Welcome to Season 14! The show titles have got a new font, the Doctor has got a new coat, and the TARDIS has got more rooms and corridors to explore. Huzzah!
Sarah -
Love that coat!
Harry -
The opening minutes of "The Masque of Mandragora" are a veritable squee-fest for us viewers. Our friends the Doctor and Sarah Jane are the focal point, strolling through the TARDIS corridors -- both with a much more pleasant attitude than at the start of the previous story.
Sarah -
I have such vivid memories of seeing this story for the first time. It's rare to see the TARDIS past the console room and always very exciting.
Harry -
Inside the secondary console room, the Doctor finds one of his old frilly shirts and Sarah has a go on the Doctor's old recorder. For viewers who had waited months for a new episode it must have been a warm, comforting opener. For you and I though, it's only been a couple of days.
Sarah -
The secondary console room is so warm and cozy, isn't it?
Harry -
Very comforting. I would love to see Peter Capaldi barge in there sometime.
Sarah -
I'll let Moff know. Still, watching this scene, all I can imagine is the Third Doctor's horror at his shirt being used to dust off the console!
Harry -
No sooner are we settled in among the wood panelling and stained glass roundels, than the TARDIS is pulled into the Mandragora Helix, a kind of black hole controlled by an intelligence no one understands.
Sarah -
While the scene where the Doctor and Sarah step outside the TARDIS inside the Helix is relatively simple, the production crew did a great job of creating an uncomfortable otherworldly feeling. It felt so dangerous!
Harry -
Meanwhile, in the Italian Renaissance, Count Federico and his thugs terrorize the local peasantry. This is one of my favourite periods of history and I've been looking forward to watching this one again!
Sarah -
A fun fact: "The Masque of Mandragora" is the first historical since "The Gunfighters" not to be set in Great Britain. Fortunately, no one has to affect an American Western accent in this story, Pardner.
Harry -
The only odd note was the pair of extremely cockney guards who chickened away from the catacombs.
Sarah -
Everyone else brought out their best RSC accents.
The excellent production design continues in the Italian scenes. The exterior scenes shot in Portmeirion are gorgeous -- who needs to go to Italy when you can head to Wales!
Harry -
Wales has it all, it seems.
Sarah -
Wales does have it all and I'm pleased you've finally noticed.
Harry -
The studio sets were fantastic too, in particular that in-between area between the temple and the outdoors. It was tough to tell whether it was a studio set or part of Portmeirion.
In the DVD featurette, Philip Hinchcliffe indicates his Horror Homage was based on the Vincent Price/Edgar Allan Poe film Masque of the Red Death, and how Portmeirion was a ready-made set for this historical.
Sarah -
This was likely one of the easiest studio sets for the designers to pull together. If there's one thing the BBC can do well, it's historical drama.
Harry -
It definitely had the look of the BBC Shakespeare productions of that time. The story itself is a classic clash between science and superstition. It is the dawn of the Renaissance, and people like Prince Giuliano seek truth and knowledge from scientific discovery. They are up against reactionaries like Hieronymous the astronomer, who looks to the stars for horoscopes and bogus omens to justify his and Federico's crimes.
Sarah -
Prince Giuliano has it all -- looks, curiosity, intelligence, a plotting uncle, and very tight breeches.
Harry -
...and a hot blooded "companion" named Marco. Oh my! He provides a steely reserve when Giuliano has moments of uncertainty, and is always faithfully by his side. Doctor Who's very first same sex couple? I say yes!
Sarah -
I've never thought otherwise. They make a lovely couple...in their tight breeches.
Harry -
Also in San Martino, there is a not-particularly-secret secret cult -- the Cult of Demnos, a bunch of hood-wearing, temple-lurking, power-craving mystical nutters. Their leader Hieronymous seems to have advance insight into the Mandragora energy that travelled with the Helix aboard the TARDIS. The Doctor is aware of this menace too, but there's the rub: how can the Doctor convince a people on the cusp of scientific awareness that there is something very scientific threatening them all? And just how many horses will he need to steal?
