Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time! This time: befriending Marco Polo; surviving assassination attempts; and playing backgammon with Kublai Khan!
I adore the travel diary style of this series, accompanied by animated map sequences showing the route the group takes—something never seen in the show again.
The dialogue casually incorporates historical, cultural, and scientific lessons, reflecting the show's educational intent in the past.
From what you can tell from the surviving stills and telesnaps, the production values on this story are amazing, even on a BBC budget. Marco Polo has the feel of a big-budget TV period drama, so it's a shame it's all lost.
All performances are top-notch, from the main cast to the small but well-utilised guest cast. Mark Eden makes for one of the better takes on Marco Polo I've seen. He's not a villain, but not quite a hero either; he's more like a troubled leader, but also an unrelenting ally. I also love how naturally he becomes the reason that the Doctor and company cannot simply enter the Tardis and leave.
This is an interesting story for the Doctor. He's never quite in control of the situation, having to comply with Polo's demands, but he desperately tries to come out on top. William Hartnell is marvellous throughout.
Susan gets some nice scenes separated from the rest of the TARDIS team. Allowing her to get into trouble with a fellow teenager makes her less annoying. Ping-Cho, in turn, proves to be a better companion for this story than Susan.
Tegana is the first memorable villain in the franchise. He's sly, suspecting, and two-faced, performed sharply by Derren Nesbitt and never a loud-mouthed comic villain like some later ones; he is calm and calculative, which makes him very unnerving. I like how Tegana uses different ways of killing Marco and his men, keeping a light shadow of tension in the story.
Martin Miller brings a silly little performance as Kublai Khan, and I'm not sure what to think about it.
There are intense parts that unfortunately don't translate well in reconstructed form, such as the sandstorm in Part Two, which is a mess that makes my ears bleed, or the fight scene in Part Five.
This is a pretty slow story, mostly set on different campsites with very little action, so it is something of a chore to sit through even with such a great reconstruction. The repetitiveness of the plot in the middle episodes (parts Three to Five) and the slow plot development prevent Marco Polo from feeling like a true gem, particularly when there are sequences here that would benefit from moving pictures. It's the filler scenes, like Ping-Cho's story in Part Three, that hamper the story's flow and make it unnecessarily long.
The latter part of this serial, however, truly picks up the mystery and tension once again as Tegana comes very close to killing Polo. The Doctor also has a nice little moment with Kublai Khan in the last episode, using his wits and backgammon skills to win his TARDIS back. The show concludes with another fight scene that leaves our imaginations unsettled, revealing an ultimate fate more brutal than we've come to expect.
Sadly, there are some racist archetypes here, the worst of which is the fairly offensive Wang-Lo in the last three episodes and Tegana's henchman with the monkey in Parts Five and Six.
Review by Theo KallströmVIP 6BlockedParentSpoilers2022-03-28T16:49:52Z— updated 2024-04-23T18:40:03Z
:white_check_mark:80.7 = Mildly recommended!
Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time! This time: befriending Marco Polo; surviving assassination attempts; and playing backgammon with Kublai Khan!
I adore the travel diary style of this series, accompanied by animated map sequences showing the route the group takes—something never seen in the show again.
The dialogue casually incorporates historical, cultural, and scientific lessons, reflecting the show's educational intent in the past.
From what you can tell from the surviving stills and telesnaps, the production values on this story are amazing, even on a BBC budget. Marco Polo has the feel of a big-budget TV period drama, so it's a shame it's all lost.
All performances are top-notch, from the main cast to the small but well-utilised guest cast. Mark Eden makes for one of the better takes on Marco Polo I've seen. He's not a villain, but not quite a hero either; he's more like a troubled leader, but also an unrelenting ally. I also love how naturally he becomes the reason that the Doctor and company cannot simply enter the Tardis and leave.
This is an interesting story for the Doctor. He's never quite in control of the situation, having to comply with Polo's demands, but he desperately tries to come out on top. William Hartnell is marvellous throughout.
Susan gets some nice scenes separated from the rest of the TARDIS team. Allowing her to get into trouble with a fellow teenager makes her less annoying. Ping-Cho, in turn, proves to be a better companion for this story than Susan.
Tegana is the first memorable villain in the franchise. He's sly, suspecting, and two-faced, performed sharply by Derren Nesbitt and never a loud-mouthed comic villain like some later ones; he is calm and calculative, which makes him very unnerving. I like how Tegana uses different ways of killing Marco and his men, keeping a light shadow of tension in the story.
Martin Miller brings a silly little performance as Kublai Khan, and I'm not sure what to think about it.
There are intense parts that unfortunately don't translate well in reconstructed form, such as the sandstorm in Part Two, which is a mess that makes my ears bleed, or the fight scene in Part Five.
This is a pretty slow story, mostly set on different campsites with very little action, so it is something of a chore to sit through even with such a great reconstruction. The repetitiveness of the plot in the middle episodes (parts Three to Five) and the slow plot development prevent Marco Polo from feeling like a true gem, particularly when there are sequences here that would benefit from moving pictures. It's the filler scenes, like Ping-Cho's story in Part Three, that hamper the story's flow and make it unnecessarily long.
The latter part of this serial, however, truly picks up the mystery and tension once again as Tegana comes very close to killing Polo. The Doctor also has a nice little moment with Kublai Khan in the last episode, using his wits and backgammon skills to win his TARDIS back. The show concludes with another fight scene that leaves our imaginations unsettled, revealing an ultimate fate more brutal than we've come to expect.
Sadly, there are some racist archetypes here, the worst of which is the fairly offensive Wang-Lo in the last three episodes and Tegana's henchman with the monkey in Parts Five and Six.