DOCTOR WHO:  THE MASQUE OF MANDRAGORA

commentary by Judy Harris

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#12:  THE MASQUE OF MANDRAGORA  (4 parts) 
ORIGINALLY AIRED:  9/4/76 to 9/25/76
WRITTEN BY:  Louis Marks	
DIRECTED BY:  Rodney Bennett
PRODUCER:  Philip Hinchcliffe	
SCRIPT EDITOR:  Robert Holmes
	

The Doctor and Sarah, fetchingly dressed in a sort of tapestry jumper, are trekking through the TARDIS. Sarah spots a door, through which she can see a lovely and enormous furnished room. A pair of boots is right by the door, and the Doctor tells her the room is his boot cupboard.

"Just how big is the TARDIS?" Sarah asks. "Well, how big is big?" the Doctor replies, "Relative dimensions, you see, no constants." He continues, "There are no measurements in infinity. You humans have got such limited little minds; I don't know why I like you so much." "Because you have such good taste," Sarah jokes. "That's true, that's very true," the Doctor agrees.

Sarah stumbles into an auxiliary control room. Where the regular TARDIS interior set is white, uncluttered and modern looking, this secondary room is dark paneled with some stained glass windows, cluttered and Victorian. The clutter includes Jon Pertwee's dusty old frilled shirt and velvet smoking jacket resting on a rack, and Patrick Troughton's recorder. The actual TARDIS controls resemble an antique compartmented desk, with a Victorian shaving mirror on top. "I can run the TARDIS from here just as easily as I could from the old one;" the Doctor decides, "Come to think of it, this was the old one."

The Doctor tries the scanner and immediately sees the Mandragora Helix, which looks like some swirling styrofoam bits. He tells Sarah it's "a spiral of pure energy that radiates outwards in ways no one understands," adding that it's a living entity with a controlling intelligence at its center. Mandragora "dominates and controls by helix energy astral force. It takes away from man the only thing worth having: a sense of purpose, the ability granted to every intelligent species to shape its own destiny."

The TARDIS is heading straight for it, but the Doctor fiddles with the controls, hoping to "countermagnetize enough to resist the pull." However, they don't avoid it, and it permeates the TARDIS, getting inside Sarah's head, so the Doctor tells her to concentrate by reciting the alphabet backwards.

As they go deeper into the Helix, the styrofoam effect is replaced by spirals of a crystal-like substance. The TARDIS stops and Sarah is OK, but the Doctor doesn't know where they are, because "the astrosextant rectifier's gone out of phase."

The Doctor steps outside the TARDIS into a sort of echo-ey nothingness, surrounded by the Helix crystals. "Hmm," the Doctor remarks, "bigger than my boot cupboard."

Some helix energy heads toward them, and they hide behind the TARDIS. As disembodied laughter is heard, they hustle back inside and take off.

In 15th century San Martino, soldiers of Count Federico are slaughtering some peasants accused of insurrection.

The old Duke has just died, and his son, Prince Giuliano, confronts the court astrologer, Hieronymous, who foretold his father's death. Giuliano is Duke now, modern for his time, an open minded, intelligent, fair and scientifically interested young man.

The lavish costumes for this story were flown in specially from Italy, although in the case of Count Federico, they resemble the classic look of Shakespeare's RICHARD III.

Giuliano's Uncle, the Count Federico, plots with Hieronymous to kill his nephew, as he killed his brother. Hieronymous confides to Federico he feels destined for greatness.

The TARDIS makes a forced landing. "Helix forcefields must have distorted the coordinates, "the Doctor mutters to himself, while Sarah wanders off to pick an orange and is knocked out and kidnapped by some robed, hooded figures.

From a glass jar the Doctor finds, he determines they're on Earth in the Mediterranean area in the late 15th century. He notices the men carrying Sarah off and tries to stop them, but is hit on the head with a rock by one of them.

