Doctor Who: Marco Polo (1964)

Given that this was broadcast before the Newman household had a TV set and does not survive on video, this is one of the few Doctor Who serials I've not seen – and I didn't get round to listening to the audio release until I had to. Marco Polo is mildly important in the show's evolution: only the fourth serial transmitted, it's the first true 'historical' in that it's set in a place and time which can be found in textbooks (Cathay, 1289) and features several real-life characters (Marco Polo, Kublai Khan). It is already coping with the soon-to-be-ubiquitous plot problem of putting the TARDIS out of commission for seven episodes so the travelers have to stick around for the whole adventure – here, the thing breaks down and is furthermore requsitioned by Marco Polo as a gift for the Great Khan, with the nice irony that he will unwittingly strand the Doctor and friends here to bargain for his own right to return home.

The characters are still developing: the Doctor throws sulks and has fits of temper and (most uncharacteristically but in a Scenes We'd Like to See way) loses a chess game with the Emperor (and thus the TARDIS, again), while Susan interestingly bonds with a Chinese girl (Zienia Merton) her own age and is horrified to learn her new friend is engaged to be married to a 75-year-old man she's never met. Susan would herself get engaged in the next John Lucarotti script (The Aztecs) and be married out of the show - so there's a possibility she might be having an arc; it's also nice that she actually makes a friend, quite a rare thing on the show. Lucarotti also isn't yet stuck with a formula: some things here would rarely recur, from a plotline that extends over quite few months and features an arduous trek through the Gobi Desert to a cynical, mildly salacious resolution when it turns out the girl's aged fiancee has poisoned himself to death with a 'revivifying potion' (obviously an aphrodisiac) taken before his nuptuals.

Marco Polo (Mark Eden) is interestingly ambiguous, heroic by instinct but prepared to be unscrupulous to get what he wants, while the real villain is a complete rotter played by Derren Nesbitt. In the end, this is their story (the time travelers are sidelined as Marco Polo foils an assassination plot and duels the baddie) – later, an effort would be made to have the lead characters get more involved. I'd love to know what it looked like.
KIM NEWMAN

First published in this form here.

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