Doctor Who A-Z #124: Snakedance

Christopher Bailey, making his return here after writing the best story of the preceding season, is one of the most singular talents to write for Doctor Who. Before we start gushing about his genius, then, it’s probably worthwhile to note that he’s been extremely fortunate with his collaborators. His scripts were directed by the two best directors the show has at the moment, ones whose strengths are interestingly complementary. Peter Grimwade’s muscular, dynamic direction gave Kinda a forward momentum that it might otherwise have lacked, while Fiona Cumming – whose debut story Castrovalva shows she’d have been a dab hand at the psychedelic spectacle of Bailey’s other script – displays a feel for character here that complements the work Bailey has put in to making the planet Manussa feel like a real society with a real history. There’s no direct plot reason to cut away to show Lon suppressing a smirk when Ambril first appears, but Cumming’s decision to include it makes the characters feel richer, more genuine.

Lon is, famously, played by Martin Clunes in his television debut. This has resulted in a lot of lazy chat-show hosts pulling out stills of the outfit he wears to the carnival in the final episode and making some remark along the lines of “can you believe they thought we’d be wearing that in the future?” (Well, no, because they didn’t, but carry on) It’s a shame that he’s a little embarrassed by it now, because it’s a fantastic performance; even without the attention it’s gained thanks to Clunes’s later fame, it would be one of the best guest turns of the Davison years. Clunes often plays prickly, difficult characters but this is the only truly villainous role I’ve ever seen him in, and it’s interestingly low-key; even when he’s possessed by the Mara, Lon’s weapons are deception, temptation and psychological manipulation, a velvet glove to the iron fist represented by the Mara-possessed Tegan.

The Mara stories aren’t quite monster stories in the way Doctor Who usually is, with the threat being non-corporeal until the final set-piece in both cases. But they are horror stories, operating on a plane of purely psychological horror that the series rarely explores. Tegan’s fear of falling under the Mara’s influence sells the creature as a threat even if you haven’t seen Kinda, while the Doctor regressing her into her childhood garden is deeply eerie and uncomfortable. For all Christopher Bailey’s scripts are often interpreted in light of his Buddhism, he’s never going to turn down a symbol just because it doesn’t fit into his own personal faith. In this case, the snake that corrupts the garden sets the agenda for what the Mara is doing this time.

The big difference between Kinda‘s setting Deva Loka and Manussa, after all, is that the latter is ‘civilised’. The events of Kinda make it impossible to use that word without the largest air quotes imaginable, and sure enough it turns out that the ostensibly more advanced Manussans are far, far less prepared for the Mara’s psychic assault than the indigenous Deva Lokans were. But there is still a sense of escalation here, comparable to the first return appearances for the Daleks and the Yeti; we’re now seeing the monsters in something that’s closer to our own environment. Manussa is less like Earth than even the future London of The Dalek Invasion of Earth, but it feels oddly familiar thanks largely to the ingenious and detailed traditions Bailey invents for it. Some of them are variants on Earth traditions, like the fortune tellers, funhouses and Punch and Judy shows that accompany the festival commemorating the Mara’s defeat. But the original ones, like the water-throwing ‘demons’ and the famous Six Faces of Delusion, all have the ring of truth as well.

This is where Bailey’s vision for the Fifth Doctor comes in. Having been asked to bring the Mara back as part of Season Twenty’s roll-call of anniversary-year comebacks – an odd decision, considering Kinda wasn’t well-liked on its initial airing, but a brilliant one – he has clearly thought long and hard about what it means for the Doctor to face a villain he already understands. It means the audience don’t need to be introduced to the creature, or persuaded that it’s a serious threat – as soon as the Mara returns to Tegan’s dreams, both we and the TARDIS crew understand the gravity of the situation. Then the Doctor gets out onto Manussa, and suddenly he’s regarded as a madman insisting that a children’s fairy story is real because of a dream his friend had.

We’re about to enter a stage of the show where, thanks to the success of Earthshock, the Fifth Doctor will be increasingly portrayed as a two-fisted, even gun-toting man of action. And this is a problem, because Davison’s Doctor – Davison’s casting – was supposed to be a reaction against the domineering, attention-demanding Fourth Doctor. The more the show insists this guy is the Doctor Who answer to contemporary Hollywood action heroes, the more transparently obvious it is that he was meant to be the exact opposite. Fortunately there’s still a little gap in Season Twenty where his more thoughtful, sensitive side can be shown off, and this is the finest example, not least because the Doctor’s initial breathless rush of activity is ultimately less useful than the still, meditative contemplation he displays alongside Dojjen.

Perhaps this isn’t a cure-all for the Davison era’s problems. Perhaps, in the hands of another writer, or with guest actors less impressive than Clunes and John Carson to bounce off, watching the Doctor get dismissed and patronised by everyone he meets would become tiresome. But Bailey finds an endless series of entertaining variations on this theme, and Davison matches him. Davison is always very good at portraying the Doctor’s restless curiosity, even on those occasions where the script doesn’t supply enough mystery to be curious about. It’s one of the reasons why the indefinable, mysterious Mara is the perfect enemy for him to face, and it’s why we, the audience, keep faith with him even when his attempts to prevent it manifesting seem to be completely hopeless. He never picks up a gun in Snakedance, and he’s never looked like more of a hero.

Next: Mawdryn Undead (1983)

Graham’s Archive – Snakedance

Full Doctor Who Archive Here