Meantime, the door of the TARDIS opens, and the helix energy escapes, setting a few fires on its way. The Doctor revives and sets off looking for Sarah. He sees the helix energy land in some water, which starts to boil, and then attack and kill a peasant, turning his skin green.

Hieronymous and Federico present Giuliano's horoscope, forecasting his death. Giuliano scoffs, but suspects them of killing his father.

Whistling YES, WE HAVE NO BANANAS, the Doctor is stopped by soldiers. He puts the orange he was eating on the sword pointed at him, and under pretext of looking for his documents, produces a noisemaker which startles their horses. He steals a horse and rides off, but they pursue and capture him.

Sarah, revived, is blindfolded and taken to a ruined temple in a catacomb, where she learns she's to be sacrificed to a pagan god named Demnos.

The Doctor is taken to Count Federico. He tries to tell the Count about the Mandragora Helix, which could destroy the world, and offers to help, but the Count thinks he is a sorcerer and sends for Hieronymous, who discredits him.

As the bells toll curfew, the helix energy attacks and kills a solider. The helix energy is now an optical pink glow, something like an Independence Day sparkler, which is nicely matched up to physical effects actually taking place on the set.

The Doctor is sentenced to be beheaded, but he knocks over the executioner with his scarf and escapes on horseback and then through the marketplace. The outdoor sequences for this story were filmed in Portmeirion in Wales, which was also the setting of the popular British series THE PRISONER, starring Patrick McGoohan. This hardly accounts for many of the "Italian" soldiers having Cockney accents, however!

In the catacombs, the cult of Demnos is preparing for Sarah's sacrifice. Gowned in a long white robe, she is forced to drink a liquid which drugs her. The brethren all wear masks with exaggerated features.

The Doctor ducks into the catacombs to escape the soldiers. He sees the leader of the cult, who wears a round pendant and whose mask is the only one with a beard, and follows him through a secret passage. The Doctor slides Sarah off the altar while the brethren are distracted--seconds before the sacrificial knife falls--and carries her to safety, as the Mandragora Helix arrives. It lights up the entire temple; the cult rejoices that their prayers have been answered.

The Doctor tells Sarah the helix energy is causing "subthermal recombination of ionized plasma," and she tells him about the Cult of Demnos, which--he says--is a Roman sect from the Third Century, which should have died out long ago.

A ray of the helix energy singles out the leader of the cult, who turns out to be Hieronymous. The voice of Mandragora tells him, "You have been chosen for powers undreamed of" and promises to make him supreme ruler of Earth.

Sarah and the Doctor are captured in the catacombs by soldiers still faithful to Giuliano, and are brought to the young Duke. He and his friend Marco show the Doctor a dead soldier. The Doctor diagnoses the strange green skin as high ionization which destroys tissue utterly just by touching it--helix energy.

The Doctor deduces helix energy has chosen 15th century Italy because "it's the period between the Dark Ages of superstition and the dawn of a new reason."

Giuliano leads the Doctor and Sarah back to the temple entrance, where Giuliano is attacked by Federico's soldiers. Sarah is recaptured by the brethren, and the Doctor undergoes a psychic attack by Mandragora.

The Doctor escapes the laughing helix force and helps Giuliano in a sword fight. Giuliano is injured, but the soldiers are driven off by the brethren. The Doctor and Giuliano hide in the catacombs, and the Doctor uses his handkerchief to staunch the blood of the Duke's wound, remarking, "The finest swordsman I ever saw was a captain in Cleopatra's body guard."

Sarah is taken to Hieronymous' chambers, drugged and hypnotized; he gives her a poison needle to stab the Doctor with, when the time is right.

Giuliano and the Doctor search the catacombs and find Sarah, who's unconscious and can't remember exactly what's happened to her. The Doctor, pacing up and down, quotes a Latin phrase, "solvitus ambulando", which Giuliano translates as "The question is solved by walking." This prompts Sarah to wonder how she can even understand Giuliano, since she doesn't speak Italian. The Doctor promises to explain later.