Sarah -
It is a bit of a kerfuffle, isn't it? Fortunately, the Doctor doesn't hesitate to use his recently dormant Venusian Aikido skills when needed. There's quite a bit of action in this story, still, I can't help but wish that they'd gotten a better wig for Tom Baker's stunt double -- it's positively ginger!
Harry -
The mismatched hair colours were very noticeable as Tom Baker and his stunt double swapped in and out. Another thing I noticed during the swordfight scene: Federico's personal army seemed as inept in battle as a troop of UNIT grunts. Not one of them could lay a swordtip on either the Doctor or Giuliano.
Sarah -
So, it wasn't Giuliano's expert swordsmanship that vanquished them? I guess they're not used to fighting anyone who fights back, having made quick work of a passel of peasants early on in the story.
Harry -
We haven't had much to say about Sarah Jane. Writer Louis Marks didn't give her much to do except get captured repeatedly. She was also somehow hypnotized, hundreds of years before there was such a thing as hypnotism. The Doctor explained it away with one sentence. The Doctor did a lot of explaining things away in this story and we'll get to that shortly. As for Sarah, the lasting memory I have of her in this story is when she eagerly bit right into an orange. Can't say I've ever!
Sarah -
That was quite the moment wasn't it? I don't recall ever having seen an orange eaten that way!
Harry -
Maybe she explained it away while the Doctor was explaining everything else away. Okay, here's what I'm getting at. We learn that Hieronymous is using his cult as a front for the Mandragora intelligence, so that it can halt the Renaissance and prevent the development of human society. That's very far-sighted and a bit omnipresent, but the intelligence sees humanity as a threat that will spread across the universe, and wants to keep it locked in the dark ages.
The Doctor erupts in a torrent of technobabble, acting very manic in a way we won't really see again until the Tennant/Smith eras. Leaving Sarah and the others to attend a kind of inaugural ball, he creeps back to the temple and rigs up some wiring around the "sacred stone." A confrontation with Hieronymous follows, during which the Doctor gets zapped by energy bolts.
Later, we see Hieronymous and the brethren all get zapped, but it's actually the Doctor, and his rig seems to have worked, and, honestly, I'm not sure what happened exactly. Other than the Doctor explained it all away with a flurry of technobabble. The befuddled looks on everyone else's faces mirrored my own. Was this our first real "technobabble" ending?
Sarah -
Well, I feel better knowing it wasn't just me. I was just as befuddled.
Harry -
When watching the new series, we have occasional moments where it's like, "Oh, the Doctor just acted like [name of previous DW actor] used to in the past. Charming!" This time, I definitely had a moment where it was like, "Oh, the Doctor just went all hyper and rapid-fire like Matt Smith will in the future. Charming!"
Sarah -
Everyone seemed happy at the end. Well, except for everyone who had become a corpse -- but, look, fancy dress!
In the end, the Doctor tells Sarah that Earth will not have any more trouble with Mandragora for the time being. Alas, the constellation will be in position again in 500 years, at about the end of the 20th century…but, look, fancy dress!
Harry -
Forza, Dottore! Job well done, whatever it is you did, before enjoying your salami sandwich. I'm sure once the TARDIS faded out of sight, everyone helped tidy up the palace, removed the unfortunate corpses, put on another smashing ball, and neither Giuliano nor Marco let each other out of their sight again.
And so ends the great Hinchcliffe Historical. Huzzah!
Sarah -
I love happy endings!
Harry -
Best line:
"You try my patience, Hieronymous. You can no more tell the stars than you can tell my chamberpot."
Favourite moment: The Doctor steals a horse. Then another.
Lasting image: Hieronymous in full cult leader garb.
7/10
Sarah -
Best Line: "Save me a costume. I love a knees-up!"
Favorite Moment: The masque! Fancy dress!
Lasting Image: The secondary console room.
7/10
Our marathon continues with Story #87: The Hand of Fear...
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