The A-Z of Classic Who | Pyramids of Mars: Oh Mummy!

 

I don't think anyone has ever, or frankly will ever get Doctor Who quite like Robert Holmes. His utter aptitude to what made the show great remains unmatched and his list of utter classics that's longer than the full credits of most other writers is the testament to that. Sure, it took some trial and error - both his Troughton stories are unimpressive - but once Doctor Who entered the colour era, he became probably the most consistent writer of the Pertwee era and slid into the script editors chair as Tom Baker entered the TARDIS. It was in this role he discovered what was perhaps his most important talent - taking good ideas in dogshit scripts and turning them into proper stories. NuWho sorely needed (and needs) someone like this to take the good ideas and fashion them into stories, rather than just sticking in some mindless spectacle instead and hoping nobody will notice the embarrassing holes in the script. Ahem.

Anyway, before I bore you all to death ranting about NuWho, that's exactly what Pyramids of Mars is - an idea that was initially going to be, by all accounts, a bloated, complex mess without focus or drive, turned by Holmes into one of Doctor Who's all time classics by building it from the ground up. Yes, it's with great relief I say that this story is indeed top quality stuff, and while Holmes is not the only one responsible for this, as we'll see several others have important contributions to make, but it's his script that allows everything to fall together. Flawless? No, but the flaws are small and forgivable because of how the story comes together. It's a belter lads, and I'm here to look at why.

what being made to watch nuwho is like

Let's look at a bit of background first though. Phillip Hinchcliffe and Holmes wanted to do an Egyptian story for season 13, and let's be honest, why not? Not only does that kind of imagery play exactly into what the kind of classic horror tropes that they build this, perhaps Doctor Who's greatest season, on, it was also a period of history with great popular appeal that Doctor Who had largely left untouched. All there was the stuff from The Daleks' Master Plan which probably would have had even less prominence than it does now, as this was before Episode 10 was recovered which is the episode that most prominently features the Egyptian stuff. And even then, that's all it is - a setting. It's not about Ancient Egypt, whereas this would be. And again, why not? A captivating mythology was there for the taking. So H and H (as I shall affectionately call them) commissioned Lewis Griefer to write this story.

 The problem was that didn't really end up working out, after much wrangling around with a convoluted script involving Egyptian gods trying to poison grain at some food conference which may or may not have been on the moon which may or may not have involved the Brigadier, and this is beginning to sound distinctly not like the kind of the thing H and H wanted - mummies and Egyptian gods. With deadlines looming and Griefer unable to rewrite the scripts, Holmes took the original ideas and built the new story himself, crediting it under the name 'Stephen Harris' who joins Robin Bland and David Agnew was writers of all-time Doctor Who classics who are as fictional as the characters in them. 

Unlike Bland's The Brain of Morbius, Pyramids of Mars is much more recognisably Holmesian, with the fingerprints of Terrance Dicks visible all over the former. Pyramids is a tight plot-driven outing which nevertheless uses character to drive said plot, while taking influence from the Classic Egyptian horror and being uniquely Doctor Who at the same time.

"Oh whoops, I put my murder gloves on this morning by mistake"

First though, I do want to look at the ways the other elements of the story allow this script to succeed and there are a lot of them. Directly this was Paddy Russell, who way back in The Massacre became Doctor Who's first ever female director and returned to the show near the end of the Pertwee era. Unfortunately, her sixties work remains unavailable to assess thanks to the Standard Issue BBC Flamethrower™, but between this story and Horror of Fang Rock she clearly leaves a very positive legacy as a Who director. As well as making the story look great (for instance, much of the mummies' menace comes from how they are shot early on in this story - from the ground up to make them seem loom seemingly unstoppably). Russell also gets the best out of her actors, not least Tom Baker who she famously absolutely beyond refused to take shit from and squarely told him to do it her way, full stop, in a way that became rarer and rarer among directors as Baker's time on the series went on. The result was a commanding performance for Baker, free from his comedic eccentricities. He's playing the Fourth Doctor in a way that lends credence to the seriousness of the situation but also plays into the idea of the Doctor as an alien in mind and action, proving in stark contrast to the chummy homely Pertwee years. Baker of course is masterful, pulling it off with gravitas, while never totally losing his charm. Russell also gets the best out of her other actors - Elisabeth Sladen comes across perfectly as the Doctor's human voice of reason, Bernard Archard is astonishingly menacing as Marcus Scarman, Michael Sheard plays the tragic role of his brother Laurence fantastically, and Gabriel Woolf's voice is both chillingly calculated and dramatically insane. Of course, the credit must also go to the actors for rising to the challenge to bring this story alive, and they'll also be looked in greater detail when we get to their characters.