Marco is seized by Federico's soldiers and tortured in the dungeon to force him to falsely accuse Giuliano of being a follower of Demnos.

Giuliano, the Doctor and Sarah return to the palace. Giuliano mentions he has called a gathering of all the scholars and philosophers in Italy--including Leonardo DaVinci--and their patrons, to celebrate his accession to the throne. The Doctor declares if anything should happen to these people, Earth would be thrown back into a new Dark Age.

Hieronymous, confident of his new status with Mandragora, has forecast Federico's death, so the Count sends his right hand man, Rossini, to banish him.

The Doctor sets off to see Hieronymous, and Sarah sneaks after him, poison needle in hand. In Hieronymous' chamber, the Doctor finds the mask he wore during the ceremony in the catacombs. "Fascinating," he muses, "predeluvian sandstone with a complex circuit of base metal fixed into it."

Sarah attacks the Doctor, but he easily breaks her hypnosis by telling her, "You don't want to hurt me, Sarah; I'm your friend, remember, your best friend."

The soldiers arrive to banish Hieronymous, who gets away, so they seize Sarah and the Doctor. Giuliano is also captured in the palace, and they all wind up in the dungeon with Marco.

While dangling by their manacled wrists, the Doctor tells Sarah he knew she had been subjected to drug-induced hypnosis: "I've taken you to some strange places before, and you've never asked how you understood the local language. It's a Time Lord's gift I allow you to share."

This is another nice touch. In so much dramatized science fiction, the hero meets aliens from many different planets and is always able to communicate with them; the ability is never explained or is explained by means of an unseen simultaneous translation device, such as the one mentioned briefly in STAR TREK. This is actually the first time this power had come up in all the years DOCTOR WHO was on the air, and the explanation is vague but elegant.

The Doctor tells Federico his real enemies are the brethren, whose leader is Hieronymous, who is in possession of enormous energy. Federico forces the Doctor to lead him to the catacombs to seize Hieronymous; the others will be kept hostage and killed if the Count doesn't return in an hour.

Dressed in hooded robes, they enter the catacombs. The Doctor advises the Count not to touch Hieronymous, but the Count ignores him. He rips the mask off Hieronymous and there is no face beneath--only a blindingly bright glow. Hieronymous kills the Count with an arc of helix energy from his finger.

As the Doctor escapes, he hears Hieronymous' last prophecy: "Mandragora shall swallow the moon."

The Doctor returns to the dungeon and tells Rossini the Count is dead. When Giuliano asks how, the Doctor quips, "Hieronymous gave him a blank look." Rossini gives up and the Doctor rescues everyone from the dungeon.

The Doctor recommends Giuliano block all the entrances to the palace and turn it into a fortress to keep the brethren out.

The Doctor goes to Hieronymous' chambers. With a primitive telescope and astrolabe (medieval sextant), which is almost a whole degree out, he takes quill in hand to "compensate for error and convert to the Copernican system." At last he comes up with the exact figures: 43 minutes and 8 seconds past 9 the next night, there will be a lunar eclipse and the brethren will attack.

The Doctor suspects helix energy is ionized plasma. If he's right, it must be spread pretty thinly among the brethren, so he hopes to exhaust it. He asks for an armored breast plate and a length of wire from Giuliano's armorer.

Giuliano asks the Doctor if he should cancel the masque scheduled this evening. This is a dance with elaborate pageantry and costumes. "Of course, you must hold a hop," the Doctor enthuses; "save me a costume, I love a knees up!" Knees up is British slang for dance. The Doctor is also looking forward to meeting Leonardo.

While the Doctor dons his breast plate, Sarah brings him his costume for the fancy dress ball. The Doctor tries on his lion mask: "Remember the French at Agincourt!" he roars, miming a lion rampant. The mane of the lion and Tom Baker's curly hair are similarly thick and unruly.

