4 Episodes
Aired between 25th October 1975 and 15th November 1975
Written by Stephen Harris
Produced by Phillip Hinchcliffe
Directed by Paddy Russel
Synopsis
Professor Marcus Scarman, An archaeologist, enters a newly unearthed tomb in Egypt, 1911. Inside he finds a door to the burial chamber, marked with the eye of Horus. This spooks Scarman's aids, who flee in terror, leaving Marcus to go on alone. He enters the burial chamber to find a masked figure sat atop a black throne. He gasps in terror as he is bathed in a green light...
In the TARDIS, the Doctor and Sarah Jane are on their way back to London. The Doctor's a bit distracted because he doesn't fancy the prospect of going back to work for UNIT - he's got fed up of it. He's so distracted in fact that he calls Sarah "Vicky" when she decides to wear one of Victoria's period dresses.
As the Doctor and Sarah bicker, the TARDIS is rocked violently and Sarah sees an apparition of an Egyptian dog-headed demon. The Doctor is concerned, as the power to beach the TARDIS exterior must be huge. He decides to track the source of the energy release and brings the ship down to land.
The Doctor and Sarah quickly work out that the TADIS set down in 1911 on the site of an old priory that existed at the same location as the UNIT HQ until it burned down mysteriously. Exploring, they find lots of Egyptian artifacts around, and see that the place is run temporarily by an Egyptian man called Ibarhim Namin in the employ of Marcus Scarman.
Marcus' old friend, Dr Warlock turns up and demands to know what's happened to Marcus as he feels the Egyptian has done something terrible to him.
As Ibrahim and Dr Warlock argue, the concerned butler discovers the Doctor and Sarah-Jane. Mistaking them for friends of Dr Warlock, he gives them a friendly warning to leave whilst they can.
It seems that that Ibrahim has a vile temper and has driven most of the staff away. He would be furious if he caught them. The Doctor agrees to go and he and Sarah nip out the window, failing to see the lid of one of the sarcophagus move.They move under the windows until they find another way in.
Back in the main room, Ibrahim and Dr Warlock hear a terrible scream and rush to see what's happened, finding the butler dead on the floor. Ibrahim pulls a gun on Warlock and intends to kill him because he's seen too much. Luckily the Doctor heard his intent and manages to knock his gun out of the way, just wounding Dr Warlock in the arm instead. Together, Warlock, Sarah and the Doctor race off into the grounds. instead of chasing them, Ibrahim opens one of the sarcophagus, revealing a large Mummy. He holds his gold ring up to the Mummy and commands it. The thing moves.
The fugitives race into the woods and try to hide from the Mummy's (two in total). They end up splitting up, with Sarah looking after Warlock whilst the Doctor finds them someplace better to hide. He comes back eventually, having found a hunting lodge nearby where Lawrence Scarman, Marcus' brother lives. They take Warlock their and regroup. They bring Lawrence up to speed and see that he's something of an amateur scientist. He has built a marconiscope (something of a radio telescope).
They switch it on and find that there's some kind of signal being beamed from Mars: beware Sutekh.
The Doctor instantly knows that this pertains to an alien race known as the Osirans. They came to Earth a long time ago and ended up being woven into the Egyptian mythology. Sutekh was a terrible tyrant who destroyed everyone and everything that he came into contact with until the rest of the Osirans banded together and with the help of their leader, Horus, trapped Sutekh inside a pyramid prison on Mars. It seems that now, somehow, Marcus Scarman is embroiled in a plan to free Sutekh.
The Doctor, Sarah and Lawrence go back to the Priory to try and find a way of stopping Sutekh, leaving Warlock at the lodge to recuperate. Lawrence brings his rifle with him, even though it won't do any good.
As he's out looking for the fugitives, the great organ in the Priory summons Ibrahim back. He goes and prepares for the coming of what he believes to be Sutekh.
From a sarcophagus of Sutekh, comes a man dressed in black. Proclaiming himself to be the true servant of Sutekh, he places his hands on Ibrahim and burns him to death.
The true servant of Sutekh then transforms into a corpse-like Marcus Scarman. He communicates through the time-space tunnel that is Sutekh's sarcophagus with his master who remains trapped on Mars.
Sutekh commands Marcus to secure the perimeter with the Mummy's and begin construction of an Osiran War Missile.
As Marcus and the Mummy's leave the room to dispose of Ibrahim and carry out their orders, the Doctor, Lawrence and Sarah-Jane enter the room, having witnessed everything including the death of Ibrahim. He fills Sarah Jane and Lawrence in on Sutekh and begins examining the time-space tunnel, accidentally activating it and nearly getting dragged through.
Luckily, he manages to stop it with the help of the TARDIS key but is knocked unconscious in the process. Fearing the Mummy's returning, Lawrence leaves Sarah trying to wake the Doctor whilst he searches for a priest's bolt-hole that he and Marcus discovered as kids. He helps Sarah get the Doctor inside just before Marcus returns.
