The Singing Sands (Marco Polo episode two)
R: I think it’s really rather terrific that the most alien thing we’ve yet encountered in Doctor Who hasn’t been found on some remote planet, but on Earth; the singing sands are genuinely eerie. And it’s a reminder that at this point in the series, much of the true wonder comes from history rather than just science fantasy. When Susan looks up at the sky and bemoans the fact they’re not exploring distant galaxies, it sounds almost odd and irrelevant, quite rightly so – and within minutes, she’s marvelling at the beauty of the Gobi desert.
And it’s this push-pull effect of Lucarotti’s writing – that he invites us to stand back and be a slack-jawed tourist one moment, then realise how much danger we’re in the next – that gives this instalment its edge. It’s an episode about nothing more grand than sand and water – swords are drawn, but only in jest, and a king is killed, but only on a chessboard. And yet, there’s such an earnestness to the real-world threat of thirst that the closing minutes, in which Ian persuades Marco to gamble all on a sprint to a distant oasis, are brilliantly tense. What’s so remarkable about the confidence of this story is that, only two episodes in, it feels so tonally different from what we’ve seen before, so much more magisterial somehow. Doctor Who has become a road movie of sorts, and, set as this story is to run for seven episodes, you can somehow sense that this adventure could be the basis for the entire series. Had Sydney Newman come up with the idea of a group of contemporary people travelling not through time and space in a police box, but journeying to Cathay alongside Marco Polo, then I think the premise would have sustained itself for quite a while.
William Hartnell has only one line this episode, but you hardly notice his absence because Mark Eden (playing Marco) and William Russell effortlessly take on the lead roles. (I love the explanation for the Doctor being missing from the action – he’s usually unconscious or captured in stories to come, but here it’s because he’s sulking, which is delightful!) Carole Ann Ford is very good this week too. In this story alone does a writer think back to that strange girl in the classroom who didn’t quite add up – the one who knew the future and was a scientific genius, but still danced to John Smith and the Common Men on her transistor radio. The portrait of Susan as a mixed-up kid who can fantasise about the metal seas on Venus, but so desires an identity that she’s fallen in love with sixties England, has been rather left by the wayside; she’s been reduced somewhat to a girl who’ll scream for her grandfather. But it’s really very endearing here that she’ll dig that crazy desert in her sixties slang. It all sounds unreal and self-conscious, of course, just as Ace did with her toecurlingly unlikely eighties yoof speak 25 years later – the difference here being that it’s meant to be.
T: The marvellous soundscape created for the titular sandstorm is reminiscent of the Radiophonic Workshop’s unnerving crepitations in Quatermass and the Pit (the only programme to have ever rivalled Doctor Who in my affections). It’s uncanny the way the elements themselves become the threat, and the consequent moaning, roaring, screeching aural assault suggests something alien and dangerous just as much as anything we encountered on Skaro. Ian’s line that “it sounds like all the devils in hell are laughing” is wonderful, and underlines my previous assertion that John Lucarotti is cleverly making the past not so much another country as another planet. Fandom has always considered Lucarotti as a writer of evocative historicals, but he’s far more sophisticated with the brief than is generally accepted.
No, there’s not an awful lot of incident in this episode, but it still works because Lucarotti is cunningly engaging in an exercise in mood. The manoeuvring of the chess game between Ian and Marco, the lurking shadows in the threatening night-time, the horses acting uneasy – all of this builds up the sense of menace and impending doom magnificently. I’ll take this over any badly orchestrated fight scene or a randomly generated piece of jeopardy involving a pesky space door, because the writing is so skilful and the characters are so real.
Derren Nesbitt continues to purr his way through his role as Tegana – he lays his nastiness out in the open but stops short of being too blatant, almost as if he’s willing everyone involved to accuse him of being a baddie. It’s most beguiling and, strangely, rather civilised. Tegana is a sneaky, manipulative presence who smiles, and murders while he smiles.
