). But he pulls it off, giving depth and background to the lighthouse, the Rutans and the human protagonists. These books are going to become hidden gems of Who lore. The one problem with this one is that Frankham-Allan, as both author and editor of the series as a whole, seems not to have proofed it as closely as other volumes – I caught a number of silly slips, including a South American llama in Tibet.
