Snakedance Part One

The one where Tegan gets possessed by the Mara again...

Tegan's only been back aboard the TARDIS for a heartbeat and already she's getting possessed by the Mara again! Yes, the Mara, the serpentine entity from Season 19's Kinda, is the returning element in Snakedance, one of Doctor Who's most overlooked stories.

We begin our newest adventure with Nyssa trying to flirt with Dr Who. Everybody thinks that companions having crushes on the Doctor is a 21st century thing, but here it's heavily suggested that Nyssa is desperate for the Doctor's attentions. "Well?" she demands, showing off her latest - and truly awful - outfit. The Doctor doesn't notice her apparel at all, in perfectly Doctorish fashion, and completely misses the fact she's literally pushing herself in front of him, squeezing between him and his TARDIS controls. Who knew that Nyssa had a thing for the Doctor? It's not surprising though, and actually quite refreshing, although I do realise that no such thing was intended by the production team at the time. It's supposed to be a humorous but innocent scene in which Nyssa tries to get the Doctor to notice her new clothes (and nothing more), but with these 21st century eyes, you can read a lot more into it. Nyssa luvs the Doctor!

Meanwhile, Tegan is sleeping in her room with all the lights on. The TARDIS probably has an amazing lighting set-up, with all sorts of snazzy dimmer switches, shades and fades, but Tegan decides to sleep floodlit. In her dream she encounters a cave entrance shaped like the mouth of a snake, and accompanied by that sinister screechy whistle on Peter Howell's soundtrack, we know straight away that the Mara's about.

While latently influenced by the Mara resting in her mind, Tegan set the TARDIS on a course for Planet G139901KB (does that stand for Kate Bush?*) aka Manussa, part of the Sumaran Empire. In an attempt to suppress the Mara in her dreams, the Doctor gives Tegan a contraption to wear in her ear, which makes her look like she's got a hearing aid. They leave the TARDIS to search for the snake mouth cave entrance in Tegan's dream, in an attempt to head the Mara off at the pass.

Ah, Manussa. Doesn't it look glorious? Designer Jan Spoczynski has created a stunning alien market, dressed beautifully and convincingly, and populated by Manussans wearing wonderfully Romanesque clothes, designed by Ken Trew. The combination of the talents of Spoczynski (sadly, his only Doctor Who), Trew, director Fiona Cumming (refreshingly female!) and writer Christopher Bailey (refreshingly intellectual) makes Snakedance a real treat, a visual feast as well as a narrative treasure. It's one of those instances where everything comes together, whether by alchemy or design, to make a truly impressive slice of Doctor Who.

As well as the wonderful market, there's the stunning snake mouth cave entrance, and the spooky cave interior, with the serpentine etchings and sculptures. The Federator's quarters are wonderfully 1980s, but not in a kitsch way. The set is dressed with ornaments and drapes, and reflects the overall Romanesque influence for Manussa. Everything about the story is on the same page, from the toga-like costumes to the insouciant way the Manussans go about their lives. You can tell some thought has gone into the presentation of this story, and that the creatives have read and understood the script from the start. When this happens on Doctor Who, it becomes a real pleasure to watch.

The performances are top-notch too (it's actually hard to believe this is the same programme that recently gave us Time-Flight and Arc of Infinity). Most impressive of all is Colette O'Neil (recently deceased as I write this), who gives Lady Tanha such class and poise, and never sends up the sometimes stagey dialogue she's given. O'Neil (a Gillian Anderson for the 1980s) attacks her scenes with Martin Clunes with such grace and wit, and he bats back just as well. It would have been so easy to not take it all seriously and send it up, but O'Neil and Clunes don't overplay it once. They seem like a genuine mother and son, with that gentle undercurrent of mirth and mockery that only very familiar family can get away with. It's hard to believe this was only Clunes's second TV job.

Truth be told, the scenes between Tanha and the aloof Lon are one big info-dump, telling us all about the history of Manussa ready for the story proper to kick in. Manussa was once under the rule of the Mara, until it was defeated 500 years ago. But the people still celebrate its defeat in a grand ceremony every 10 years, although Lon (perhaps rightly) thinks everybody should just move on and forget about what used to be, and concentrate on the now and next. Plus, there is a legend that the Mara shall one day return, perpetuated by the mysterious Snakedancers. Lon pooh-poohs the legend, but events aboard the TARDIS tell me that the Mara may very well be on its way back...

Peter Davison is damn good in this too. He's so much more Doctorish than we usually see, with a vein of eccentricity in his performance stemming right back to William Hartnell. This is a good version of the Fifth Doctor, one that he seems to have settled on between seasons. His Doctor fails to notice the aesthetic qualities of his needy companion, and becomes blindly obsessive about Tegan's worrying possession, to the point where he's rude, abrasive and unfeeling (but constantly checked by Nyssa).

I love the scene in the cave where he meets Lon, Ambril and Tanha, and starts to tell them all about the Mara and what's happening inside Tegan's head. "[The Mara] exists as a latent mental force in the mind of my companion," the breathless stranger tells the bemused Lon. "It's using her dreams to increase its power. Eventually it will take over her mind altogether, but I've put together a device to inhibit this temporarily." On the face of it, the Doctor is coming across as a complete madman, talking nonsense, in a neat echo of scenes in Kinda where he's perceived as unhinged.

Elsewhere, someone shoves a toy rattlesnake in Tegan's face and she runs off, terrified. Removing the device from her ear, she is taken in by a strange fortune teller, played with wonderful quirkiness by Hilary Sesta. I love this character, and Sesta takes the role with both hands and lifts it straight off the page. The fortune teller is a faker ("I pretend. I flutter my fingers, gaze deep into the [crystal] ball, and then... I make something up! Whatever comes into my head. Whatever I think they want to hear. After all, they're paying!") and clearly revels in her deceitful trespasses. And just look at her costume, designed with considered eccentricity by Ken Trew. Everything about this character, and her scenes with Janet Fielding, is wonderful.

And Fielding is wonderful too. Her possessed Tegan really creeps me out, and the scene where she is told by the Doctor to look into the cave in her dream is one of the most unnerving moments in all of Doctor Who for me. Tegan is desperate not to look ("Mustn't look, mustn't ever look") but when she does, the Mara lashes out: "GO AWAY!" The Mara's voice is deep and hateful, and reminds me every time of the very similar moment in Michael Jackson's Thriller video where his face is hidden, but he suddenly looks up, and he is transformed into a werewolf, and shouts "GO AWAY!"

For the cliffhanger, Fielding effortlessly slips from the bruised innocence of a lost and afraid Tegan, to the beastly, possessed monster within her that is the Mara. Tegan becomes forceful and demonic, and cackles evilly as the image of a snake skull emerges in the crystal ball, and then the fortune teller screams as the ball explodes and crashes into the closing credits.

Simply wonderful. Although I've no idea who that old bloke in the desert is.

* This is a ridiculously niche joke referring to the fact fandom mistakenly believed Kinda to have been written by the famously unearthly pop star Kate Bush back in the 1980s!

First broadcast: January 18th, 1983

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Jan Spoczynski and Ken Trew's fantastic designs for Manussa.
The Bad: Nothing!
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★★★

NEXT TIME: Part Two...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Part Two; Part Three; 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.

Snakedance is available as part of the BBC DVD box set Mara Tales. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Tales-Kinda-Snakedance/dp/B004FV4R4K/