Snakedance: Ranking - 26

 

Snakedance

(Season 20, Dr 5 with Nyssa and Tegan, 18-26/1/1983, producer: John Nathan-Turner, script editor: Eric Saward, writer: Christopher Bailey, director: Fiona Cumming)

Rank: 26

   'How other monsters might have re-acted to being inside Tegan's mind:

 'Nyssa, could you turn up the heating? I'm turning into an ice warrior here!' 

'Stop being so emotional Dr! And you seem to have a bit of wobbly leg, would you like me to provide a cyber-replacement for you?!' 

'My name's Tegan Lopez and I'm an air stewardess for Chameleon Tours' 

'Let's play a game Dr - no not the trilogic game this time, how about pink snakes and ladders?!' 

'Highlanders? Braveheart Tegan - literally. I'm played by Mel Gibson in this one!' 

'It takes all-sorts to make a world, Dr. Mmm, I just fancy some sweets right now'. 

 'You dare insult my Aunty Vanessa?! Exterminate!' 

 ‘Snakedance’ is kinda like ‘Kinda’ continued a year on, a story which plays with the concepts of our inner psyche and the fragmented illusions of the self, only this time it feels much more like your usual DW tale of invasion, brainwashing and quest for power. If that sounds like a dilution of everything that made the first story so good then, well, actually it isn’t: all the big concepts that made the first stand out so much above the rest of the era are still there and the only thing that’s really missing is the giant pink bouncy castle snake (and while DW fans famously disagree on absolutely everything this is one change we can agree, to a fan, is a big improvement). There really aren’t that many direct sequels in DW for such a long running series and those that do (‘The Web Of Fear’ ‘Monster Of Peladon’ ‘New Earth’, even ‘Dalek Invasion Of Earth’ a little bit) tend to recycle the same elements in a slightly tweaked setting without really adding anything new, forgetting that the thing that made the first story so strong in the first place was the brave way it did something no other DW story could do; with two unique episodes sitting in a back catalogue it takes away the thing that made the first one stand out the most. Not so ‘Snakedance’ though, which feels more like a continuation and extension rather than a repeat and one that flips the idea of Tegan being ‘invaded’ by having Tegan become the ‘invader’, lashing out at other people instead of self-sabotaging herself. It’s hard to say what’s more frightening: seeing brave courageous feisty Tegan reduced to tears of helplessness in ‘Kinda’ or laughing mercilessly like your worst school bully as she takes over a whole new world, Manussa. ‘Kinda’ was full of names that related to Buddhist ideas but the only new one this time is the planet name, which means ‘everyday’ and Manussa certainly seems a lot more like ‘our’ planet than Deva Loka ever did. 

While the locals are much more like your everyday DW fictional world than the people we saw in Kinda (they can all talk this time, for starters) the thrill comes from seeing a world that in other DW stories would be unremarkable sent running in horror not because of some invading psychopathic villain or race of monsters or the latest cold war parable or even a fictional demon turned real but because of one of our heroes we’ve come to know and love. And not in the usual ‘alien brainwashing’ way either, but because the Mara has distorted her sense of self and exaggerated feelings that were lurking within her mind all along. There’s no particular reason for The Mara to manifest itself back in Tegan’s life here, except that a cave that once housed snakes triggers painful memories in her subconscious: it’s a shame that the plot isn’t more random than that for once and the story been more about how you can escape all soerts of things in life but never your sub-conscious. It would be interesting to debate what might have happened if the pink snake had started controlling Tegan on another planet, causing the Great Fire Of London more directly ‘The Visitation’ for instance, or when following Concorde to prehistoric Heathrow and especially if it had attacked Tegan during her ‘gap year’ back on Earth (Tegan would have been wanted for a spree of murders and probably never be able to return home again). However it would be in keeping with The Mara’s backstory of living off guilt and shame that it arrives right here in Tegan’s timeline, when she’s still suffering from survivor’s guilt following the after-effects of Adric’s death by dinosaurs on a spaceship and more normal guilt after watching the 5^th Dr suffer a similar invasion-by-unlikely-entity in ‘The Arc Of Infinity’, a story driven in part by what her cousin discovers in Amsterdam. We’ve seen in the run of stories since ‘Kinda’ just how emotional Tegan really is, the events of that story having broken through Tegan’s surface level character and turned her into someone who cares far more than she did when we first met her in ‘Logopolis’ (perhaps breaking through the trauma of just what The Master puts her though in that story killing her aunt and very nearly her planet; like Nyssa she’s been suffering a form of PTSD ever since). It makes sense that, deep down, she’s resentful of the people around her for what they’ve put her through and guilty for her part in similar life changing events for strangers because she’s grown close to the 5^th Dr and Nyssa by now and know how they feel. While it might have been more fun to see The Mara take over prim and proper Nyssa (it would have explained why she went to sleep in The Tardis last time so suddenly too) writer Christopher Bailey isn’t done with Tegan yet: he wants to see how someone as fragile yet courageous as Tegan has handled the knowledge that she has a primal beast lurking within her waiting and further the idea that you’re never really done confronting your inner pink snake, that the job of ‘shadow work’ making peace with your faults and weaknessess is never really over. 