I'd also like to praise costumer designer Barbara Kidd for the job she did on the mummies, who are a silly concept made to look soulless and threatening through a combination of the design (and Russell's direction as mentioned) and in general for the overall job she did... except for Sarah's dress which looks a bit like a cheap knock off of Princess Leia's dress (even though this story predates Star Wars by 18 months but that's a minor detail) - it's also odd she put it on before they know they'd be in 1911 and not UNIT HQ. Either it's extremely convenient or Sarah has precognition we never heard about again... which would admittedly make some of her later adventures quite funny in retrospect ("Why Doctor, I'm very surprised to see you in this school... drat, I'm never going to get hold of that Skasis Paradigm now.)

The location shoot choosers (I can't be bothered to look up the actual term) also did brilliantly as the Priory and the grounds look fantastic, grand yet creepy. Unfortunately, the only ones on the production side to really let the side down are the production designers for the studio bound stuff om Mars, and very briefly in Egypt in Part One. It just, unfortunately looks like very generic Seventies Who and doesn't quite line up with the weight of the occasion. It's fine, but no better than that which is a shame.

The Doctor and Sarah weren't picking the best time to stop and admire the wallpaper

Anyway, the script. It's funny that Pyramids has (deservedly I hasten to add) attained a status as an all-time classic, given that the plot is honestly pretty flimsy and has holes it in it you could see from space. And yes, this does cause one or two problems - mostly that the story kind of grounds to a halt in Part Four to do all the riddles. It's not bad exactly, but its hardly riveting either, and is only really saved by the Riddle of the Osirans scene which I'll touch upon later. The actual conclusion is also a mixed bag - I like that is expands on the theme of the rules of time, and that it uses a bit of real life science to do so. Because radio signals take two minutes to reach Earth from Mars, the Doctor and Sarah have two minutes to reach Earth and stop Sutekh - time can't be cheated or bent, but that has advantages as well. Unfortunately, the actual means of defeating Sutekh is pretty lame ("I'm going to whatsit the technobabble to produce a whatever field that will render Sutekh's thingymabob useless! Hooray!") and does make the Doctor's bellyaching about the danger to the universe seem a bit unnecessary when all he had to do to defeat him was twiddle a few knobs.

"Oh, I do beg your pardon, wrong coffin, sorry!"

The main plot itself is also a bit expositiony - the Doctor and Sarah just happen to know enough about Osirans and Egyptian mythology between them to get the plot moving, and sometimes there's explanation that seem a bit too dry, and ground the story to a half as its explained. It's the only niggle with otherwise fantastic pacing through, but it is there. Finally, I would be remiss not to mention the anti-Egyptian stuff in Part One, with Marcus Scarman's Egyptian assistants being a pretty poor stereotype as easily spooked idiots, and Namin's Egyptian spirituality is a bit on the nose to say the least - obviously all involved played by white guys in Egyptian makeup to make it worse. Given Holmes' record on this (i.e not good) it remains something worth mentioning for all to be aware of. It's not defensible as it was in Planet of the Spiders where the characters were portrayed respectfully despite everything and it was clearly just values dissonance, but it's also not Talons with a decidedly racist attitude throughout. It is what it is, and I'll leave it to the individual viewer to decide on their reaction. God help us all when I become the voice of authority on this.

Anyway, enough negativity, because despite Holmes'... err... tendencies, there's no real denying his ability to bring plot and characters together in a Doctor Who story. Because Pyramids is two things at its core - a story of galactic threat and intrigue, and a story about its characters. See, Holmes did what NuWho has mostly either not bothered to do or embarrassingly failed at when tried - create guest characters to be just as important as the regulars in the totality of the story. This is just as much the story of the Scarman brothers, and of Sutekh himself even, as of the Doctor and Sarah, and the story feels richer as a result.

