Running Through Corridors: Rob and Toby's Marathon Watch of Doctor Who (Volume 1: The 60s) (9 page)

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 longer 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.

The other great scene is the introduction of Kublai Khan. The first Dalek adventure showed us that the more epic you make the story, the greater the risk of it falling flat when the climax can’t be as grand as you want it to be. For six weeks’ viewing (and several months’ adventuring!), all the travellers in Marco Polo have done is set out to meet the great Khan. The danger, surely, is that the reveal of this warlord Mongol could only be disappointing – and Lucarotti brilliantly faces that head on, and trounces it, by playing it as comedy, by showing the Khan as a frail old man who finds a common bond with the Doctor by bemoaning the agonies of old age. It’s the dramatic power of finding out the Wizard of Oz is just a little man pulling strings, or Deep Thought announcing the answer to everything is 42, or revealing after all the press hoopla that the eleventh Doctor is Matt Smith. And yet, what’s terrific is that the tension doesn’t lessen – the scene might smack a little of The Mikado, but it’s impressed upon us that this apparently doddery arthritic has the supreme power of life and death. And that carries so much more awe than had he been simply another Tegana with better robes.

Incidentally, Toby, you’re an actor – what do you make of all the different accents? For a while I was thrown that there was no consistency to them at all. Some were putting on cod Chinese, some speaking in BBC English. I’ve rather grown to like it, though, I think it lends rich variety to the setting. Does it make that classically trained noggin of yours seethe?

T:
Actually, I don’t mind the accents; complaints about such things are, frankly, the first weapon employed by lazy critics. Quite often, I’ve seen actors getting stick for using an accent that is actually their
native
one, which just goes to show how little weight such objections can have. In the case of this story, once you’ve accepted a Czechoslovakian Kublai Khan, such things cease to matter.

I’m likewise struck by our meeting with the Mighty Kublai Khan. Hartnell’s overt comedy refusal to kowtow to him seems initially like a misstep, but it’s worth it for the reveal of the aching, moaning warlord. The Doctor needs to rail against his condition (even if it does make him seem a little daft, seeing as he’s facing a man with the power of life and death over everyone present), so that the two old codgers can bond over gout! The Doctor and Khan hobbling out, groaning far longer than you expect, their exit protracted with comedy grunts, is nuts but great fun!

By this point in the story, the loss of the TARDIS – which is stolen while en route to the Khan – cannot be taken too lightly. When the Ship, say, falls into the chasm in The Impossible Planet, we know it’ll somehow come back because we’re on an alien planet surrounded by strange, SF goings-on. But the sheer length of this tale, combined with the travellers having no technology at their disposal in this time period, and this being a point in the series’ history where seemingly
anything
can happen, makes searching for the missing Ship become like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Special mention should be made that there’s yet-another riveting cliffhanger: Ian, who
finally
gets proof after six episodes that Tegana is a ne’er do well, is denied a triumphant denouement when the Mongol – expert swordsman that he is – calmly beckons Ian towards him.