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"Marco Polo" is the first of the lost serials. All I had available to "watch" was the audio track, accompanied by still images and stage directions and descriptions scrolling by as text on the screen. Not an ideal way to experience it, but better than not having it at all.
I'm not going to go on a blow by blow description of the plot, but it was a good one. Probably the best story so far, I think. This was the longest story so far, at least in terms of how long the Doctor and his companions were involved, given that they were with Marco Polo for quite a span of time in their journey acrossChinaCathay.
At first Marco Polo himself seems to be the villain, given that he claims the TARDIS for Kublai Khan and refuses to let the Doctor have access to it (though they try many times to do so over the course of the serial, with varying degrees of almost-success). His reasons for doing so is because Kublai Khan refuses to allow Marco to go home to Venice, and he hopes the gift of the "magical flying caravan" will convince Kublai to allow him to go home. On the whole, Marco is portrayed as conflicted, but ultimately a nice guy.
The real villain is Tegana, the warlord serving Nogai Khan who is also traveling with Marco Polo, ostensibly, to broker a peace deal between Kublai and Nogai. He's really a scheming asshole, though. I'd say he's probably the most effective villain seen on the show so far, except that he's actually not very effective. All of his ploys are foiled in some way, and it's only thanks to his own persuasive abilities, combined with the severe obliviousness and gullibility of Marco Polo that Tegana lasts as long as he does, especially since the TARDIS travelers are pretty much wise to Tegana from the start and try several times to convince Marco of what a conniving shitheel he is.
Long story short, they reach Kublai Khan in the final two episodes, who immediately bonds with the Doctor almost entirely on the basis that both of them are old and infirm. Kublai Khan is sort of portrayed as a comic figure, which seems at odds with his reputation (which, I'm sure, was the intent). He's a lot nicer than you'd probably expect a feared Mongol warlord to be. At one point, the Doctor has won half ofChinaCathay through playing backgammon with Kublai, but then loses it all again when he tries to wager that back in an attempt to get the TARDIS. In the end, Tegana finally makes his move to assassinate Kublai, is stopped by Marco Polo, which restores Kublai's trust in Marco, and the Doctor and his companions get in the TARDIS and leave.
There was a subplot involving a young girl named Ping Cho who was meant to wed some old 70-something geezer when they reached Kublai Khan, against her wishes. She befriends Susan and the other companions and tries to help them in their attempts to get the TARDIS back from Marco. The whole issue of her unwanted marriage is neatly cleared up when her intended husband dies suddenly, for stupid reasons, off screen, without ever being seen, and then Kublai Khan allows her to remain as a courtier. So everyone has a happy ending. Except for Tegana. And the unseen would-be husband. And some mooks. And, I suppose, Nogai Khan and his army, who are mentioned but never shown on screen, either.
All in all, I liked this one the best of the serials so far. The Doctor and his companions finally all seem to be on the same page, as opposed to being antagonistic towards each other as they had been up to this point, in the previous serials. The Doctor himself, while still snarky and sarcastic, is far less of an asshole than he was in the previous stories. (He's almost entirely absent from the second episode, but this was because of William Hartnell's real life health issues.)
It's sad that "Marco Polo" is lost, but at least the story is still able to be experienced, and it's not a half-bad way to do so, even so. My only quibble with it was that all of the Chinese characters except for Ping Cho were played by non-Asian, British actors. Yellowface and all that. Ah... the 60s.
I'm not going to go on a blow by blow description of the plot, but it was a good one. Probably the best story so far, I think. This was the longest story so far, at least in terms of how long the Doctor and his companions were involved, given that they were with Marco Polo for quite a span of time in their journey across
At first Marco Polo himself seems to be the villain, given that he claims the TARDIS for Kublai Khan and refuses to let the Doctor have access to it (though they try many times to do so over the course of the serial, with varying degrees of almost-success). His reasons for doing so is because Kublai Khan refuses to allow Marco to go home to Venice, and he hopes the gift of the "magical flying caravan" will convince Kublai to allow him to go home. On the whole, Marco is portrayed as conflicted, but ultimately a nice guy.
The real villain is Tegana, the warlord serving Nogai Khan who is also traveling with Marco Polo, ostensibly, to broker a peace deal between Kublai and Nogai. He's really a scheming asshole, though. I'd say he's probably the most effective villain seen on the show so far, except that he's actually not very effective. All of his ploys are foiled in some way, and it's only thanks to his own persuasive abilities, combined with the severe obliviousness and gullibility of Marco Polo that Tegana lasts as long as he does, especially since the TARDIS travelers are pretty much wise to Tegana from the start and try several times to convince Marco of what a conniving shitheel he is.
Long story short, they reach Kublai Khan in the final two episodes, who immediately bonds with the Doctor almost entirely on the basis that both of them are old and infirm. Kublai Khan is sort of portrayed as a comic figure, which seems at odds with his reputation (which, I'm sure, was the intent). He's a lot nicer than you'd probably expect a feared Mongol warlord to be. At one point, the Doctor has won half of
There was a subplot involving a young girl named Ping Cho who was meant to wed some old 70-something geezer when they reached Kublai Khan, against her wishes. She befriends Susan and the other companions and tries to help them in their attempts to get the TARDIS back from Marco. The whole issue of her unwanted marriage is neatly cleared up when her intended husband dies suddenly, for stupid reasons, off screen, without ever being seen, and then Kublai Khan allows her to remain as a courtier. So everyone has a happy ending. Except for Tegana. And the unseen would-be husband. And some mooks. And, I suppose, Nogai Khan and his army, who are mentioned but never shown on screen, either.
All in all, I liked this one the best of the serials so far. The Doctor and his companions finally all seem to be on the same page, as opposed to being antagonistic towards each other as they had been up to this point, in the previous serials. The Doctor himself, while still snarky and sarcastic, is far less of an asshole than he was in the previous stories. (He's almost entirely absent from the second episode, but this was because of William Hartnell's real life health issues.)
It's sad that "Marco Polo" is lost, but at least the story is still able to be experienced, and it's not a half-bad way to do so, even so. My only quibble with it was that all of the Chinese characters except for Ping Cho were played by non-Asian, British actors. Yellowface and all that. Ah... the 60s.
