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Doctor Who: The Masque of Mandragora (1976) This historical Who hinges on a device established in Pyramids of Mars - and, by implication, other historical/s-f serials - but never really articulated: that alien invaders can change the course of human history for the worse, and the Doctor feels obligated to set things right. The whole Time Lord non-intervention in history thing, which was raised in The Aztecs and others, never quite squares with the notion that they live beyond normal time: if ending Aztec ritual sacrifice in the Earth's past would be a crime, why isn't saving the planet from a Dalek invasion in its future? Here, the Mandragora Helix is an unusual galaxy-spanning villain, an apparently non-corporeal intelligence who doesn't want mankind developing to the point where they spread beyond the Earth to compete with it. Taking a ride on the TARDIS, the Helix makes its way to 15th Century Italy and represents itself as Demos, a Roman God whose cult persists, and empowers an astrologer to become ruler of a stagnant planet which will always be stuck in the superstitious Dark Ages and never develop proper science, especially since there'll be an incidental massacre of the founding geniuses of the Renaissance (Leonardo, who never gets on screen, etc). This fills in a bit of long-dangling continuity, establishing that a Time Lord gift enables the Doctor and his companions to understand the language wherever they go. It does the usual histo-s-f thing of scrambling elements from the period to kit out the basic drama of the Doctor defeating Mandragora: a scheming uncle with a Richard III haircut who has killed the Duke and is plotting against the rightful heir, a masqued ball at the finish invaded by a robed figure which spreads death, a catacomb-dwelling robed gothic novel cult, plentiful swordplay (the Doctor leaps on and off balconies and horses like Fairbanks or Flynn), torture, melodramatic declarations, a hint of romance between Sarah Jane and the progressive young Duke who thinks the world is a sphere. Baker is at his peak, delivering a serious but light, nuanced performance
and playing up the Doctor's unpredictable, genuinely alien attitudes.
This is someone who isn't human, and his occasional lack of reaction
horrifies Sarah Jane - when the plot is only about the succession in
the Duchy, he's prepared to move on (unlike the old Hartnell or Troughton
Doctors who'd have seen small justice done) and only goes into action
when he realises there's a threat to more or less the whole fabric of
the universe. Absent from the story, no doubt because of the limitations
of children's TV, is any presence from the Catholic Church, who are
left out in favour of a made-up cult of robed and masked pagans. Given
that in Doctor Who, everybody's God turns out to be
an alien, it's no wonder Christianity rarely gets mentioned. First published in this form here. Visit Kim's Official Website at www.johnnyalucard.com
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