Snakedance (1983) Review

Damn, that woman is on fire!!

Snakedance is an emotionally wrenching exploration of good vs evil that adds a whole new dimension to the TARDIS crew.

WRITTEN BY

Christopher Bailey. This is a sequel to season 19's Kinda. Bringing Bailey back for another run was a great choice, as he delivers a far more impactful and coherent story this time.

PLOT

When the TARDIS goes off course and Tegan begins to see bad dreams, the Doctor suspects that the Mara may still yet be inside her and hypnotises Tegan to find out what it wants. After arriving at the Mara homeplanet, it's up to him and Nyssa to track down the source of its power and destroy the evil within her once and for all...

ANALYSIS

It's like Bailey is Dr. Frankenstein pulling on a lever and sending a jolt of lightning through the Davison era. Suddenly, the TARDIS crew come across like real people who change due to circumstance, it feels like we're visiting a genuinely alien culture, the guest stars perform flawlessly and the drama is subtle and mature, clearly the result of a writer who had a lot to say. 

CHARACTERS

Whilst Davison's incredibly fast and loud delivery continues to grate on me, he had some very charming moments in this story, most notably in the early scenes in the TARDIS, where he was adorably oblivious to Nyssa's change in costume and later on, when he telepathically connects to Dojjen and fights off the Mara alone. 

It has to be said that Janet Fielding is RIDICULOUSLY hot as the Mara. That sly grin and playful attitude just slay me. She has a ball playing the villain and it's easily her best performance to date, and as Tegan too. For a brief moment, we get to see Tegan's childhood and Fielding plays the naughty child perfectly. And after all was said and done, her breakdown really got to me. All the theatricality blew away on the wind, leaving behind an incredibly frightened woman. I've gained a new respect for her.

With the massive focus on Tegan, Nyssa suffers slightly, but her interactions with both the Doctor and her early on in the story were priceless. I like how Bailey gives her a sort of motherly role on the TARDIS, keeping the Doctor's excitement in check whilst also caring for Tegan. Still, it felt like a lot of her scenes were just filling up time and trying to make some - any - use of character, which lead to her long search for Tegan in the town and multiple attempts to get the Doctor out of prison, which only end with her in jail with him. Can't have everything, I guess.

Martin Clunes(in his acting debut) knocks it out of the park as the utterly spoiled rich child of an official who gets in way over his head when the Mara decides to use him as a tool to regain its power. As everyone familiar with Clunes will know, he has a very expressive, stretched face which works perfectly for the nosey brat that he plays and makes him look quite intimidating and greedy once he actually wields power. 

His mother, Tanha, is played with lovely upper-class panache by Colette O'Neil, whose character is so likable in that Downton Abbey kind of way that her complete uselessness when it comes to her son's out of control antics comes as a surprise over and over again. 

John Carson's Ambril is another likable character, a sort of slightly grumpy, but well-meaning archeologist whom you could imagine Jon Pertwee being best chums with, but whose closed-minded insistence on following hard facts leads to his miserable cooperation with the Mara as he desperately tries to save real historical artifacts whilst paying no heed to Lon's dark impulses.

Preston Lockwood's Dojjen is a work of genius. He never says a word on-screen, merely meditating throughout most of the serial until finally providing support to the Doctor via telepathy. He's basically an upgrade of the wise woman from Kinda, but much more effective due to being mute and having a clear, established mission.

Brian Miller(Elisabeth's Sladen's husband) has a hilarious role as the con artist, Dugdale, though the purpose of the character is kind of vague. He basically exists simply to tie Lon and Tegan together and afterwards shuffles after them in a hypnotic trance. Could've just killed him.

NOTES

*Nyssa's repeated attempts to earn a compliment from the Doctor on her costume are just adorable. Man, do these two have developed chemistry!

*And as always, the obligatory Moffat nagging: the Doctor's oblivious nature is handled subtly, making it funny, not hamfisted("What are you doing with your eyeballs?!")

*How does the Doctor connect the TARDIS malfunction with Tegan having some bad dreams? He's awfully jumpy in this story.

*The Mara effects in this story are a major improvement over Kinda's. They've clearly learned from that story. I especially like the hidden snake transition(from arm to arm).

*What exactly happens to Tegan once she puts on the Doctor's anti-dreaming machine? Is she still in hypnosis? Because she acts like she's sleepwalking. And once they find the Mara cave, why does the Doctor not snap her out of whatever she's in, because she's clearly terrified and there's no more need to be now that they found what they're looking for!

*I hate hate hate it, when they have the Doctor not even try and bother to win an official's trust, instead just ranting like a madman until he's locked behind bars.

*The Mara having fun in front of a mirror is a nice touch. So far, this season has a trend of revealing the more enchanting side of villains.

*A question that reminded me of The End Of Time... who came up with the prophecy about the Mara returning? Did the Doctor visit Manussa in the past? Actually, the birth of the Mara would make a great Big Finish audio.

*Now what are the chances of Nyssa wandering into the exact same tent Tegan did(it's a big town), and finding her anti-dreaming device?

*How can the Mara possess two people at a time in this story. It clearly didn't have this power in Kinda.

*And if the snake on the arm is what controls them, how can the Mara separate herself from Tegan and still maintain power over her? Yeah, I don't get much about the physical side of the Mara at all. Can the snake multiply? What is the significance of the snake vs the mental power?

*The Doctor setting the archeologist up to a fall with the "six faces of delusion" helmet was pure British comedic genius.

*What prompts Dugdale to offer partnership and his life's story to someone who's desperately talking to mirrors and is clearly suffering some kind of mental breakdown(he even looks creeped out in the previous scene)?

*One serious problem that the story had was that it was over-edited. The setting changed constantly and without any necessity. We don't need to see five seconds of someone holding a vase before resuming the same scene we had earlier!

*Where are all the guards in this story? Nobody protects the classified Mara caves or the holding cell(they even leave the door open!!)? Is this like Traken, where everyone are just expected to be nice?

*Why does the archeologist, who up until this point showed nothing, but disdain towards Dojjen, ask Chela to read out the final page in his journal?

*Why would the Federation ban Snakedancers if they believe the Mara is gone? Surely it'd be... I dunno, nicer to just keep them around for the sake of it.

*For the first time in this marathon, I noticed the Doctor and his friends running through identical corridors from the same angle Curse Of The Fatal Death-style

*This is probably unintentional, but I love that the dust of fear in the play that's supposed to 
flow through Lon's fingers actually sticks to his hands. It's a great touch. He also obviously picks up the crystal in greed as opposed to his ancestor, though the trifecta is incomplete since he drops the branch of despair like he was supposed to.

CONTINUITY ADVISOR

1) The Doctor finds traces of anti-matter in the TARDIS, leading Nyssa to wonder whether Omega has returned. This is never brought up again, so I'm not sure what the Mara had to do with it. Weird.

2) In her dreams, Tegan recalls knocking apples onto Aris's head whilst being controlled by the Mara. 

And that's it! Kudos to Bailey for restraint on this angle. 

BEST QUOTE

"Once a man fell asleep, dreamt he was a frog. When he woke up he didn't know if he was a man who dreamt he was a frog, or a frog who was now dreaming he was a man. "

CONCLUSION

A fascinating and gripping tale about overcoming the evil within through purification of the soul.