Pyramids of Mars Part Three

The one where Laurence's late brother calls round...

The Doctor's coldly alien approach to the loss of human life continues in part 3, first of all when he reminds Laurence yet again that his brother is dead. He describes Marcus as an animated human cadaver, driving his point home as gently as a bull in a china shop. Michael Sheard is really good here, giving a silent nod in agreement as he stifles a sob. Laurence is really put through the emotional mill in this story, and Sheard is more than up to the job. Tom Baker is also on fine form, barely containing the Doctor's anger at Laurence's bungling. "Stay here!" he growls as he heads back to the Priory (although once again, loyal Sarah refuses!).

The scene where Marcus Scarman pays his brother a visit at the Lodge is beautifully played by Sheard and Bernard Archard. It's inevitable what's going to happen, but to see Marcus struggle against Sutekh's influence as he tries to remember when he was human (when he was alive!) is remarkable. "I was... Marcus," he gags. Laurence is desperate, almost pathetically so, in his efforts to "save" his brother, but the Osirian's hold is too strong, and there's only one way this is going to end.

The tragedy is startling and deeply felt, because we've had three episodes to get to know Laurence, and sympathise with him. I felt sorry for Collins when he died, and Clements and Warlock also (I sort of felt sorry for Namin too), but the death of Laurence cuts deepest, thanks to Sheard's sensitive performance. When Sarah and the Doctor find his corpse rocking gently in the chair on their return, the latter's dispassionate regard for Laurence is sobering ("His late brother must have called," he says, rolling Laurence's body aside). Sarah says and feels what we as viewers do, that the Doctor doesn't react the way we humans think he should. Elisabeth Sladen is predictably excellent here too, not getting over the Doctor's coldheartedness too quickly. We see Sarah struggling with her best friend's responses here, and for once they are not on the same page. It's top-rate stuff.

The photograph of the Scarmans as boys is a little odd though. If we are to take the actors' ages at the time of filming as the characters' rough ages, Laurence was 37 and Marcus the much older sibling at 59. But the two boys in the picture look of similar age, despite an age gap of roughly 20 years.

We finally get to see Sutekh properly in this episode, and Barbara Kidd's costume design is marvellous, as is Gabriel Woolf's smooth, silky vocal performance. Sutekh oozes evil, and Woolf's calm, centred voice, occasionally interrupted by a muted explosion of anger, makes him one of the most unsettling villains in Doctor Who history. He just sounds evil, and very powerful, and he doesn't move a muscle. And you know Sutekh must mean business when he even starts threatening the fish: "The alien who dares to intrude, the humans, animals, birds, fish, reptiles... All life is my enemy! All life shall perish under the reign of Sutekh the Destroyer!"

I love the scenes of the Doctor and Sarah walking through the woods to fetch the gelignite from Clements' hut. For me, Doctor Who in a forest or woodland seems so right, so cosily perfect, and when it's Tom and Lis, it's all the more settling. These two are just so good together, bouncing off one another and having a great time. "Your shoes need repairing" is one of my favourite Sarah Jane Smith moments ever, and the bits in the hut where Sarah throws the sweaty gelignite at the Doctor, and he warns her about ferrets, is wonderful to watch. We were so lucky to have them together. Just imagine if Sarah Jane Smith had been played by April Walker, as was originally the case (would Sarah have even lasted 'til Season 13?). I sincerely do not believe we'd have had "Your shoes need repairing", or two separate Doctor Who spin-offs. Sorry, April!

By the way, those canopic jars containing the generator loops... In his 2004 book In Search of the Pleasure Palace, Soft Cell singer Marc Almond claimed he once owned two of them, which he described as being made of papier-mache. He got rid of them in a mid-life clear-out however, so who knows where they are now?

You can tell that the plot is stalling in circles as the episode nears its end, with the Doctor dressing up as a mummy in order to plant the explosives which the sharp-shootin' Sarah Jane will fire at to trigger an explosion to destroy the Osirian rocket. When that fails, the Doctor has to travel to Egypt along the tunnel to distract Sutekh's mental containment, thus releasing the explosion. It's all bunkum, and most of it unnecessary, but such fun to watch. Director Paddy Russell was right to force Tom Baker to dress up as the mummy because he does have a very distinctive way of walking about, and it also gives us yet another of Sarah's classic teases: "It must have been a nasty accident."

How the Doctor manages to look so very like a mummy I don't know. Has he actually managed to climb inside the mummy's skeleton in order to perfectly maintain the robot's distinctive chest and head shapes? And all this mummy wrapping also made me wonder where the mummies came from? They would seem to have been shipped to England from Cairo as part of Scarman's haul from Saccara, but why would Horus entomb his evil brother with a bunch of service robots which he could use to help him escape (mind you, he did leave him with a telly to watch so nothing's impossible). And, if the Osirians were a direct influence on how Egyptian culture and religion developed, why were the robots dressed as mummies? What was the relevance of cloth-bound skeletal automatons to the Osirians?

The cliffhanger has the Doctor travel along the tunnel to Egypt in order to say hello to Sutekh, who loses his concentration, causing the pyramid rocket to blow up, which leads to Sutekh flaring up his evil green eyes and pinning our hero against the wall in pain. Love those eyes.

First broadcast: November 8th, 1975

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Michael Sheard is good in every scene in every episode, but is particularly good in his fateful confrontation with Marcus.
The Bad: It's not explained how Sarah Jane Smith is suddenly a sharp-shooting expert with a rifle. It's fundamentally out of character, and feels fundamentally wrong.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★★☆

"Would you like a jelly baby?" tally: 05

NEXT TIME: Part Four...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Part One; Part Two; Part Four

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.com/2014/06/pyramids-of-mars.html

Pyramids of Mars is available on BBC DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Pyramids-Mars-DVD/dp/B000198ADY