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Doctor Who story number 4
This is the first purely historical story. Marco Polo is one of the six stories that have never had any portion recovered (Of course five or six seconds of other stories doesn't really count either). It's said to be one of the best stories, the best historical and so on. It's hard to judge without the benefit of episodes to watch, but the script is available online, and if you've seen any of the other episodes featuring the main cast then you can get a good idea of how the story went (The backgammon scene is hilarious, especially if you know Hartnell's style).
Script available at http://www.bw.edu/~jcurtis/Scripts/Polo/intro.html
Writer
John Lucarotii
Episodes
This story has 7 episodes with individual titles:
- The Roof of the World
- The Singing Sands
- Five Hundred Eyes
- The Wall of Lies
- Rider From Shang-Tu
- Mighty Kublai Khan
- Assassin at Peking
Plot Overview
The TARDIS has yet another fault: The entire electrical system is blown. This in itself would be nothing, but they have materialised above the snow line in a mountain range. While searching for shelter they meet a caravan led by Marco Polo who offers them shelter and tells them they are on the plain of Pamir, known as the Roof of the World. When he learns of their "caravan" and it's mode of travel (flying, simplified to explain to the people in the past) he decides to give it to Kublai Khan in exchange for the freedom to leave his service and return to Venice.
Travelling with Marco Polo is the warlord Tegana, who is coming to Cathay to negotiate with the Khan on behalf of his master, Noghai. He decides to try and kill the travellers and steal the TARDIS to return to his lord. He first tries to poison the caravan's water supply in the Gobi Desert, and then attempts a raid on the caravan later. As they travel The Doctor works on the TARDIS, but his second key is taken from him by Marco after completing the repairs.
On arrival in Shang-Tu The Doctor befriends Kublai Khan, and when they move to the imperial palace in Peking The Doctor wins exorbitant ammounts at backgammon. He then promptly loses it again, when trying to win the TARDIS. Tegana attempts to assassinate Kublai Khan, and the travellers prevent this. The keys to the TARDIS are retuned and they travel on.
Main Cast
Cast
Mark Eden - Marco Polo
Derren Nesbitt - Tegana
Zienia Merton - Ping-Cho
Leslie Bates - Man at Lop
Jimmy Gardner - Chenchu
Charles Wade - Malik
Philip Voss - Acomat
Philip Crest - Bandit
Paul Carson - Ling-Tau
Gabor Baraker - Wang-Lo
Tutte Lemkow - Kuiju
Peter Lawrence - Vizier
Martin Miller - Kublai Khan
Basil Tang - Foreman
Claire Davenport - Empress
O. Ikeda - Yeng
Notes
- This story covers the longest time scale, estimates I've seen run to six months and up
- The working title was A Journey to Cathay
- John Lucarotii had worked with the creator of Doctor Who, Sydney Newman, at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, where he wrote a fifteen part radio serial about Marco Polo. He used his notes for this story.
- The Doctor wins the following at backgammon: Thirty-five elephants with ceremonial bridles, trappings, brocades and pavillions; four thousand white stallions, and twenty-five tigers, "the sacred tooth of Buddha which Polo brought over from India", and all the commerce from Burma for one year. The Khan then offers the Island of Sumatra instead of the TARDIS.
....We owe half of Asia to our friend at backgammon. - Kublai Khan