And so it is that ‘Snakedance’ turns the usual DW cliches on its head: its the companion people need to be saved from not the other way round and the Tardis – that symbol of hope and rescue – ends up being the source of the problem by taking Tegan to this planet. ‘Snakedance’ is, like ‘Kinda’, driven by Tegan’s fear and self-loathing but the difference this time is that its not an inward journey anymore but an outer one, as Tegan can’t handle all the inner agony that’s built up and lashes out at other people to avoid lashing out at herself. It’s kick-the-cat syndrome, or perhaps a side effect from living in a dog-eat-dog world, only for Tegan its still a pink snake that’s inside her and makes her want to control and hurt other people so that they don’t hurt her first. Tegan’s journey from victim to bully is in keeping with everything we learnt about her in the earlier story and Janet Fielding is, if anything, even better at playing bitchy than she is playing broken. And if even someone as brave and feisty as Tegan can’t shrug off all the trauma she carries the rather wet people of Manussa don’t stand a chance and it isn’t long before the strangely dressed locals are feeding off each other’s negative energy and possessing everyone they meet with the same ugly vibes. The first one is future national treasure Martin Clunes in his first non-spear carrying extra TV role at the tender age of twenty-two and this time he’s the one with the spears, sticking them in people when Tegan over-powers him and even this early on, dressed up like a camp androgynous gypsy, he’s superb the equal of any guest part in the series (check out the lipstick!; clip shows love to embarrass Clunes with how he looks in this story and every other year one will think its the first time the clip has ever been discovered even though its on every sodding time on those ‘Before They Were Famous’ type progs). Even in the thankless role as a Manussian Behaving Badly he out-acts everyone else off the screen except for Janet. As the local spoilt brat with power he’s a good choice for the Mara to infect: he’s basically Prince William, bored out of his mind, resentful of all the nonsensical traditions he has to carry out and secretly thinking the locals are simpletons inferior to his magisterial presence, but enjoying the money and fame it brings him too much to truly step away. He’s not bad though and not usually cruel; its just that the Mara finds enough wickedness in him to exploit. People have spent his whole life nattering in his ear about how big and important he is and how his ancestors once faced down a snake just like this one so its bound to give him a dodgy ego problem. Sensibly Bailey turns the one thing that never quite worked in ‘Kinda’ on screen - the giant pink snake, which looked cuddly rather than demonic – and replaces it with a snake tattoo that passes between the hands of the possessed instead; to this day I wince when I see people with one just in case they’re about to unleash their inner Mara on me (you’d be surprised how many there are) and the effects are, especially by 1983 standards but even for nowadays, frighteningly convincing. There is a giant pink snake here too but cleverly its a joke: my favourites scenes in this story are the carnival parade that takes place, a sort of folk memory of a time the Mara visited Manussa and infected people before, which looks like an even low budget version of ‘Kinda’ of the sort that a local village would put on; it may well be the writer’s gentle pith(helmet) take on how ‘Kinda’ turned out on screen with a BBC budget and his own inner demons getting the better of him as he tries to distance himself and say ‘that rubber snake had nothing to do with me guv’, yet also serves the story beyond the bitchiness, making Manussa feel like a real planet with a real story long before the Tardis shows up. 