"Let's see, F and G, E and G then D and B... hey, this organ lark isn't as hard as I thought!"

First though, let's look at the plot based elements. The story's primary success in this area is the sense of the scale of the threat - the stakes have pretty much never been higher. Generally, such enormous universe altering stakes are rare in Classic Who - usually its just 'the Earth will be destroyed/conquered' and variations on said theme, or usually when there's a divergence from that it's usually towards a smaller scale, either some local conflict our heroes become embroiled in, or personal stakes like The Chase or most of the historicals, in that it's the Doctor and his friends and their fate that is the focus of the threat. The idea of the Doctor having to be the last line of defence before universal destruction was very rare - off the top of my head, only The Daleks' Master Plan and Genesis of the Daleks had such stakes prior to this, and it's fair to say both were special cases. And that's good, because 'the universe is going to be destroyed' loses its effectiveness and starts limiting storytelling if done any more than every so often. This has without a doubt been a recurring problem with NuWho, part of its core failing in fact that it just refuses to ever sit down and breathe, everything seems to always have to be breakneck and 'epic'. It's also a problem, for instance, with the newer incarnations of Star Trek, every season there's some cosmic threat to all life everywhere (as opposed to 90s Trek where the biggest threat that happened was a war in one quadrant of one galaxy that was treated as so huge it was the defining feature of the series it appeared in). Conversely, things like this make the universe feel smaller, like the Nu Doctors or the starship Whateverprise always happen to be the ones to fight intergalactic threats through sheer coincidence. Pyramids works in part because Holmes realised Doctor Who's reluctance to do this left a gap, and it was a gap he exploited. The fact that Sutekh can and will wipe out all life from the universe gives this story a sense of dread and urgency, and helps demonstrate Sutekh's threat as a villain. Precisely because this is so rare, it makes him seem like the real deal in a way that may have been lacking otherwise.

This is best demonstrated in the brilliant scene where Sarah pronounces it'll all be okay because her 1980 exists undestroyed... which results in the Doctor taking her to 1980 to show her what Sutekh will do. It's a bold but brilliant move, to embrace 'show not tell' and give an image for the audience to think back to, rather than just exposition to that effect. It also shows that there is no hope of a magic fix (well, not from an outside source anyway), the only hope rests with the Doctor and co. This also plays into another of the story's ideas, a look at the idea of time within the context of the series' mythology. The rule of being unable to chance history has been since in Doctor Who since very near the beginning, The Aztecs being the show's sixth every story, and some say the aforementioned scene in this story contradicts it, but I disagree, I think it builds upon it. The idea this story puts across is that those with the power and will to wreak destruction will change history without a second thought if they can - I mean, let's be honest, if 15 minutes after the Doctor left, a squadron of Daleks turned up in South America and started exterminating the Aztecs and the rest of the continent's native population, that would probably change history and inevitability wouldn't do much to stop them. What this idea is, is that preserving history is not an inevitability, it's a responsibility. The Doctor can't rely on time running as it should, it's not a conscious ally, it's a force that sometimes needs protecting, and indeed, this idea is the part of the story's conclusion that works very well - the flow of time may not be inevitable, and it is a responsibility of those with the power to preserve it, but the mechanics of time are, and that inevitability is what defeats Sutekh. He may after all be able to manipulate time (such as by freezing the explosion on the rocket) but he cannot defeat its most basic features.

For certain parts of Britain, this was of course an improvement

This idea improves the story in two ways - first, it increases Sutekh's threat, presenting him as someone both able and willing to devastate history as we know it. Given the importance of preserving history in the Who universe as previously mentioned, it makes the tension all that much greater and Sutekh's abilities all that more unprecedented. Secondly, and perhaps more interestingly, it explores the Doctor's relationship with time, in that he's both its protector and its master. He protects the flow of time from Sutekh, taking that responsibility of preserving it, but also that he will use it if necessary to carry out what he believes is his moral duty - the protection of innocent life and the vanquishing of baddies. It's an interesting contrast with Genesis of the Daleks, where, in the end, the preservation of established history came second to that moral duty. Just because here in this story the preservation of established history and innocent lives are the same ends, doesn't mean the Doctor is going to let that stop what he sees as his moral duty. He respects time enough that such interventions are rare, but not enough that they are impossible. The Doctor's relationship with time is highlighted by its interaction with other characters - Sarah isn't given time to grieve over the death of Laurence, representing its limited nature, but when the poor old poacher tries to shoot Marcus, his inability to meddle in it compared with Sutekh's results in the bullet literally being reversed in time.

