Doctor Whosday: The Greatest Story Never Told

Being a Doctor Who fan has many frustrations. We have to deal with the neutering of the show by Mary Whitehouse and her ilk. We have to deal with certain stories being, how shall I put this... less than fantastic. In fact some of them are downright awful. We have to deal with continuity being an old rag to be beaten up, dirtied, abused, then torn to shreds, and the very word "canon" to be meaningless.

But perhaps most frustratingly, we have to deal with missing episodes.

There are a number of early Doctor Who episodes that were destroyed by the BBC during regular purges of old material. Of these, some of them have been recovered thanks to copies that were sold to foreign television stations, copies made by private enthusiasts, and other such discoveries. However, many First and Second Doctor stories remain missing, and as time goes on the chance of more being found diminishes.

The very first Doctor Who serial with currently missing parts is missing in its entirety. It was also perhaps the greatest First Doctor story ever produced. The serial is known by the name "Marco Polo".

Now luckily for us, the soundtracks exist for all Doctor Who serials, even the missing ones. The good people over at Loose Cannon have taken telesnaps, essentially still images of the production, and reconstructed the episodes in slide-show style with the original soundtracks. They originally made a beautiful color reconstruction, and then after a more complete set of telesnaps was discovered in 2004 they made a more complete black and white reconstruction.

In my head, this was what the writer's pitch was like.

Now there are some reconstructions that, without the action of the moving pictures, are sort of dull. Marco Polo is not one of these. It is a sensational story, owing to the magnificent writing of John Lucarotti, the excellent direction of Waris Hussein, and stellar performances by both the regular cast, and guest star Mark Eden as Marco Polo.

If you are the sort of person who has only seen the Doctor Who episodes available on DVD from the BBC, do yourself a favor and track down the Loose Cannon reconstruction. In the meantime, you can look at the synopsis over at the Tardis Wiki.

So what makes this show work so well, even in an incomplete form 50 years later? Well for one thing, it was a journeying story. The plot itself is fairly simple. The Doctor and party are found by Marco Polo, who seizes their TARDIS as a gift to Kublai Khan in the hopes that the mighty Mongol ruler would grant Marco his freedom to return to Europe. The Doctor must either convince Marco to give him the TARDIS back, or escape and steal away with it.

So what stretches this plot out for seven episodes? And what makes those seven episodes exciting, when the seven episodes for The Daleks got tedious and dull? The answer is Lord of the Rings.

Significantly less complicated than Battletech.

Think about it. What's the plot of Lord of the Rings? Frodo and three friends take a powerful, evil ring to Rivendell. There they are met by four others. Then Frodo and Sam go on to Mordor, while the others defend the free peoples from the armies of evil. Eventually, Frodo and Sam make it to Mount Doom, where the Ring was forged, and throw the Ring in, melting it.

Simple, right? Even if you include the stuff with Saurman, and the Ents, and Gollum, and all that, it's still a very simple plot. How the heck did that fill up three (or six) rather hefty-sized books?

Because the plot is only part of it. The rest is the journey across a magical and mystical land. Frodo and friends' journey across the Old Forest and the Barrow Downs serves no purpose other than to get the hobbits their first weapons. The journey through Moria serves no purpose other than to kill off Gandalf. And yet these scenes are excellent, and riveting, because the setting itself is excellent and riveting. We care about the deep magicks of the Old Forest, and the deadly wights of the Barrow Downs. We care about the fallen Dwarven kingdom of Moria, and the Balrog who dwells there.

Don't pretend you didn't see this joke coming.

In the same way, John Lucarotti brilliantly made this serial stretch over the whole of Cathay. The plot is not just about the Doctor trying to get the TARDIS back from Marco Polo. It is about Marco Polo and his caravan traveling for weeks and weeks across the breadth of Cathay, from the Plain of Pamir in the icy cold Himalayas, across the deadly and treacherous Gobi Desert, through the trade cities along the Great Wall of China, and finally to the summer palace of Shang-Tu, and the capitol of Peking, where they finally meet the great Kublai Khan.

It is this journey that kept me riveted for seven episodes. Crossing the Gobi Desert, with its terrible sandstorms and its lack of water, is very different from the bandits that plague them at Tun-Huang, which in turn is different from the courtly intrigues and assassins of Shang-Tu and Peking.

These different situations are also reflected in the changing allegiances and attitudes of the protagonists. The Doctor and his party just want to escape in the TARDIS, seeking their freedom to continue traveling. They are opposed by Marco Polo, who hopes gifting the TARDIS to Kublai Khan will earn his own freedom. Between the two is Tegana, emissary from Khan Noghai, who is surrendering to Kublai Khan after a long war, and who seeks to manipulate the situation for his benefit, and the benefit of his master. Then, finally, there is the aging Kublai Khan, who looms as a powerful legend over the group at the beginning, but then is revealed to be an old man who simply wants to maintain his Empire.