The Doctor takes his leave of Sarah: "A Time Lord has to do what a Time Lord has to do." Sarah asks, "Is it dangerous?" The Doctor replies, "Only if I guess wrong, and then it's fatal." He explains: "Negatively charged high energy particles follow magnetic lines of force." If he's guessed correctly about the nature of helix energy, he should be able to drain if off. If not, well...

The Doctor strings up wire in the catacomb temple, then plays with his yoyo while waiting for Hieronymous, again whistling YES WE HAVE NO BANANAS. Hieronymous appears, ranting about the Doctor profaning the sacred stones. The Doctor tells him to drop all that bosh and "just be your natural horrid self."

They argue, and the Doctor says, "It's part of a Time Lord's job to insist on justice for all species." Hieronymous releases the helix energy, which sends the Doctor sprawling again and again.

The brethren get into the palace through a hidden entrance that was not blocked off; one of them is dressed in the Doctor's lion costume. They kill a few people and round up the survivors in the catacombs for sacrifice. The eclipse begins and additional helix energy comes into the temple. Because of the Doctor's wiring, it kills all the brethren.

The Doctor has been impersonating Hieronymous. When he reveals himself to the delighted Sarah, she is speechless. "Well, I thought that was rather clever," the Doctor says, explaining how he destroyed Hieronymous: "A case of energy squared. It puts Mandragora back to square one." He adds: "Well, don't just stand there, I'm in the market for congratulations. I wouldn't even say no to a salami sandwich."

Later back at the TARDIS, Giuliano sends the Doctor and Sarah off with a salami. The Doctor never did get to meet Leonardo: "Good thing, too; his submarine design wasn't exactly practical, you know," the Doctor tells Sarah. Ironically he misses Leonardo again in CITY OF DEATH, although it is implied in this later story they had previously met.

The Doctor tells Sarah Earth hasn't heard the last of Mandragora: its constellation will be in position to try again in 500 years. Sarah calculates that's just about the end of the 20th century. The Doctor says, "Now that was an interesting century. Sarah, who's from 1980, says, "What do you mean was?"

Norman Jones, who plays Hieronymous (which is Latin for Jerome), played Baker in the Pertwee story THE SILURIANS and Krisong in the Troughton story THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMEN.

Tim Piggott-Smith, who plays Marco, played Harker in the Pertwee story THE CLAWS OF AXOS. Mark Strickson, who played Turlough, a companion to Peter Davison's Doctor, claims Piggott-Smith was a member of UNIT during the Patrick Troughton era. Unfortunately, none of the Troughton UNIT stories survive, but published records of the cast do not list Piggott-Smith, and Nicholas Courtney--who was in all the Troughton UNIT adventures--remembers him only from THE CLAWS OF AXOS.

Just as in America's "golden age of television" in the 50s, when many stage performers did fondly-remembered live television specials, so in Britain now stage performers from the Royal Shakespeare Company appear, from time to time, on DOCTOR WHO, among whom is Tim Piggott-Smith, who has since become better known in America through his role in THE JEWEL IN THE CROWN.

Robert James, who plays the High Priest, played Lesterton in the Troughton story THE POWER OF THE DALEKS.

Pat Gorman, who plays a Soldier, has played over a dozen background roles in DOCTOR WHO, including an Auton, a Cyberman, a Primord, a Sea Devil, a Silurian and a Thal.

James Appleby, who plays a Soldier, played a Policeman in the Troughton story THE FACELESS ONES.

Pat Walsh, who plays a Pikeman, played Efrak in the Tom Baker story THE SONTARAN EXPERIMENT.

Peter Tuddenham, who provides the voice of Mandragora, also provided a voice for the Tom Baker story THE ARK IN SPACE. On BLAKE'S 7, he was the voice for Zen, Orac and Slave.

Stuart Fell, who plays the Entertainer, has made at least 10 appearances in mostly stunt type roles, including Alpha Centauri, a Kraal, a Sontaran, a Wirrn, and the Morbius Monster.