Doctor Who: Pyramids of Mars (Story 82)
by Paddy Russell
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Elisabeth Sladen, Gabriel Woolf, Tom BakerDirector: Paddy Russell
Brand: Warner Brothers
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 1.0; English (Subtitled); Mandarin Chinese (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); German (Subtitled); Indonesian (Subtitled); Korean (Subtitled); Thai (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 1.0
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: Widescreen, 1.33:1
Running Time: 97 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-09-07
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: BBC Worldwide
Movie Reviews of Doctor Who: Pyramids of Mars (Story 82)
Movie Review: "I'm not a human being. I walk in eternity."
Summary: 5 Stars
Sometimes "Doctor Who" succeeds as a show by taking itself very seriously, as with the classic "Genesis of the Daleks." And then sometimes it makes itself dear to our hearts just by presenting us with a good, fun, straightforward science-fiction adventure. Intelligently written, well-acted, finely crafted, and clever in ways no other TV series can be, of course, but blissfully free of moral dilemmas and explorations into humanity's heart of darkness. As you may have guessed, "Pyramids of Mars" is a particularly fine example of "Doctor Who" in this latter mode. It's a thrilling, suspenseful tale of good vs. evil--Here we have Sutekh, an extraordinarily powerful extraterrestrial, imprisoned within the Martian Pyramids ages ago by his fellow beings because of his unhealthy impulse to blot out all life but his own; now, in 1911, he has a chance to break free again because of a British archaeologist's blunder, and it's up to the Doctor and Sarah to outwit him and save the cosmos from a premature entropy. It's as simple as that, folks.
Simple, but not simplistic. As usual, this show demonstrates its alchemical knack for turning lead into gold, for taking standard plotlines and hackneyed themes and bringing them marvelously to life, making them interesting and clever ("regenerating" them, if you will). Nowhere is this more evident than in the overall motif of this storyline, for what could be more tired and cliche than an old "Curse of the Mummy" type horror film? And yet it really works, intriguingly translated into a science fiction idiom--the mummies are robots, the Egyptian god is a powerful extraterrestrial, demonic possession is some sort of telepathic mind control, magic powers are telekinesis, burial urns are force field generators, the secret passwords and magic spells to get into the heart of the pyramid are mathematical puzzles and logical riddles, and so on and so forth. Granted, some of this is delightfully inspired technobabble rather than hard science per se, but it still relocates the story out of the realm of the supernatural (which most of us don't take seriously anymore) into a natural, secular one we tend to find plausible if only speculatively so. And yet the writers get playful with this relocation a little bit, too, slyly hinting at a certain experiential wisdom in the old fears: at the very beginning, the modern, rational British archaeologist rushes in to his doom while his Egyptian diggers run away in a panic like "superstitious savages" (as he snaps at their fleeing backs, famous last words)--at the end of the day, they're the ones who'll go home to dinner, which sure beats becoming a telepathically animated corpse, generally speaking.
The Doctor's character also shows a lot of complexity in this story, and after getting overly cozy with him over the years we are pointedly reminded that he is not an Earthling and doesn't necessarily share our priorities, nor our natural reactions and attitudes. Tom Baker always gets credit for his delightfully wacky, oddball rendition of the Doctor, and rightfully so. It's indeed one of the joys of the program. But one shouldn't let that obscure his ability to get across a wide range of other emotions with great subtlety, from a cantankerous temper and dash of arrogance almost worthy of Hartnell's Doctor to pained humiliation as he's forced to kneel before the villain, from very real anger and fury at well-intentioned but misguided actions putting them all in danger to a strong and solid sense of moral backbone. And he excels at making the Doctor alien without alienating us.
Anyway, I had always assumed that the title of this storyline referred to the pyramid-like formations found on the Martian landscape around the Cydonia region, about which there's been so much speculation over the years. What a neat touch, I thought. When I double-checked, though, I found that these objects were not photographed by Viking I until July of 1976, about half a year after "Pyramids of Mars" originally aired in November, 1975. Now that's spooky!
Summary of Doctor Who: Pyramids of Mars (Story 82)
As the Doctor and Sarah attempt to return to UNIT HQ, the TARDIS is thrown off course and materializes in 1911 at an old priory owned by Egyptologist Marcus Scarman. While excavating a tomb, the archaeologist became possessed by the spirit of Sutekh, the last survivor of the godlike Osirans. The Doctor and Sarah witness strange and deadly events as Sutekh, who has lain imprisoned in a pyramid for thousands of years, employs Scarman and a legion of robotic mummies in an elaborate scheme that may bring about the destruction of the world.Similar DVD Movies
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