I know sci-fi westerns are popular, but this is ridiculous.

At first everyone is friendly. Marco Polo regrets taking the TARDIS from the Doctor, but the idea of winning his freedom by giving Kublai Khan a "magical" box is too good to pass up. He does not believe it possible that the Doctor and party are from another world, and fully intends to do whatever he must to see them put on a ship in Venice, and seen safely home. To his mind he is merely causing them inconvenience, not stranding them forever. He admires the Doctor's party, especially Ian in whom he finds a kindred spirit, but as they continue trying to steal the TARDIS back he is forced to become more and more antagonistic toward them.

In the same way, although they wish the TARDIS back, the Doctor and party find themselves admiring the clever, capable leader that is Marco Polo, but as they become desperate and fearful of being stranded they see him less as a friend and ally, and more as their jailer to be outwitted and escaped.

Marco Polo is brilliantly played by Mark Eden. He is a man doing the best he can in a bad situation. The golden seal of Kublai Khan guarantees him safe passage throughout Cathay, and marks him as Kublai Khan's agent, but it is also a prison cell that keeps Marco trapped a continent away from his home. He is fiercely loyal to Kublai Khan, but at the same time is manipulating Kublai Khan to get the freedom he desires.

That sound you hear is the weeping of
swashbuckling fans everywhere.

And Tegana, played by Derren Nesbit, is a great villain. Beginning as an honorable warrior forced, through circumstance, to offer terms of surrender, he comes to believe that if he can steal the TARDIS, its "magic" would help his master conquer Kublai Khan. He reveals himself to be more and more a villain, until the climax where he and Marco Polo face off in a sword-duel to save Kublai Khan's life.

Then there is Kublai Khan himself. After being spoken about in awed, hushed tones throughout the serial, his final appearance in the last two episodes as an old man with a gout-ridden leg and a penchant for gambling is wonderful. He and the Doctor form a fast friendship, commiserating about the trials of old age together. And while the Doctor's plan to win back the TARDIS in a high-stakes game of backgammon (a bit of an anachronism, but so much fun I don't care), fails, the scenes with the two of them are excellent.

Looking back over this review, I realize it's not very funny. It's not very funny because Marco Polo is good. It's just a good, solid serial, well worth the watch even in its reconstructed format. But of course, no show with a running time of three hours is perfect. So let's get a few jokes in.

His name is Wang Lo. I'm not even joking.

Like the the guy at Cheng-Ting who, if this wasn't the sixties, I would swear was a camp gay stereotype. But since it is the sixties, he's probably just someone trying too hard to be a comic character. He sounds like Hedonism-Bot from Futurama.

Oh yes, and perhaps we should talk about Ping Cho. See, she is being betrothed to a man as old as her grandfather, and she's not looking forward to it. The fact that this is part of Chinese culture grates on our modern heroes, which is fine and in fact good. It also lets Ping Cho sympathize with Susan, who is also facing the threat of never being able to return home if the TARDIS is taken. Thus far, it's all good.

Then, right at the end, Kublai Khan calls Ping Cho forward with bad news. Her husband-to-be drank a virility potion of quicksilver and other stuff, and died on the spot. Which means she's free! Death solves everything!

There's also the fact that the Doctor and company would have escaped with a clean getaway in episode five, if Susan had not run back and gotten captured for no reason. Sure, it is presumably to fulfill the promise she made to Ping Cho that she would not leave without saying goodbye, but the fact that she doesn't remember to do this until five seconds before she is supposed to enter the TARDIS, and she then decides to run all the way back to Ping Cho's room and then all the way out to the courtyard again, which gives Tegana plenty of time to capture her... oh Susan. Even in the sixties, when it was okay to have a character who existed just to screw up, you were a particular gem.

There is no way this is a coincidence.

And then there's the guy with the eyepatch and the monkey from "Raiders of the Lost Ark." Seriously. Look at him. He has an eyepatch and a monkey. They look identical. Was this an homage? Did Spielberg watch Doctor Who when he was a kid? Considering this is a lost episode, it's an obscure homage if it is one.

Is there some other kind of eyepatch-with-monkey stereotype that I am just unaware of?

Nitpicks aside, though, this is a great story, combining a fantastic romp through Mongol-controlled China with some of the best acting of the First Doctor era. Get your hands on this, and watch it.

Kublai Khan knows the secret of being a world leader: A silly hat.