Enough waxing lyrical about time though, let's briefly touch on the other parts of the plot that works. Part One is a cracker for instance - near perfectly paced, with the mystery building and the pieces of the story neatly falling into place as it builds up to that absolutely phenomenal cliffhanger where Namin receives a similar fate to much of Doctor Who's 1960s output (i.e set on fire) with simple cold precision - life, even that of a servant of his, is just something to be swatted away by our villain. I also adore the scene where the Doctor confronts Sutekh and is utterly outmatched by him - rarely is the Doctor put down a peg like he is in this scene where he's forced to practically cower in Sutekh's presence. He's been the equal of villains like the Master, Davros, the Great Intelligence and others and stood up to Daleks and Cybermen, Ice Warriors and more without so much as flinching, but here he's forced to his knees by the sheer power of the villain. Only once before was he ever so utterly outmatched, and that was in The War Games when faced with his own people. There, though, he met his fate with quiet resignation after a few half hearted attempts to run, knowing that he was beaten and there was nothing else to do, while here, even under such conditions, he fights until what he expects to be his last breath, refusing to give in no matter what. It's a brilliant character moment, that despite his reservations about the Time Lords in The War Games, he gives in as he knows the only threat is to himself and his own freedom and not to innocents, while he refuses to serve the more powerful yet insanely destructive and evil Sutekh even if it means his own destruction. In true Doctor fashion, the only thing that can coerce him is threatening Sarah - his weakness is his care for others, not care for himself. He then gets mind controlled into helping Sutekh out, preventing us from finding out how far he'll truly go to protect her... which is good, as some things are best left to the imagination. 

The Doctor was unimpressed by Sarah's attempts to get a scarf of her own

As I'm already basically talking about character stuff anyway, I'll move on to a full discussion of it, especially as that is what Pyramids of Mars at its heart is about. I've already talked about the Doctor at length, but there's one thing I'll add to all of that, that Pyramids takes an exploration of his alien nature and how that influences his worldview. The Doctor, at least in this incarnation, is arguably at his outwardly coldest and most distant in this story, any such humanity wiped away by his single-minded pursuit of the defeat of Sutekh. Most prominently, this is reflected in the death of Laurence, where his only reaction is to lament Laurence's inability to let his brother go seemingly without remorse for the dead man himself. Of course, what separates this from how similar characterisation went wrong in the Sixth Doctor's era or parts of NuWho are two things - first that Sarah calls him out on it without hesitation, which perfectly creates the debate that the audience are having over the situation. Sarah is right that a man is dead and it is not something to be brushed over, but the Doctor is right that they have bigger problems (i.e the fate of the universe) to worry about, that Laurence is not the first person to have died over it and bluntly he was warned enough times about Marcus. This debate is also done quickly and without being dragged out - enough discussion to linger in the mind but not enough to become melodrama or distract from the pacing of the plot. Secondly, and this is just as much down to Baker and Russell as Holmes, you can tell that the Doctor isn't being heartless about Laurence's death - it's not that he doesn't care, it's just that it isn't his priority, and that's something he spells out to Sarah. Laurence's death is a tragedy, as were the others that had happened, but the horror of what Sutekh will do is more important. It links in to the stuff about the Doctor's duty to protect the innocent and so forth - grief is not a luxury they can afford, and grief will do nothing to help the innocents of the universe if Sutekh wins. He says "know thine enemy" - Sutekh doesn't give a crap and if they want to win they can't either.