Outside, in the grounds of the estate, a poacher called Ernie Clements runs across one of the Mummys. it's trapped its leg in one of his traps.
Ernie watches in shock as it frees itself and goes about it's business of setting up an invisible barrier around the Priory grounds so nothing can get through.
Ernie legs it and soon comes nose to barrier with the invisible force field. He is forced to go looking elsewhere and heads to Lawrence's place. When he gets there, he finds that Marcus Scarman and the Mummy's have got their before him.
Inside, Marcus confronts a bewildered Dr Warlock and demands to know where Lawrence is. once he's found out, Scarman sets the Mummy's on Warlock, killing him.
As soon as Clements hears the death screams he legs it to cover and follows Scarman back to the Priory.
Now recovered, the Doctor speculates that with Namin's ring, he could likely disrupt Sutekh's commands to Marcus and the Mummy's.
As they debate ways to get the ring however, Marcus returns and knowing there are humans around, begins looking for them. He's just about to try the priest hole when Clements shoots him in the back through the window.
Marcus' body convulses but the wound reverses in time, healing him. Marcus orders the Mummy's out to kill him, which of course, they ultimately do.
The delay buys the Doctor and co. enough time to leave the priest hole and go into the storage room. The Doctor takes Ibrahim's ring from his body and together, they all pile into the TARDIS. Once Lawrence has gotten over his shock at the TARDIS interior, Sarah and him suggest just going on to the future (1980). The Doctor says they can't because the threat of Sutekh is too great. Sarah challenges this by saying that she knows the world didn't end in 1911. The Doctor shows them 1980 which is now a barren wasteland because of Sutekh. He says they have no option.
They go back to 1911 and taking some equipment from the TARDIS, go back to Lawrence's lodge to jury rig a jamming device.
As they prepare, Lawrence protests that Marcus is still alive, despite the Doctor's insistence that he's dead now. It does no use. When Marcus and the Mummy's inevitably come for them, Lawrence has a moment of weakness and tries to stop Sarah-Jane from throwing the switch that will jam their control signal. The Mummy's attack and one reaches out menacingly to kill Sarah. As it strikes, it hits the jamming device and is stopped by the discharge of power. This allows her to escape and stop the other Mummy by using Namin's ring. She commands it to return to control and it does.
After berating Lawrence, the Doctor looks at the equipment - it's beyond repair.
He decides that the only way of stopping Sutekh now is to destroy their missile before they can launch it. Trying to be helpful, Lawrence suggests getting some blasting gelignite from the poacher, Clements. The Doctor and Sarah go off to find the gelignite, leaving Lawrence to unwrap the bandages from the fallen Mummy.
On their travels, they run into the barrier. Once they deactivate it via switching off a circuit hidden in a canopic jar, Sutekh senses the disturbance. He orders Scarman to find and kill the humans, but not at the expense of building the missile. Marcus obeys and goes to the lodge with a Mummy to find out what's gone wrong. He sees Lawrence, who foolishly tries to turn him back to the good side. Unfortunately for him, the Doctor was right, there's nothing left of Marcus Scarman. He sets the mummy onto Lawrence, torturing and killing him also.
The Doctor and Sarah find the gelignite and take it to the Priory grounds, hiding it before heading back to the lodge. They find Lawrence dead, and the Doctor gives his best, I told him so performance, an act that disturbs Sarah Jane because she's not used to him acting so alien. The Doctor realises however that millions will die, far more than the five so far, if he doesn't get on with the job. They use the bandages and wrap the Doctor up, disguising him as one of the Mummy's. He goes to the gelignite and sets Sarah nearby with a rifle, ready to shoot it, thereby detonating it once he's clear.
The plan goes almost swimmingly, with the Doctor placing the box on the ramp of the missile and eventually getting clear.
But when Sarah shoots the explosives, the blast suddenly stops and then reverses. The Doctor hypothesises that the sheer mental force of Sutekh is keeping the blast contained.
With nothing else left to do, the Doctor decides to sneak into the Priory once more and goes through the time-space tunnel, being transported to Sutekh's chamber on Mars.
As he looks upon the Osiran, it causes enough of a distraction for Sutekh's concentration to slip and the missile is destroyed.
With his only chance at freedom gone, Sutekh uses his eye beams on the Doctor causing him to scream in agony. He pauses for a second, having the foresight to interrogate the Doctor. In doing so, he discovers that the Doctor is a Time Lord from Galifrey and that means he can travel through time.
He intends to kill the Doctor and steal the TARDIS but the Doctor points out that the controls are isomorphic, meaning they respond only to him. Sutekh demands the Doctor help him but he refuses. It's only by Scarman capturing Sarah-Jane that he is able to force the Doctor to do his bidding.
