Well, finally of that TARDIS goes the Doctor and he’s back
on Earth. It seems these episodes were engulfed by the time vortex! They don’t
exist anymore as moving pictures! The time vortex is a cruel beast that ways,
some of my earliest adventures such as ‘The Man-Eater’ and ‘Nature Walk’ have
disappeared into time and space never to be seen again. Very sad indeed.
However, this has some sort of reconstruction I saw on the
DVD that I bought in the future on ebay for a fraction of the actual cost of
today as I blog. In fact I got the whole series. And with a series of blurry
photos and some of the surviving soundtrack I could follow this story,
apparently 7 parts but on DVD only 31 minutes!
That’s a mercy! So the Doctor and his crew have an issue
with the TARDIS getting to cold. How bizarre. Wouldn’t happen if they took
better care of it! They meet Marco Polo, a famous traveller from Venice who’s
going along the silk road to China, called Cathay back in the time. I went to
China once where I met the evil Nhim Sie Hou, but it turned out this Tegana
fellow was even shiftier!
They also travelled with Ping Cho, a lady to be married to a
man of 70 she had never met. Susan wasn’t so rapt at that thought. She told her
what’s for and Ping Cho realised she didn’t really want to marry the chap.
Meanwhile, Marco Polo wants to give the TARDIS to Genghis
Khan in the hope he will be allowed home. But Tegana wants war. They travel a
heck of a long way in this one, thousands of miles, and never leave the studio.
Impressive stuff! All they really want is the TARDIS back so they can bugger
off, but every time they get close something goes awry!
For seven parts based on such a thin premise, the story
holds up extraordinarily well. The actors, especially the supporting cast do a
great job, and there appears to be less of Susan’s whining, crying and
screaming. Why the Doctor doesn’t just drop her off somewhere and not come I
don’t know. A very clever idea for a story, and well paced over seven episodes
(in fact I went to this youtube place where I saw a full, colourised version!).
Nicely done.
8/10
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