Essential Viewing

Atop my desk at home, amongst a collection of wooden giraffes, teddy bears, my Mego "Bones" and other precious objects, stands a stoic mummy with a little Egyptian jar at its foot. Had I known of Doctor Who when I was 10 and had there been a dearth of related action figures (as there had been for Star Wars), I surely would have worn out this plastic automaton in the backyard sandbox or in a country house setting I would have constructed from boxes and stolen Barbie furniture.

Pyramids of Mars is the very definition of fun! And Doctor Who should always at its root be fun. More than anything, that's the reason why it's proved so resilient for me. I remember the fun of first watching it. On a bad day it can lift my spirits.

Back in the 80s, KVOS used to show clips from the story as part of its one and only advertisement for Doctor Who. It makes perfect sense: the Doctor states he's from Gallifrey in the constellation of Kasterborous, while Sutekh identifys the Doctor as a Time Lord. And the clips looks cool and have the advantage of Gabriel Woolf's menacing and silky voice.

Pyramids of Mars feels like the very epicentre of Hinchcliffe/Holmes Doctor Who. It has a memorable villain in Sutekh, lots of great location filming, a large country home, some chilling deaths, fantastic acting, great chemistry between the leads, nods to the past (Victoria, companion to the 2nd Doctor is referenced as is the city of Exxilons from Death to the Daleks) and gosh darn-it--pyramids on Mars!

In retrospect it's just so darned iconic as well, which is why the "Oh Mummy" featurette on the DVD release works so well (the dialogue and images are so striking--"I bring you Sutekh's gift of death" or "plaything of Sutekh". And I can completely understand why Russell T Davies chose to reference it specifically in an episode in Queer as Folk. And hiring Gabriel Woolf to do the voice of The Beast in The Impossible Planet/ The Satan Pit two-parter during the 2006 series was a brilliant move.

Right off the bat we have a brooding Doctor who complains about being at the Brigadier's beck and call (and discloses his approximate age to Sarah). Holmes and Hinchcliffe must have felt a certain confidence in having the Doctor utter these sentiments on screen--we're pretty much done with all that folks (even though UNIT would have a presence in two more stories before disappearing).

Later Holmes shows us the consequences of the Doctor high tailing it away in the TARDIS without dealing with the baddie. It's a striking an important scene and I'm surprised we haven't had such an illustration in Doctor Who before (RTD would elaborate on the idea in the new series with his concept of "fixed points in time and space".

Every time I watch the story I can't help feeling the poignancy of Lawrence Scarman's death at the hands of his brother (or at least what he believes to be his brother). He's seen the wonders of the TARDIS, and the horrors of Sutekh, but in the end the power of his relationship with his brother remains the only truly real thing to him.

It's an old fan discussion to posit which Doctor Who story would be a good starter for a new viewer. I nominate Pyramids wholeheartedly for all the reasons I mention above. And what fodder it would have provided for my world-building 10-year-old self.

Original viewing date: October 22nd or October 29th, 1983

Wine: "Trapiche Reserve" my favourite Malbec from Argentina. It's deep, fully bodied and has a little of everything (vanilla, blackberry, oak-y, etc.), rather like the story.

Music: "That's All" by Genesis. One of those forgettable songs from latter day Genesis, but there's no accounting for taste at 14...