Backed into a corner, the Doctor allows himself to be possessed by the will of Sutekh and he goes through the time-space tunnel back to the Priory.
He leads Scarman, a captive Sarah and the remaining Mummy into the TARDIS, taking them to Mars so they can destroy the Eye of Horus and free Sutekh.
Once they've arrive on Mars, Sutekh orders the Doctor killed and the Mummy strangles him to death. They then leave Sarah alone and go off into the prison. Sarah cries at the Doctor's death but he soon revives, stating that he has a respiratory bypass system to allow him to stop breathing.
Sutekh has let his mind go now, believing him dead. Together, they go off after Scarman and the Mummy.
They each pass through a series of tests, moments apart from one another, including one with a fake button, and a pattern puzzle.
Sarah is inadvertently trapped in a plastic cylinder to face the judgement of Horus. There's two buttons on the cylinder, one instant freedom, one instant death. Two of Horus' Mummy's appear and the voice of Horus explains the test, stating that they can ask the Mummy's one question.
The Doctor thinks that one is programmed to tell the truth, the other a lie, so asks one of them what button the other would say. He uses reasoning to deduce that the answer given would be false, so would point to the death switch, and if it was true, then it speaks the truth of the answer that the other must be the liar and therefore would point to the death switch anyway. The upshot is, he presses the right switch and releases Sarah.
They are too late to stop Marcus as they enter the main chamber, they see that although another Mummy of Horus is holding off Sutekh's Mummy, Scarman has managed to destroy the eye, killing himself in the process. Sutekh is free.
All seems lost, but the Doctor finally remembers there's a time difference from Mars to Earth. He grabs Sarah's hand and rushes back to the TARDIS and races back to Earth. Once there, he takes a portion of the TARDIS console with him and hooks it up to the time-space corridor, that Sutekh is coming through.
He manages to move the exit of the tunnel far, far into the future, effectively trapping Sutekh in the tunnel forever. This however, causes a thermal imbalance and causes the Priory to catch fire, explaining the mystery of it being burned down. Sarah and the Doctor race back to the TARDIS and set off again, trying to get back to UNIT.
Trivia
- Stephen Harris is a pseudonym of Robert Holmes and Lewis Greifer
- Greifer originally wrote it, but was unable for re-writes that were desperately needed. In essence, the script was totally re-written by Bob Holmes and looks nothing like the original
- This is the first story to mention his respiratory bypass system
- A new TARDIS console built at the time of this story and used for Planet of Evil (because POE was filmed after this story) would not be used until the Invisible Enemy due to the cost of setting it up for what would be a small use.
- As this is the Gothic era of Doctor Who, this story is based on a classic horror story. This time, it's the turn of the Hammer Horror classic - The Mummy
What worked
- The acting is superb, especially from Ibrahim and Michael Sheard
- I love that the Doctor is quite serious here, it gives a definite gravitas to the threat
- The soundtrack is also suitably gothic
- Loved the effects of Scarman getting shot
- Loved how Sutekh is so unrepentant and evil
- Loved the end of the first episode
What didn't work
- The Mummy's chest press
- The dog face of Sutekh looked lame
- The fact that the good guys couldn't figure out that if they stayed at the lodge long enough, the Mummy's were bound to turn up and kill whoever was there
Overall Feelings
More than any other story of Tom Baker's so far, this feels like the start of a new era. There's no doubt that he made a big impact before this and at this point was probably a huge star already. To get the full appreciation of it, I want to take you momentarily back to 1963. When the first Doctor found himself on Skaro for the first time, there was a deep sense of wonder that came across to the audience, even when watching it in 2013. That was when Doctor Who was about exploring threats on new planets in a Dan Dare fashion. It was pulpy and incredibly enjoyable. Now, Tom Baker introduces us to a new concept, threats in sleepy villages.
Hang on though, didn't Jon Pertwee just spend 4 years doing that? Yes, sort of. The thing about Jon Pertwee's run is that everything is action packed. The closest we get is The Daemons, but even then, it's full of bike chases, helicopter chases and other such drama. The Pyramids of Mars shows what Jon Pertwee's run never would. It sports a huge death count and shows the consequences of failure. It is extremely dark and gothic in nature. It shows that threats can come even in bright, summer daylight and they're of such a scale that even the Doctor would be hard pressed to beat them.
This is a fantastic episode and will form the benchmark for more stories of ominous threats in sleepy English villages, just like I remember watching as a kid.
Rating
10 out of 10!
Rewatchability Factor
10 out of 10!
Watch this if you liked...
The Daemons
Death to the Daleks
The Awakening
The Image of the Fendahl
The Stones of Blood
Shada
Consulting the Matrix
Who is your favourite enemy from Mars - Ice Warriors, Sutekh or the Waters of Mars?
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