Assassin at Peking (Marco Polo Episode 7)

The one where Tegana's treachery is revealed at last...

Last Christmas I finally learnt how to play backgammon. It only took me four decades to get round to it, but I instantly fell in love with the game, and so it's doubly amusing to see it play a pivotal role in proceedings in Assassin at Peking. And the Doctor's obviously a good player, having already won from the Khan 35 elephants, 4,000 white stallions, 25 tigers, a year's worth of trade from Burma, and one of Buddha's teeth!

But it is the TARDIS that the Doctor really wants to wager for, even though the Khan has yet to see his gift from Marco. Instead, the Doctor is offered the entire island of Sumatra, but eventually manages to persuade Kublai Khan to play for his TARDIS.

Sadly it would seem the Doctor is not quite good enough to keep up the roll he's on, and he loses this final game, and with it his Ship. This he finds quite amusing, by all accounts. Maybe it's shades of that manic hysteria we witnessed in The Roof of the World when Marco first took the TARDIS off him? The backgammon scenes between William Hartnell and Martin Miller are a delight.

Assassin at Peking is an episode where everything slots into place, albeit rather too conveniently if you ask me. For instance, Ping-Cho's marriage to the 75-year-old nobleman falls through at the last minute when her husband-to-be (never seen, never named) appears to accidentally kill himself by drinking quicksilver and sulphur, which he believes to be an elixir of youth. And so the terrible fate that hung over Ping-Cho for the last seven weeks is removed in an instant. However, it must be said that drinking quicksilver (ie, mercury) isn't actually fatal, it merely acts as a laxative and exits the body quite naturally. It's the inhalation of mercury that ought to be avoided, and it's difficult to avoid inhaling it when you're drinking it. What a fool Ping-Cho's elderly fiancee was...

It's also a little too convenient that Ling-Tau arrives at just the right moment to prevent Tegana from slicing Ian to ribbons at the start of the episode, and Noghai times it just right to order his army to advance on Peking, thus proving the travellers were right about Tegana all along and convincing Marco of their trustworthyness.

The duplicitous Tegana - who manages to turn the Khan against Marco in this episode - seems to have succeeded, even managing to prick the Venetian's pride as they pass in a corridor. "I underestimated you, Tegana," admits Marco. "No," smirks the warlord, "you overestimated yourself." Ouch!

The two engage in a final battle after Tegana's failed attempt to assassinate the Kublai Khan. The fight doesn't seem to last very long, and Marco seems to get the upper hand too easily for saying this is a scheming, cheating, dishonest, bloodthirsty Mongol warlord who has proven history in playing dirty. But Tegana duly gets his just desserts, sentenced to death by the Khan. Tegana actually takes his own life by impaling himself on his own sword on the Khan's throne steps. Is this the ultimate act of cowardice on Tegana's part, or is his refusal to die at the hands of his enemy one last push for power over his own destiny?

Either way, we can't hang about to discuss morals because Marco has given the Doctor the TARDIS key and they're off like lightning. At least Susan gets her chance to say goodbye to Ping-Cho, but there are no fond farewells for Marco Polo himself, and it's no wonder - despite his benign open-mindedness and congeniality, when it boiled down to it, Marco was a common thief, his refusal to hand back the Doctor's property being the only reason the viewer spent seven weeks in Cathay in the first place. Marco might have been a decent enough man, but he did little to endear himself to the Doctor, Ian, Barbara or Susan!

Their departure is rushed, and we don't get a cliffhanger into next week, just a typically thoughtful final word from Marco: "What is the truth? I wonder where they are now... the past or the future?"

Ah! So now he believes their caravan can move from today into tomorrow, today into yesterday...

Marco Polo as a whole is one of the finest serials Doctor Who ever produced, that much is clear. It has top-notch writing and design, almost every single actor treats it with the respect it deserves, and the story is both educational and entertaining, treating its young audience intelligently. But as great as each individual episode is, Marco Polo is too long at seven episodes. It has a reputation as being an epic, but it is epic only in geographical scale, as much of what happens is pretty small-scale. There are a couple of times when the action lulls, and although there's always Lucarotti's textured writing to save it, even that has its flaws - the pacing can be found wanting, and there's virtually nothing for Jacqueline Hill to do except get captured in a cave (I'm surprised Barbara and Marco don't fall in love, to be honest!).

Nevertheless, Marco Polo is an astounding piece of television, and every Doctor Who fan would be much better off if even just one episode was recovered so that we could enjoy seeing its magic as well as hear it.

First broadcast: April 4th, 1964

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Hartnell and Miller are great together in the early scenes, and villain Tegana gets his comeuppance in a pleasingly gruesome way.
The Bad: Lucarotti ties up loose ends rather too conveniently in some cases.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★☆☆ (story average: 7.9 out of 10)

NEXT TIME: The Sea of Death...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: The Roof of the World (episode 1); The Singing Sands (episode 2); Five Hundred Eyes (episode 3); The Wall of Lies (episode 4); Rider from Shang-Tu (episode 5); Mighty Kublai Khan (episode 6)

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