I don’t think we’d ever get a story like this now. It’s not a criticism of New Who at all – it’s just that this adventure belongs to its period. But then, I’m not sure I’d want them to do it now either – Marco Polo exists (or rather, frustratingly doesn’t on video) as a period piece and a very fine example of its genre. And, indeed, of sixties television.
Five Hundred Eyes (Marco Polo episode three)
R: I agree with you, Toby, that one of the joys of watching this series in order is how there’s such a strange variety of styles on offer. Doctor Who still hasn’t worked out what it wants to be yet. There’s a glimpse here of a road not taken, I think – the series as educational children’s programme. We get a science lesson about condensation, and a story about the Hashashins which almost feels like the sort of insert you’d get in a magazine programme like Blue Peter. What’s great is how well these little bits of instruction are dropped in. The demonstration of how water is produced by temperature change is very clever, and the fact that Marco doesn’t respond with the cooing interest of a schoolchild – but instead the fury of a man who thinks that the travellers have tricked him – is spot on. And Ping-Cho’s mime dance is extraordinary, not because Zienia Merton has the grace of a ballerina (if she does, the telesnaps aren’t telling), but because all the action stops so the characters can sit about and watch a performance of a history lesson. The Doctor wants to get to the TARDIS with his new key, Barbara wants to tell Ian about her suspicions of Tegana – but then everyone seems to turn to camera and say, “Now we’ll take a short break whilst we have this word from our sponsor, the Education Board.” It’s absolutely splendid, full of charm and only adds to the richness of the setting. It’s as if we’re reading a history book, and are being sent to the back of the volume to read a particularly interesting footnote.
And so it should come as no surprise that the plotting is influenced by children’s literature too. I rather love the idea of Barbara going off to the very caves where all the villains have chosen to meet and chat about their nefarious plots. It’s all so wonderfully Enid Blyton, you can just see the Famous Five getting mixed up in a similar scrape. But that’s where Doctor Who and its strange shifting tone leaps up and bites you – just as you recognise the genre, you cut to a sequence where Barbara is tied up on a cave floor, the painted faces of dead bandits staring down at her, as Mongols giggle about her and mime they’re going to slit her throat. That never happened to the kids on Kirrin Island.
T: This is, I think, as close to Sydney Newman’s view of Doctor Who as we’re ever likely to get – and Lucarotti here fulfils the brief perfectly, carefully placing the “educational” elements into his script with elegance and panache. One is expected to pay attention to things like plot when reviewing television, but if an episode has no plot and yet still manages to entertain, move and excite the viewer, then it’s done its job. The history lessons here aren’t the patronising asides like the safety lessons at the end of Inspector Gadget, but they augment the story and the characters in an interesting way. Marco needs to have the process of condensation explained to him – and so yes, we get a bit of science, but it also informs us about his character and impacts upon his relationship with the regulars. Ping-Cho’s delightful interlude is a triumph – even if I can’t see it, experience tells me that the loss of this dance is much more regrettable than that of what may well have been some slightly limp fight scenes elsewhere in this story.
You can get away with not a lot happening if the stuff that doesn’t happen, er, doesn’t happen in an interesting way. In that regard, all the elements that make up this jewel of a story come together superbly. I k
now a number of fans write off the historicals as boring, but I could listen to these performances and savour this dialogue a lot more than any number of routines given by some poor sod with a silly haircut talking about the Bandicoots of Venus or somesuch. There is an intelligence going on here, one that has the confidence to weave the story with subtlety and sophistication, and gently lure us along for the ride (or, rather, meander). I will happily spend further time in the company of these characters on their quest.
January 9th
The Wall of Lies (Marco Polo episode four)
R: Marco Polo’s a real butterfly of a story – it never quite settles down to be one thing long enough, then it’s off again, whether this means a change of location or tone (or both, really). In that way, I think that it symbolises all that is great about the potential of Doctor Who. Take this rather brilliant episode as an example, and note the way that within 25 minutes, the tenor of the story shifts from something which is basically amiable (it is to Polo rather than to the Doctor that Ian calls when he finds something interesting in the cave wall) to one tense enough that Ian and the Doctor plan on taking Polo hostage, in a desperation that recalls their struggle against the cavemen. Last week, this was all an entertaining travelogue; here, all the danger is restored.