I love the fact too, that the Dr suddenly looks like a blithering idiot as he tried to warn this planet about an imminent local alien invasion: for once they don’t believe him not because this sort of thing is beyond their comprehension but because he’s basically repeating the plot of all their fairy stories they were told when they were children and they’ve spent their whole life thinking The Mara was made up. It’s our equivalent of waking up to find someone telling us St George is real and about to battle a dragon or Snow White is visiting with seven Sontaron dwarves: like the locals here we’d be more confused than scared. Martin Clunes is the standout this week, but The Manussians are a good bunch of supporting actors and actresses all round: Elisabeth Sladen’s hubby Brian Miller is very good too as cave-pedlar Dugden (and in the future it gave him an excuse to turn up to conventions and sit at the bar with fans buying him drinks while his wife talked to everyone), you can see why a still unknown Jonathan Challis (as Chela) became a big hit a few years later in Scouse soap opera ‘Bread’ and Colette O’Neil is terrific as Lady Tanha, whose kind of Queen Lizzy II, partly struck by the importance of all these local traditions and the privilege bestowed upon her and partly secretly agreeing with her son that it’s all just a little bit silly. Then there’s Dojjen: I still can’t work out if this worldly-wise hermit is brilliantly underplayed by Preston Lockwood, who perfectly understands the unfolding symbolism and subtext behind the story about staying zen and calm in the face of disaster, or whether he just didn’t get it at all and acted the part the way he would in an everyday soap opera; either way its note of realism, right at the point where its least expected as the Dr has travelled so far for spiritual guidance, is striking (for the record Lockwood made a career out of playing roles like this – he’s a magician in the 1980s BBC ‘Chronicles Of Narnia’ for instance and plays him more like a businessman – but I still can’t tell if that’s because directors recognised he was perfect at injecting a little earthiness into impractical roles or whether because those were the only jobs the actor could get). The Dr always seemed in control during events on ‘Kinda’, embracing this mysterious world through a combination of deep thought and acceptance of Deva Loka on its own terms, but he’s notably out of his depth for much of this story: he’s not around when Tegan runs off (poor Nyssa suffering PTSD of her own as her best friend suddenly turns nasty out of nowhere when they were having fun together) and spends much of the story catching up to what the viewer already knows for a change (I wonder, too, if ‘Kinda’ was written with Tom Baker’s more confident 4^th Dr in mind, without a chance to see how Peter Davison would play him – but now Bailey has he’s used the 5^th Dr’s traits of innocence and naivety against him, making him more than a little insecure himself). 

