Marco Polo

Chapter the 275th, where the Doctor goes on a long journey, a very long journey.

Plot:
The Doctor, Susan, Ian and Barbara land in the Himalayas in 1289. The TARDIS is damaged, needing lengthy repairs, and they are without water or heat. Luckily, they meet a party including Marco Polo. He is en route to see Kublai Khan, and takes them with him, also bringing the TARDIS. Polo won't let the Doctor access the TARDIS and keeps the key, as he wants to give this magic flying caravan, as he sees it, to Kublai Khan and finally buy his freedom to return to his home in Venice after many years in the Khan's service. A Mongol warlord, Tegana, who is part of the caravan, is supposed to be a peace emissary, but is secretly plotting to kill Polo and the Khan. Another member of the party is a young girl Ping-Cho, who wants to get out of the arranged marriage to a septuagenarian that awaits her in Peking. There follows an epic journey where Polo and the TARDIS team face conflict with the elements (including sandstorms and the threat of dehydration in the Gobi desert) and with Tegana's plotting. The Doctor secretly accesses and fixes the TARDIS. Both the Doctor and friends, and later Ping Cho, make attempts to leave but are caught. Everyone ends up eventually at the Khan's palace in Peking. He and the Doctor bond over the aches and pains of old age and a liking for backgammon. The Doctor gambles on getting the TARDIS back but loses. Polo saves the Khan from an assassination attempt by Tegana. Tegana chooses death over dishonour at his own hand. Polo gives the Doctor the key and the time travellers escape; Khan forgives Polo this upon seeing the magic of the TARDIS dematerialising.

Context:

It was mid-August 2023, and the family was going on holiday. As long term readers of the blog (Hi Mum!) will know, this is often my opportunity to link the Doctor Who story being watched to the trip. This year, we were going to the Greek island of Kos. No Doctor Who story is set on Kos, or Greece, and the only contenders that are even tenuously related (The Time Monster, The Underwater Menace, The Horns of Nimon) have already been blogged long ago. The random number generator then chose Marco Polo to be next, and I stuck with it; it's vaguely apt as it does see the very first TARDIS team travelling for a lengthy period with the titular character and his caravan. My laziness knows no bounds: rather that struggle with an old laptop that has itunes on and a hard-drive full of all my ripped CDs, but is very slow, I just used one of my Audible credits to download Marco Polo afresh. I think it's probably been remastered since I got the audio version of the story on CD twenty years ago (see First Time Round section below), so that's something. The one credit got me a bundle which included many other William Hartnell stories along with Marco Polo too. Before the trip, I watched the condensed reconstructed version on DVD (again, see First Time Round below); it was a nice job by Derek Handley as always but it can't fully represent the story's expanses. Then I periodically listened to episodes of the story on audio while I was away.

First Time Round:

This is one of those Doctor Who stories that has something of a mystique, and I'm sure I'd heard of it and seen some of the on-set photographs before I ever knew anything about the story. It's the first proper historical story of the series, the first time a real figure from history appears. It forms part of the opening salvo from the series that captured the public imagination: the lavish sets and costumes and educational content appealing to viewers, with large audience figures and reasonable appreciation scores. It sold widely internationally too. It was mentioned subsequently by some of the regular cast as their favourite story, and was considered prestigious enough to be the topic of the series' first ever Radio Times cover. Plus, it's missing without a trace - the earliest Doctor Who story for which no moving images have yet been recovered. I first encountered it in novelisation form sometime in the 1980s. I then bought and listened to the audio version with narration by William Russell when it was released in November 2003 (the audio existing because of enthusiastic fan home-tapers). Finally, a few years later in January 2006, I bought The Beginning DVD box set, which collected the first three stories, and had as an extra the aforementioned 30-minute compilation representing the fourth story Marco Polo using photographs, off-screen stills and sections of the audio.

Reaction:

Unless Russell T Davies takes things in a very unexpected direction, this is the last 7 x 25-minute episode story I will cover for the blog. Doctor Who did stories longer than seven episodes rarely for special occasions or at times of desperation, but the majority of stories were either four or six episodes long. At the beginning, though, and periodically thereafter for the first few years, it kept coming back to seven episode tales. As I touched on in the recent blog post for The Ambassadors of Death, this is an odd length of story, with a single focussed narrative usually unable to sustain such a running time, necessitating the inclusion of a strong subplot. Here, though, a different approach is taken: it's all subplots, with the loosest 'journey' narrative framing them. This is risky, as the eventual piece could seem too unconnected and bitty. To help prevent this, the people and the places seen on the journey need to be interesting. It's unfortunate when judging it that the story has another significance in relation to this blog: it's the final missing adventure I'm going to cover. There remain left to blog only complete stories, or ones with an episode or two missing that has been replaced with animation. If ever a story needed its visuals for a proper assessment, it's this one. Luckily, we have the audio and a lot of photographs, and from that evidence, it seems like it was a lavish production. The evocative stops on the epic route - way stations, Lop, the Gobi desert, the Wall, the Yellow River, the White City, and palaces at Shang-tu and Peking - were no doubt created with utmost skill and ingenuity from the creative production team.