What’s fascinating, as we react to the Doctor’s plans to attack Polo, is how much we are still invited to sympathise with Polo rather than with the regulars. The device of having Polo narrate the journey is very inspired – this is his adventure, we are seeing the story through his eyes, and it makes the TARDIS crew far more alienating as a result. To survive, everybody plays for Polo’s good opinion of them, and everybody lies to him. Ian may call Polo his friend, but he’s just as prepared to deceive him as Tegana is. I wince as the Doctor and Ian are caught out in their treachery, and it isn’t because their attempt to escape has been foiled, but because they’ve been shown to have lost the moral high ground we expect of our heroes. And therefore there’s a strange cynical edge to this episode, especially in contrast to last week’s, which had the trust and familiarity of all the characters sitting around together watching a dance. Tegana manipulates Polo against the regulars, the Doctor immediately distrusts Ping-Cho... and there’s a truly terrific cliffhanger, in which Ian creeps up to attack a guard only to find that someone has got there first and already attacked him. There’s a corpse on the ground and Ian’s not the killer – and yet, he still seems strangely culpable, because you know he just might have become one. Here we are, just four stories in, and the series is still refusing to tie the regulars down into easy stereotypes; it’s still playing around with how the audience should be responding to them.
What a truly extraordinary story this is. I just love it.
T: The morality here is complex and murky, and I find it fascinating. The regulars come across as interlopers in the guest cast’s story, flies in their respective ointments. The Doctor laughs at Tegana’s superstitions (played dead straight by Nesbitt), and this makes us squirm uncomfortably at the old man. Such is the Doctor’s patronising scorn, it legitimises Tegana’s hatred of the travellers, and makes it absolutely plausible that Marco would trust the warlord rather than the Doctor and his friends. Especially when, later in the episode, the Doctor again hoots at Marco for being a savage, putting us even further into the curious position of having more sympathy for Marco than our leading man does.
I have to highlight the gripping scene where Barbara’s captors play dice to decide which of them will get to kill her, and Jacqueline Hill pitches Barbara’s horror at this with just the right level of fear and disgust. The barbarity of this era – as alien as it might seem at times – is all the more frightening because the perpetrators of the evil deeds are humans, like us.
Rider from Shang-Tu (Marco Polo episode five)
R: Wang-Lo – the pompous landlord – is a bit of a breakthrough, isn’t he? He’s obsequious and fat and oily, like one of those people who show up on your doorstep trying to get you to change your gas supplier. And yet he’s also the first comic character in Doctor Who, the only one so far who’s there purely for light relief, to make us laugh. It’s a further indication of just how Marco Polo is expanding the series, and using its epic length generously, trying to nudge Doctor Who into all new areas.
The shifty looking criminal Kuiju is rather amusing too – both Wang-Lo and Kuiju are wonderful contrasts to the complexity of Tegana and Polo and our heroes, because they’re so guilelessly and shamelessly interested only in money, and have caricatured themselves in the process. Oh, and Kuiju has a monkey and an eyepatch. There’s only one thing that’s funnier than a monkey, and that’s a monkey owned by someone with a facial disfigurement.
But what really stands out in this episode, perhaps because of the comparatively broad comedy, is the very dignity of everyone else. I think the scene where Ian honestly tells Marco Polo that they intended to escape, and Polo as calmly tells him that he’ll need to redouble his vigilance as a result, is just smashing – it’s two enemies discussing the matter without rancour or apology in the face of a greater threat from bandits. And even better is that beautiful sequence in which Susan refuses to compromise Ping-Cho by asking her to break her word to Polo and tell her where the TARDIS keys are hidden – even though she knows that her entire freedom is at stake. This is all such a marked contrast to the amorality of the early stories, where the ends justify the means, where you’ll lead the Thals into battle just to save your own skins. I think it’s all part of an ongoing debate the series is making, and these differing approaches to responsibility towards individuals is what gives Doctor Who its unity – and for all its shifting styles, makes this feel like one long continuing story.