A great scene this is illustrated in is the best scene in Part Four, when during the Doctor and Sarah's escapade into  ̶a̶ ̶H̶a̶u̶n̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶H̶o̶u̶s̶e̶ ̶f̶r̶o̶m̶ ̶S̶c̶o̶o̶b̶y̶ ̶D̶o̶o̶ the Osiran Complex on Mars, she gets trapped inside a tube, to which the Doctor is presented with the Riddle of the Osirans - two Osiran mummies presented to the Doctor, one tells the truth, one fibs, he gets one question. It's not as if Doctor Who invented it of course, and some of you may recognise it more from the David Bowie film Labyrinth but the riddle itself, while clever and intriguing, is only really the backdrop to what the Doctor does. Once he knows what's happening, he acts without hesitation, solving the riddle before the audience even has time to work out what's just been said, showing that when the Doctor's heroism kicks in, he's as quick and sharp as Pertwee's Doctor ever was. Grief isn't a luxury he can afford maybe, but he can afford to use his skills to save Sarah, and use them he does. It's a fantastic scene, which is also helped by great dialogue which spells out just enough to any still confused audience members what's going on so the final pieces can fall into place without having to be done through exposition.

The Doctor's otherworldliness is best portrayed by the small moments in my view though - bits of dialogue here and there designed to separate the Doctor from the human characters that surround him. Baker of course is flawless in these moments and really lets the Fourth Doctor shine as what he always was at his best being - bombastic, larger than life and mysterious, but also brilliantly heroic.

Sarah decided it wasn't the best time to point out the Osiran Mummies were wearing gold gift wrapping

Sarah Jane Smith, and by extension Elisabeth Sladen, have a brilliant story here as well, and I think this story is frankly a perfect example of why she became so beloved and a staple of the show for the rest of Sladen's life, and why she remains so remembered now. She remains the perfect audience identification character - she needs the Doctor to explain parts of the plot to her but is smart enough to fill in some of the gaps herself (yeah, I know, I said that I didn't like the how convenient and plot specific that knowledge is, but things can have both good and bad points so sod it). She's also the Doctor's moral anchor, the need to save her life rooting the Doctor to the ground and not allowing him to be caught up entirely in large universal affairs, but also allowing her to give him shit when he deserves it. She's also capable and doesn't take his crap - near the end of Part One, the Doctor tells her and Laurence to wait behind while he investigates Namin, and she, in a brilliant moment, tells Laurence to come with her to follow him anyway and to bring the rifle while he's at it. And also, let's be honest, what other Classic Who companion could have pulled off that rifle like she does in Part Three? Sladen is also magnificent, her chemistry with Baker as its electric best. Sarah's character, more or less perfected here, became the template that was used for most companions from this point onwards, with increasingly diminishing returns unfortunately - only those like Leela, Romana, Tegan, Ace and Donna, who eschewed it in favour of unique dynamics really succeeded in my view, but hey. Overall, Sarah was the right companion in the right moment here.

The guest characters are also triumphs. I'll mainly be looking at the Scarman brothers and Sutekh, being the most important ones, but the more minor ones also play their part - Dr Warlock for instance, through his interactions, sets up the relationship between the Scarman brothers which is a major driver for the middle part of the story, while Clements the Poacher is a bit of cannon fodder, but cannon fodder with a purpose - to show once again how futile action against Sutekh can be, and how little he regards life.

In the end though, as guest characters go, this is the story of the Scarman brothers who are two of the richest single appearance characters in the show's history, and that's impressive given one of them is technically only on screen for the first minute or so of Part One. Huge credit must go to the actors, Bernard Archard's performance as Marcus being frankly terrifying, and the depth Michael Sheard puts into Laurence's refusal to accept Marcus fate is brilliantly tragic. Their relationship is an important part of the story, that presents in real human terms the threat Sutekh poses and how unprepared human beings really are to deal with such a thing. It's left up to the viewer's imagination how close they really were as brothers, which is good as spelling it out would just be dead air when the audience can work it it out for themselves, but Laurence's horror at the idea of Marcus being dead indicates they were fairly close - his actions at being told he's lost one of his closest family members is therefore both totally understandably human and totally inappropriate to the situation. Who of us in Laurence's situation wouldn't cling to the idea that Marcus was still alive? It's an honest and human take on the Doctor Who guest character, and compared to the pretty lacklustre hole-in-plot shaped characters in Planet of Evil, the story before this one (see I can use negative comparators that aren't NuWho!) it's night and day. The scene where Marcus and Laurence finally come face to face is utterly chilling - Laurence's desperate pleading with Marcus leads to the tiniest glimmer of hope that there may be a way through to him, which is quickly shoved aside as Sutekh becomes impossible to overcome and Laurence's inability to let Marcus go signs his death warrant. How possible was it for Laurence to get through to him? Once again, left to the audience to decide and that's good - no matter what though, it's an absolutely fantastic scene, played brilliantly by both actors, directed tensely by Russell and written with tragic humanity by Holmes.