The ending of ‘Snakedance’ is a big improvement on its predecessor, as the Dr basically saves the day not with mirrors and a bouncy castle snake but by meditating, visiting local guru Dojjen and thinking deep thoughts as he stares into a crystal and refusing to back down from his own darkest fears, while refusing to accept the ‘evilness’ of the Mara (because he can also see Tegan in a way she can’t, for her kindness, empathy and courage and knows that no one is all bad). It might have been better still had Tegan herself shouted down the Mara lurking inside her and accepted that she’s just a human with frailties like any other, but it still works as an ending: sometimes all it takes to quieten down the primal fears within you is to have the people around you who care for you tell you how great you are and give you a hug. There are no scenes in ‘Snakedance’ quite as deliciously surreal as the ones in ‘Kinda’ of the colonialists hiding from a box of their own darkest fears. Manussa itself isn’t quite as invitingly strange and other-wordly as Deva Loka. The idea of the Mara bringing out someone’s outer lust and recklessness as well as their inner doubts isn’t as fully explored as before. Poor Nyssa gets almost as rum a deal as she did in ‘Kinda’ where she fell asleep for four episodes, mostly running around yelling ‘Tegan!’, without the subplots Adric got last time out. However ‘Snakedance’ just wins out a smidgeon over its predecessor by courtesy of being a lot scarier (the first episode cliffhanger, where Tegan is getting her fortune told, and a crystal ball explodes with an image of a skeleton snake while she laughs uncontrollably, now fully in the grip of the Mara, is my candidate as not only one of the best cliffhangers but hands down the single best DW ‘possession’ scene of them all - and kudos for making the snake a skeleton this time, with the perfectly-lined up shot of Tegan being ‘swallowed’ by the snake not far behind – that one shot alone must have taken hours to set-up just right with 1983 technology!) and by having this strange and unlikely threat invade a world that feels a lot more like our own (while Deva Loka was designed to feel like darkest Africa ‘Snakedance’ feels a lot more like Britain, with its divide between rich and poor who are terribly polite eccentrics, bored Royals who are clearly unfit for their job and full of daft customs people have forgotten the real meaning of over time but carry on doing anyway). ‘Kinda’ felt like a gripping piece of telly as we could get lost in another fictional world, but ‘Snakedance’ feels like a better bit of Dr Who and more of a morality tale than pure escapism, as if the Mara is lurking inside all of us. They’re both pretty incredible stories in their own ways though, a brave daring step from a series that was playing it a little too safe for most of seasons 19 and 20 suddenly becoming the courageous anything-goes series DW had been when it first started. It’s a real shame we haven’t seen a repeat of The Mara somewhere in DW by now (on screen anyway; poor Tegan gets a third takeover in ‘The Cradle Of the Snake’, one of the better 5^th Dr Big Finish audios, while a third script was submitted ‘The Children Of Seth’ which would have seen how the Mara affected the guilty conscious of the Dr – and the egotistical, brash, insecure 6^th Dr at that. Now that would have been interesting!):‘new Who’ needs one story this downright baffling and weird and The Mara is one of those timeless ‘monsters’ that would work just as well then and now (I mean, if they’re even bringing the Celestial Toymaker back this year then surely anything goes?!) It’s even more of a shame that Christopher Bailey retired after this story: his is one of the most unique and imaginative writing voices DW ever had and, admittedly mostly by courtesy of only having two stories, sits neck and neck with Douglas Adams as statistically my favourite multi-story DW author. The result is another highly impressive story that no other series would ever have even considered, never mind done half as well as this.

+ If you want people to imagine a whole world without being able to build many sets then build a town square or a market: its amazing how much of a bigger feel for a world you get when you have random extras mingling at large, each one seemingly with their own stories going on separately to the plot. Manussa feels like one of DW’s most believable planets because the people we meet aren’t all from one class, one gender or a bunch of soldiers: they’re families, bachelors, children, people passing through on their way to work, others enjoying a day off, all of them united in an anniversary pageant of an ancient tale of invasion by the Mara, utterly oblivious to the fact that the modern-day repeat is going on just out of shot. My favourite detail: there’s even a punch and judy stall, complete with miniature snake!

- Well, I say this looks like our world...Only even in the 1980s nobody was wearing clothes like this. Costume-wise Manussa is more of a ragbag than the usual DW planets, which ought to mean a fascinating world of cliques and classes, where everyone’s identity is driven by their lot in life and reinforced by the restricting nature of how they’re forced to dress. In practice it means every last bit of outlandish clothing leftover in the costume department when other programmes have had their pick, whether they fit together or not. I mean, just look at those over-size earrings (which seem more like something an Aztec would wear) draped over some togas (which appear to be secondhand from ‘I Claudius’ – well they do both have snakes I suppose), gloves taken from a documentary on falconry and Martin Clunes additionally dressed in some painting overalls at one stage, complete with drips of paint over the front and one (of many) of the silliest hats ever seen in the series. Weirdly hermit Dojjen is the most normally dressed of the lot.