It’s why the cliffhanger is so effective. This is the third story in which the audience has been led to believe that the regulars have reached the sanctuary of the TARDIS, only to be thwarted in the closing seconds. Doctor Who plays an awkward game sometimes with the credibility of its companions, where for the plot to work your typical girl assistant needs to go out and foolishly get herself captured. But for all the Doctor’s bluster about Susan, it’s entirely right that she jeopardises their escape by going to say goodbye to Ping-Cho. Because Ping-Cho has put her own honour at risk to steal Susan the keys, and all she wanted in return was a farewell. The Doctor of The Forest of Fear would have broken that promise, the Ian Chesterton of The Expedition would have put his own safety first. But there’s a different moral centre to this episode, and there are some things that are just more important than the TARDIS crew getting their way and flying off to their next adventure.
T: “Classy” is the word for this. After a very talky instalment last week, this is all-action from the kick off, with the underbeat of drums rattling us along. Marco gets a great line when giving a weapon to the Doctor, stating that if he’s half as aggressive with it as he is with his tongue, then they can’t lose. The science lessons continue to be seamless and integral, whilst demonstrating the smartness of our regulars – in this case, Ian’s application of his scientific knowledge from the future (the burning of the bamboo) exploits the bandits’ superstitious beliefs. When the Khan’s courier – Ling-Tau – arrives, we get a fascinating litany of information about how he manages to ride so quickly (he keeps changing horses every three miles, but this means he travels 300 miles in more than 24 hours with no sleep). It’s meticulously researched and fascinatingly presented, without feeling like an unnecessary longueur.
There’s so much formality about, in fact. Tegana is now happy to be blatant (but not in a sneering, cod, villainous way) in his dislike for our heroes, and Marco and Ian openly discuss their differences and what tactics they might employ in dealing with each other. Then there’s the fine moment where Marco does a “good” thing by saying that they’re no longer officially prisoners of the Khan – but that they’re still his prisoners. “Thanks for nothing,” mutters Hartnell, brilliantly. It’s a bit like telling the Guantanamo Bay inmates that they’re no l
onger prisoners of the state but are still prisoners of war, and that they’re not going anywhere. The powerful often use semantics to make their actions seem honourable.
January 10th
Mighty Kublai Khan (Marco Polo episode six)
R: This episode is dominated by two excellent scenes. The first is between Ian and Polo, and it’s so cleverly written. After everything I wrote about the moral code at work in the last episode, Ian here loses his opportunity to convince Marco that they should get the TARDIS back – all because he tries to protect Ping-Cho by taking blame for the theft of the TARDIS keys in Marco’s possession. Because Ian has lied, even with the best of motives, it only means that he is capable of lying in the first place – and so Marco cannot make the leap of faith required to accept that the TARDIS can travel through time. There’s never any question that Ian shouldn’t have leaped to Ping-Cho’s defence, but Lucarotti is subtly demonstrating that there’s a sacrifice to be made for doing the right thing. It’s another version of the argument played out in The Expedition, in which Ian battles with his conscience to lead the Thals into a war in which some will die for the greater good.
Suddenly, that chess game that was played in The Singing Sands takes on a whole new meaning; every time Ian acts altruistically, he risks losing a pawn. By chasing after Ping-Cho when she runs back to Cheng-Ting, he only gives Tegana the chance to drive a further wedge between him and Polo. For all the fact that this adventure appears to be an educational story for children, it firmly resists any attempts to teach easy differences between right and wrong in a way that’s wholly admirable; just look at the stuff we get on CBBC nowadays, which strongly sets out moral messages in which naughty acts are punished and selfless ones are rewarded. In Lucarotti’s tale “for kids”, instead, we’re shown things are never quite as simple as that. And that’s so much more valuable a lesson – here I am, age 38, and I’m trying to debate whether Ian should have told Marco that white lie or not.
Running Through Corridors: Rob and Toby's Marathon Watch of Doctor Who (Volume 1: The 60s) Page 7