Of course, Laurence may have had better luck if he hadn't asked Marcus to spud him

Finally, I'd like to touch on Sutekh the Destroyer himself, who rightly has the reputation as one of the best villains in the show's history. Firstly - what a voice. Gabriel Woolf's menacing performance is the piece of the puzzle that comes together to make Sutekh such a fantastic villain - it oozes as much charisma as it does menace, making the audience totally aware of just how much of a threat he poses through his intelligence as well as his evil and power. This is absolutely in how he is written as well, as through his words and action he is clearly just as insane as he is powerful, but these never define him - he never becomes an over the top or melodramatic villain, he retains cold and calculated, as if he is just as intelligent and powerful as we've been told. This only slips when he is defeated, which is good, as that's when an otherwise threatening villain's mask should slip - when it matters, there's no reason for the audience not to believe Sutekh is as powerful as he claims. He's also built up superbly - he's not properly seen until the end of Part Three. Until then, he's just Woolf's fantastic disembodied voice pitching in occasionally and the consequences of his actions - Sutekh is seen as a formidable villain simply through the images of the mummies and the undead Marcus Scarman romping around, and when he does confront the Doctor the ice cold determination to destroy the entire universe only reinforces that threat. His dialogue also helps - again, it's restrained enough not to go over the top and slip into melodrama (like say, most NuWho villains) but always give the sense that Sutekh is only a step away from going over the edge, forcing the Doctor to kneel before him seemingly purely out of ego and... well, because he can frankly. As mentioned, Woolf's delivery takes this even further - the subtlety of his performance works so brilliantly in making Sutekh such a threatening and memorable villain.

"My one goal in conquering the universe is to switch the bulbs in helmet out for LEDs! Mwuhahahaha!"

In the end though, Pyramids of Mars works because it, like all great Doctor Who that works on the complex levels, is just a damn entertaining ride. The characters, the plot and the atmosphere draw the viewer in brilliantly - it doesn't rush, but it doesn't meander, it has heroes to identify with and villains to root against, and all those elements come together seamlessly. In the end, it can be as clever and have great characters, but if its a snooze fest then it's not really much good. Pyramids of Mars is not that and it's all the better for it. It also brilliantly marries the gothic horror elements as well - in the end, Hinchliffe and Holmes wanted the image of mummies chasing people around haunted locales, and by chum that's what they got. It's influence from stuff like the Mummy films of the 1930s is not really something I can comment on much as I'm not familiar with the source material, but frankly, when all the elements like writing, directing and production design are combined, it's difficult to see how they could have done much better.

So, that's Pyramids of Mars. Flawless? Not at all, but I'm willing to overlook all the flaws because it's just such an entertaining ride. The pacing is excellent, the acting sublime, the writing sharp and clever, hell, even the soundtrack by Dudley Simpson (who let's be honest, tended to write scores that sounded a bit samey) does a lot to add to the atmosphere. There are so many people who contributed to make this work - Gabriel Woolf, Bernard Archard, Michael Sheard, Barbara Kidd, Elisabeth Sladen, Tom Baker and Paddy Russell all deserve top marks for making this such a triumph, but overall, it's Robert Holmes' clever, thoughtful, character-driven yet brilliantly plotted script that wins the day. It's not perfect, sure, but then what is?

The answer is Dragonfire. Dragonfire is perfect. Hope that helps.

Final Score: 9/10. A cracking adventure, brilliantly atmospheric, smartly plotted with great characters and the winning Baker-Sladen duo. It may not be flawless, but whatever problems it does have are brushed away by being an entertaining run from start to finish, and deserves its' status as an all time classic.

Next Episode: Remembrance of the Daleks