Writer John Lucarotti has also been clever in his scripts to allow for a story with epic sweep to be constructed within the confines of Lime Grove D. The device of having Marco narrate the journey by reading from his journal makes the action seem much more broad and spacious than any television studio. It also tends to make Marco the main character of this particular tale. He's already got the title (and was part of the Radio Times cover, unlike any of the regulars save Hartnell). The regulars' subplot is about getting access to the TARDIS so they can leave, which is not really as interesting, and certainly not as picturesque, as Marco's journey to the Khan, hoping to buy his freedom. In order to achieve their aim, the time travellers have to get Marco on side, which also makes him the embodiment of authority, Othello to Tegana's Iago, as the warlord persuades him that he cannot trust these strangers. The regulars don't feel sidelined exactly as they mostly have enough good material here and there to keep them on screen to remind the audience whose show it's supposed to be; but, it's telling that the Doctor's role in the second episode was drastically reduced (as Hartnell was ill for the rehearsals) and it doesn't impact the story at all. This is a lot to do with this being only the fourth ever story, with the rules and structures still plastic. One can see things develop in real time, with the early episodes having overtly educational material (water boiling at different temperatures, the origins of the word 'assassin') and Susan speaking in an uncharacteristic hip groovy idiom; all this disappears partway through the story.

The most interesting guest characters, with the best performances, are those in Marco's caravan that become de facto regulars for the seven weeks of screen time. On route, there are some comedy grotesques - unctuous attendants and villainous henchmen, even the doddery Khan himself - but the depth comes from Mark Eden's Polo, Derren Nesbitt's Tegana, and Zienia Merton's Ping Cho, and the interactions between them and the time travellers: the trust triangle between Ian, Polo, and Tegana, at one memorable point symbolised in a chess game, the sweet friendship that develops between Susan and Ping Cho, the Doctor's frustration that he's been bested by his intellectual inferior. The story is unique (again, this comes down to it being early on when approaches are still being tried out) in allowing so much story time to elapse for these relationships to develop. The character stuff never dominates over incident, though, and there are some great set piece scenes (sandstorms, repelled bandit attacks, the teased false ending of episode 5 when the regulars almost escape but are caught at the last minute) along the way. If there are flaws, they are minor ones; such time elapses, that it does feel Polo is sometimes being an idiot in stubbornly mistrusting the people who are continually helping him, and failing to suspect the person who always seems to go missing whenever they get into trouble. Sometimes the pacing might just be a smidge too laid back - it feels like a whole episode is taken up with the telling of one story. There's never a moment, though, when the story is less than charming. I just wish that I could see it.

Connectivity:

An extended period of time elapses in both Marco Polo and The Time of the Doctor compared to the majority of Doctor Who stories that more closely follow the Aristotelian advice on temporal unity.

Deeper Thoughts:

Travels without a TARDIS. The peripatetic nature of the story of Marco Polo is an excuse for me to indulge in a bit of travelogue and cover some episodic but unconnected Doctor Who activities and thoughts from this summer. The story starts with me at home down on the south coast of the UK. The group of Doctor Who enthusiast friends that I often meet up with (as recounted occasionally in these pages) were looking for an opportunity to get together as it had been a while. In previous years, there had been more Doctor Who events at the BFI Southbank, which we'd use as a reason to meet; but, with no stories having been released as animations for a while, and a slower rate of release for the Collection Blu-ray box sets, the BFI events had become few and far between. We decided to try something different, the Doctor Who escape room on Oxford Street. This is Escape Hunt's The Dalek Awakens. On a Saturday towards the end of July, I travelled up to meet the rest of the party in London. It was only as the train pulled out from Brighton that I heard someone behind me talking about their limited travel options because of the RMT strike, and I realised I might face limited travel options because of an RMT strike. In the end that meant that Scott couldn't make it at all, the rest (David, Trevor, Chris) were staying in or close to London and so were fine. I just had to go home earlier than I would have normally. The escape room only takes up to an hour, so the limited number of trains to get home didn't impinge on that activity, but we would potentially have gone to see the Barbie movie in the evening had I been around longer (I saw it with my daughter instead - great movie, not enough Ncuti!).

