July 26: Pyramids of Mars Parts Three & Four

Part three keeps the momentum going, as the Doctor formulates a plan (thanks to Laurence) to blow up the missile that the mummies are building in order to destroy the apparatus on Mars that keeps Sutekh a prisoner.  There's an entertaining scene with Sarah and the Doctor inside the poacher's shed looking for explosives, where Sarah tosses a box of gelignite to the Doctor, much to his alarm: "Sweaty gelignite is highly unstable," he says quietly.  "One good sneeze could set it off."  They can't find any detonators though: "Perhaps he sneezed [to set it off]," Sarah says facetiously -- a comment which the Doctor is very clearly (and wonderfully) not amused by.

Sutekh, last of the Osirans. (Pyramids of Mars Part Three) ©BBC

While they're gone, Laurence receives a visit from Marcus and unsuccessfully tries to break Sutekh's hold on him, resulting in Marcus strangling Laurence.  This leads to probably the most callous Doctor moment ever: after he finds Laurence is dead (casually pushing the body aside when he's done examining it), the Doctor gets on with his work, prompting a rebuke from Sarah: "A man has just been murdered!"  "Four men, Sarah," the Doctor responds evenly, putting things in perspective.  "Five, if you include Professor Scarman himself, and they're merely the first of millions unless Sutekh is stopped."  It's a nice way of making the Doctor seem not quite human while still on the side of "good". 

The stuff with the Doctor dressed as a mummy (and yes, that's really Tom Baker underneath -- director Paddy Russell insisted on it, much to his displeasure) and Sarah turning out to be a crack shot with a rifle is also quite entertaining, and the fact that Sutekh is containing the force of the explosion with pure mental energy is quite impressive -- and requires the Doctor to head down the sarcophagus space-time tunnel to Sutekh's tomb (prison?) in order to distract him so that he releases his mental grip on the explosion.  Sutekh is not happy with the Doctor...

The opening of part four is fantastic.  Sutekh's power over the Doctor, even while he's still confined to his chair, is impressive, and Tom Baker really sells the Doctor's horror and fear over being controlled by Sutekh.  It's also quite worrying, how Sutekh is able to take full control of the Doctor and have him take Marcus and a mummy to the pyramid on Mars that controls Sutekh's imprisonment.

Sadly, it does sag a little in the middle, as they remake part of Death to the Daleks here, with mental puzzles and such needing to be solved in order to get further inside the pyramid.  In the fine tradition of Terrance Dicks, Sarah even mentions how it reminds her of the "city of the Exxilons" -- but that doesn't solve the basic problem of repetitiveness.  Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen do manage to keep things entertaining (such as with their entrance and immediate exit into the room Marcus is currently in, or with the Doctor writing "RELAX" in the dust of the cylinder Sarah is trapped in and Sarah sarcastically indicating her understanding), but it's not quite as wonderful as the first part.  But then Sutekh is actually freed and heads out to wreak his vengeance on the universe -- but thanks to some technical jiggery-pokery by the Doctor, he ends up trapped in a "corridor of eternity" and thus cannot leave before he dies.  The universe is saved, and the Doctor and Sarah leave as an explosion from the sarcophagus starts a large fire in the priory...

It's not hard to see why Pyramids of Mars has a reputation for being one of the standout Tom Baker stories (and indeed one of the standouts of the entire series).  There's a real effort here to make this as tense and serious as possible -- there's very little in the way of humor to relieve things, and much of the humor we do get is rather black (such as the aforementioned bit with the gelignite).  Tom Baker is at the top of his game here, acting alien and intense without going too far or (most crucially) turning into a caricature, and Lis Sladen is more than up to the task of keeping up with him.  Add into that an outstanding performance from Gabriel Woolf as Sutekh (never has evil sounded so calm and cultured as here) and a creepy turn from Bernard Archard as the possessed Marcus Scarman, and the result is a cast taking an already solid script and elevating it to something special.  It's not perfect, but it's a lot closer than most other stories ever get.