Things I've Learnt from Watching My Favourite Doctor Who Stories: Part 4 - Pyramids of Mars

 4. Pyramids of Mars

You can't always trust a man in a fez and that isn't my Mummy...

Pyramids of Mars was the first Doctor Who story I saw on video rather than on TV and so has a special place in my heart. The sheer joy of seeing a classic Doctor Who story with the first Doctor I remembered was palpable. I grew up in Abingdon in Oxfordshire and there was a music shop in the High Street called Haken and Bell, which in the mid 1980s started a video library. Among the small selection was Pyramids of Mars and I begged my parents to hire it out for the weekend. 

I was thirteen and thought it was absolutely brilliant! I remember it was during the Trial of a Time Lord season and while I don't remember thinking that Pyramids was much better than Trial, I did watch the video a couple of times over that weekend to enjoy it as much as possible before having to take it back to the shop. 

It was amazing. Tom Baker was amazing, I was spellbound by the way he would go from silly "Is this where he keeps his relatives?" to serious "what are you afraid of?" with such ease and conviction. Watching Tom when I was younger during Season 17 he was quite jokey, but still the hero, safe and friendly. Here, apart from the initial humourous lines about Marie Antoinette, he's abrasive and snappy, he's angry at Laurence Scarman at the beginning of part three for ruining his plan and he's dismissive of Sarah when they discover Laurence, murdered by his brother. Not that different from the then current Doctor, the other Mr Baker... 

Received fan wisdom had told me this story was brilliant and much better than the current run. Now I enjoy both Pyramids of Mars and Trial of a Time Lord, but there's an urgency and sinister undertone to Pyramids which, let's be honest, is missing slightly from Trial. Pyramids also has a script editor working his socks off as a script editor and writer, with this story being pretty much a page one rewrite! Trial is not the finest hour of the then script editor let's say... 

This is one of those stories that's built on many memorable moments. The Mummies were creepy, the death of the poacher could have been comic but was grotesque. There's a horrible death scene where Dr Warlock is screaming for help. It's not gory but the fear is palpable. But the story belongs to Sutekh, evil personified. Played by Gabriel Woolf, his performance is terrifying simply by the power of his voice. The scenes at the beginning of the last episode are spellbinding, where Sutekh tortures the Doctor. It's very simply done with just a green light shining on Tom Baker, it's the performances that make it so memorable. Baker is the best Doctor to convey pain and here he totally convinces that he is in absolute agony. 

In contrast, there's the wonderful moment in part four - the moment Tom Baker rebelled! The scene where the Doctor and Sarah walk in on the mummy was based on the old Marx Brothers routine of walking in and straight out again. He suggested it to director Paddy Russell (Tom referred to her as "sir!") but she forbade it. Tom then said to Lis they were going to do it anyway! To be fair to Paddy Russell she kept it in and this is a wonderfully daft moment in quite a dark story. 

Some say the end is a bit convenient but it's not the only Doctor Who story to suffer that. Pyramids of Mars is exceptionally good television, nor just exceptionally good Doctor Who. It was part of a golden age of the programme where ratings were high (according to Jictar episodes three and four hit 14m and 15m, much higher than the BBC figures!) 

And here's a confession. I quite like watching Doctor Who as a compilation like these early videos. So there! 

Next Time: I don't like unlimited rice pudding...