The first rule of The Dalek Awakens escape room is you don't talk about The Dalek Awakens escape room, the better for it to be a fun surprise for anyone doing it in future. As such, I won't mention anything here except that it had good production values (Jodie Whittaker provides extensive voiceover as the Doctor, as does Nicholas Briggs as the Dalek), and some challenging but not impossible puzzles. You don't need to know anything about Doctor Who to participate. For a few more details, but no spoilers, there is a Radio Times review online here. Unlike the group mentioned in that review, the four of us managed to complete it with a few minutes to spare. Our same group, with Scott and others mentioned many times before on this blog such as Tim and Dave, didn't have to wait too long after that for a new possible opportunity to meet up, as a BFI Southbank event was announced to tie in with the forthcoming Season 20 Blu-ray box set, showing a(nother) new version of The Five Doctors. Unfortunately, like the last two of these events the date clashed with a pre-existing engagement for me. I hope to get to the next one, whenever that is. The positive way to look at my clashing engagement is that I'm leaving someone else the opportunity to get a seat. Perhaps because there are fewer events of this kind of late, competition was fierce. Only David and Trevor managed to get tickets (which are limited to two per person). Everyone else tried and couldn't select tickets and get them into the basket on the website fast enough as The Five Doctors screening sold out in less than 5 minutes, the quickest I've ever seen for a BFI Doctor Who event.

A number of disappointed people online afterwards directed their ire at the BFI for not providing more - and perhaps more regional - opportunities for fans to access these events. This isn't fair. They have two venues only, both in London, one of which is an IMAX cinema totally unsuitable for watching old telly or guest panels. Also, their job isn't Doctor Who, it's programming a wide range of films, festivals and special events of which Doctor Who is just an infinitesimal fraction. BBC Studios could potentially branch out to find more exhibition partners across the country, but presumably they don't have much of a budget for any of their staff to find and progress such new relationships. The investment would only be worth it if the events were a sure thing, but the last BFI event I made it to, for The Abominable Snowmen animation showcase last year, wasn't sold out, and I couldn't give my spare tickets away. It's a shame, but I can't see us getting any more than we're getting, with everyone having to travel to London. Just before we were due to fly out to Kos, an announcement was made that The Underwater Menace was going to get a full animation release on DVD and Blu-ray in November 2023; assuming this will get a tie-in screening, there will be another opportunity for everyone to get stressed and frustrated with the BFI's website later in the year. There was an online story on the Mirror's website early in 2023 that stated Underwater Menace was being animated, so it was at least half right. The other one they mentioned was The Smugglers, so maybe we'll see that one soon too.

An attractive ruin in Kos town

Going back to the topic of disappointments caused by the popularity of Doctor Who stuff, I'd hoped that Pull to Open, Ten Acre Films book by Paul Hayes giving the inside story of how Doctor Who was brought to air in 1962 and 1963, would be my holiday reading. It's a companion piece to Hayes's book The Long Game that told a similar story about the new series before its launch in 2005, which I read and reviewed in the Deeper Thoughts section of the blog post of Midnight back in March. I was very much looking forward to reading it, and it would have been thematically linked to Marco Polo, one of the first script commissions from that early period. It wasn't to be, but it was for a good reason. The weight of demand for pre-orders necessitated an extended print run, which delayed the book, and I didn't receive my pre-ordered copy before we flew. It was waiting for me on the doormat when I got back home, and I'll share my thoughts in a future post. That left me with only Marco Polo as my Doctor Who fix in Kos. As I listened in the sunny surroundings, I struggled to find resonances (trying to eke out the bottles of sun cream we'd brought to last the week of our holiday wasn't exactly on a par with the Doctor and friends trying to make their limited water last for their trek across the Gobi desert). It was only on the penultimate day when we caught a bus into Kos old town that something occurred to me. As I wandered round the remains of many ancient buildings, surrounded by many other tourists, I realised Marco Polo is Doctor Who's attractive ruin: it's from long ago, it unfortunately doesn't all exist as it did when it was first made, but it's still a big draw for interested parties. Until it's restored by animation, or even the recovery of the original footage, let it always remain so.

In Summary:

Marco! Polo! Marco! Polo!