The Singing Sands (Marco Polo Episode 2)

The one where the water runs out...

Considering the foul mood the Doctor was in during The Roof of the World, it's amusing to discover that he's been giving Marco an ear-bashing for the last three days. He has had "to endure his insults", he writes in his journal, but to be honest, why is Marco surprised? He plots to steal the Doctor's property for his own personal gain. I don't blame the Doctor for being annoyed.

The Doctor – not seen on screen – also refuses to eat with the others, and declines food when Susan takes it to him. The threat of the loss of his Ship has obviously affected him deeply. The TARDIS is the source of the Doctor's authority, power and freedom, so its loss would utterly destroy him.

Susan is affected by these events too. After all, the TARDIS is her home and shelter too. John Lucarotti gives this episode to Carole Ann Ford on a plate, and she rises to the script's meat with obvious enthusiasm. Her scene with Barbara as they look up into the starlit sky is wonderfully played. "We should be up there… another time, another galaxy," says Susan, somewhat oblivious to Barbara's feelings and her wish to return to 1960s London.

Only Susan seems to fully realise what a desperate situation they're in. While Ian happily plays board games with Marco, the Doctor refuses to engage in conversation with her. She feels alone and afraid, and with good reason. Ford is wonderful in her scenes with both Jacqueline Hill and Zienia Merton (Ping-Cho), giving Susan that otherworldly charm she gets to play so seldomly.

"One day we'll know all the mysteries of the skies," she says, wishing that she and the Doctor could stop their wandering. Lucarotti shows that Susan has thoughts and feelings too, at odds with those of her crotchety grandfather (this is something that will be picked up on again later, principally in The Dalek Invasion of Earth). She admires the moonlit Gobi Desert, likening it to the metal seas of Venus. Susan's melancholy here is beautifully played.

It's great for Susan to have somebody her own age to bounce off and relate to, and it should've happened more often (remember how Ace was given a wealth of relatable companions, such as Susan Q, Mags, Shou Yuing and Gwendoline?). Susan was too often sidelined as fodder for melodrama (Sydney Newman’s “kid to get into trouble, make mistakes”), but when given the right material, Carole Ann Ford could show she was just as good an actor as her colleagues. After having lapped up material like this, it's no wonder she chose to leave the series after a year of pretty lame writing otherwise.

Lucarotti gives Susan some Swinging '60s lingo, which is a little out of character as we've never heard her use it before. In The Roof of the World she uses "fab", and here describes the beautiful night sky as "crazy… it means I dig it". It's a great way to get across the difference in culture between her and Ping-Cho, and again, it's a lovely idea which could have been picked up on by other writers, but wasn't. We didn't get any more hip lingo until Dodo came along two years later…

The singing sands of the title are, quite frankly, terrifying. The sound effect of the sandstorm that engulfs Susan and Ping-Cho, and Marco's camp, is brilliant. Ian describes it as if "all the devils in Hell were laughing", and he's right – the wind sounds like cackling voices. It's a spooky sound design, making the desert sound like it's haunted by ghosts of the Gobi. "Soooooo-saaaaaaan!" bellows Tegana, who ultimately rescues the two lost girls. The sandstorm scene is definitely one of the eeriest yet for the series, at least to listen to (oh, to be able to see it too!).

The caravan then falls victim to what Marco believes is a bandit attack on their water supplies, but we know it's dastardly Tegana trying to implement his plan to take possession of the TARDIS. He lets the water run away into the desert sand, putting every single traveller in danger. Just five minutes from the end of the episode we finally get to see the Doctor, but William Hartnell only has one full line before he collapses unconscious through dehydration. It's strange that the Doctor should be absent for most of The Singing Sands when Hartnell was obviously available to appear, but at least it's given us chance to see Susan more.

We end with Tegana reaching the oasis where he's supposed to be collecting water to take back to the caravan. Instead he drinks deeply and hungrily for himself, then symbolically tips a flask of water out into the sand. "Here's water, Marco Polo!" he exclaims. "Come for it!"

What a complete git.

First broadcast: February 29th, 1964

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Carole Ann Ford is great in the scenes Lucarotti writes for her, but there must also be credit for the execution of the sandstorm scenes, and in particular the sound design.
The Bad: Why is the Doctor in this episode so little, when William Hartnell was obviously on set?
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★★☆

NEXT TIME: Five Hundred Eyes...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: The Roof of the World (episode 1); Five Hundred Eyes (episode 3); The Wall of Lies (episode 4); Rider from Shang-Tu (episode 5); Mighty Kublai Khan (episode 6); Assassin at Peking (episode 7)

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site: http://doctorwhocastandcrew.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/marco-polo.html

Marco Polo is available as a soundtrack CD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Original-Television-Soundtrack/dp/0563535083