As a countdown to the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who I and my wife will be watching an episode a day until we are caught up to whatever the Beeb has planned. This is a record of my initial reaction to each day's episode published with minimal editing and crappy synopsis.
"It is the year 1289 and this is the Plain of Pamir."
A new serial and a new experience to write about. This is the first episode that doesn't exist in the BBC video archives. In 1960's Britain TV was looked at as ephemera. Reruns were rare and the thought of meticulously archiving something that the networks couldn't use again was alien. Doctor Who actually got off lightly in comparison to some other series. Thankfully the BBC hired Ian Levine in the 70's and he put an end to the junking of old Who.
Ang and I listened to this episode on a BBC released CD of a fan made audio tape. In the pre-VCR days fans made these "off air recordings" to relive the stories that the BBC wasn't going to rerun. These same fans turned over copies of their tapes to the Beeb in order to preserve what little they could. All of the missing serials have been released on CD with linking narration provided by an actor associated with the production. Tonight's episode was narrated by William Russel who played Ian.
Some stories are partially complete. There are a few that are only missing an episode or two while others have as little as a few seconds of screen time that have trickled down to us. None of the seven episodes that make up Marco Polo exist; to the best of my knowledge it is one of three stories that have NO remaining footage.
This is also the first truly historical serial in the series. Historical stories at this point in the series steer clear of any science fiction elements other than the TARDIS and the nature of time travel. In later seasons the gloves are off and we see see an alien explorer financing DaVinci, the Daleks scaring off the crew of the Marie Celeste, HG Wells taking a trip on the TARDIS etc.
I like both approaches, but I have to say that it's nice to see that every famous person in human history DIDN'T end up meeting aliens. History is fascinating to me. At least if it's well presented. You shouldn't have to add aliens to make history appealing. On the other hand some of the finest stories in Doctor Who have been science fiction historicals.
So that's a lot of talk about everything but this episode.
I think that this story is especially hurt by the lack of visuals. I've listened to many other stories and enjoyed them immensely. This was a let down.
The photographs from the set indicate that this was a relatively lavish story by Who standards. A tidy sum was spent on sets and costumes that probably impressed TV viewers of the time, now lost to the ages. A costume drama that you can't see is half a story. I've also noticed some very subtle acting cues from Ian and Barbara in previous eps; obviously that's lost too.
The plot is interesting in and of itself. The TARDIS has landed and soon breaks down. No heat, water or electricity and they are perched in a frozen wasteland over a thousand feet above sea level.
Fortunately Marco Polo and some of Kublai Kahn's finest show up and save the day. Not without a bit of drama from Mongol warlord Tegana though. His talk of the traveler's being "evil spirits" is more than a little cliched.
Most of the Chinese people (Cathayians?) in this story are played by white actors. It's something that will persist in Who for at least another decade. I'm not going to condone it, but I will give the actor playing Tegana credit for not using an oriental accent of any kind.
The actress playing Ping-Cho is of Burmese descent. Ping-Cho does seem to have an accent even though the actress playing her (Zienia Merton) does not. Ms Merton was a regular on Space:1999 and her accent there was refined British.
Marco Polo, the character, comes very close to being a little too "knight-in-shining-armor" for my tastes, but the script makes a nice turn towards the end and we discover that Polo plans to trade the TARDIS to Kublai Kahn for permission to return to Venice.
Polo's scheme has the Doctor livid with anger at one moment and laughing his butt off the next.
Of course, Tegana has plans of his own for the TARDIS.
Next Up: The Singing Sands
Now that you mention it, I don't think it is as good as the other audios we've listened to. But, the show in general isn't as good yet as it will be later, in my opinion. So it makes some sense that they would still be getting their "Who legs." I enjoyed it well enough. First episodes can be a bit on the slow side as they are just setting the table for the meat of the story which comes later.
ReplyDeleteAnd I was really tempted to just comment and say "Marco..." but I was afraid that either 1) no one would take the bait or 2) I'd have created a monster of ongoing one-word comments.