Marco Polo

The TARDIS is broken. After its brush with near-destruction the ship has suffered a total power failure and stranded the Doctor, Susan, Ian and Barbara in the Himalayas, or "the roof of the world" in 1289. All is not lost, though; they are happened upon by Venetian trader Marco Polo on his way to the court of his master, Kublai Khan, and are taken along as part of the entourage. Also in the mix are a warlord named Tegana and a young girl named Ping-Cho, all travelling together. Marco Polo is fascinated with the TARDIS and decides to appropriate it from the Doctor and give it to Kublai Khan in the hopes that the gift will persuade the Emperor to allow him to return home to Venice at last. The Doctor is furious but bides his time, working on his repairs in secret. But there are bigger problems: someone in the entourage is a traitor and is planning a murder spree for their own ends.

Aside from the presence of the time travellers there is no element of science fiction in this adventure at all, lending it to a more educational slant than a fanciful one, and allowing for some development of our main cast without a crisis happening around them. Susan makes quick friends with Ping-Cho, who is betrothed to a man she has never met who is old enough to be her grandfather; Susan is horrified by this and does not understand why her friend would merely go along with it. The Doctor plays sneaky games with Marco Polo where the TARDIS is concerned, slyly palming a second key to the craft and sneaking in and out when he can to do his repair work. Barbara is thrilled to actually be back in history, something she actually knows about - a change from cave men, Daleks and the terror of her experience in the previous episode. Maybe time travel isn't so bad for her now. And she has learned a bit about the Doctor, enough to know that his anger at everyone is really just his frustration at being held captive by a man he considers to be "his inferior". Ian stays the same for now as the more rational of the group; staying calm and trying to reason with Marco Polo and convince him to let them go. As for Marco Polo himself, he is a quietly desperate man; he wants to go home, he's been working for the Khan for a long time and just wants to return to Venice. He tries to ease the Doctor's mind by telling him he can build a new "flying caravan", which is really just he himself trying to justify his out and out theft of the TARDIS. Here and there Polo writes in his journal, his entries voiced over as he writes.The voice overs not serve as personal reflection for Polo but also to mark the passage of time for the serial. Whereas The Daleks took place over several days, Marco Polo is an early epic with the Doctor and company travelling with Polo for weeks, maybe a couple months.

There is a lot of good stuff to be said about Marco Polo. Now the bad news: this story - all 7 episodes - does not exist in any video format, at least not that anyone is generally aware of (that DVD cover above is really just wishful thinking). In 2013 when wild rumours about a huge haul of missing Doctor Who episodes were making the internet rounds Marco Polo was one of the titles mentioned, with the bold claim that it has been found in its entirety. When a total of 9 episodes were announced - all of them from the 1968 season of the show - there was a huge sense of disappointment that Marco Polo was still somewhere out there, although the next batch of rumours suggested that it was indeed found and was being withheld from release so as not to totally blot out the 50th anniversary of the series. Then the rumour changed to the episode had been "located" but not found as whoever held it realized how much it would be worth and was now demanding much more for it. The latest one I read indicated that a copy of it was found but it was not salvageable, missing sound and being of poor visual quality. I first enjoyed the story in a Target paperback, but the actual broadcast story is not entirely lost to us: the BBC Radio Collection released the entire story from an off-air recording on audio CD with bridging narration by William Russell. Brilliant move, really; like a radio play the tale can be enjoyed with imagination filling in the visual details. The excerpts from Polo's journal work well in this format, adding a certain something to the storytelling. It says a lot about the series when it can overcome the loss of some episodes by jumping formats and being just as enjoyable. Versatility like this is what would lead to other media offshoots such as webcasts, special episodes recorded just for radio broadcasts, the Big Finish audios, the Telos novellas, and the Virgin Publishing New Adventures and Missing Adventures novels.

And speaking of those...

NEXT EPISODE : THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE