The Masque of Mandragora

One of those stories that you don't really hear spoken of that often. It's fun to see Four in a historical story and the BBC always did a fantastic job with period settings and their costumes. It meanders a bit to begin with but gets quite good in the last couple of episodes as the threat of the Cult of Demnos ramps up and Tom Baker is in fine form.

Louis Marks is not one of the series' more inspiring decade spanning writers, but I did enjoy his fourth Doctor stories (this and Planet of Evil) significantly more than his previous efforts for the first and third Doctors (Planet of Giants and Day of the Daleks).

The most exciting moment of this serial happens up top with The Doctor introducing Sarah-Jane to the "old" TARDIS console room, it is a more radical interior redesign than we ever could have hoped for. A beautiful Victorian mahogany console - so much more "The Doctor" than everything that has come before. By making it a different room in the TARDIS rather than a redesign it adds to the mythology of the show and sense of infinite space inside the machine.

Its not just that TARDIS that looks beautiful but the locations and costumes. I loved seeing Sarah-Jane in her posh 15th century frock - period costumes are something the BBC was and continues to be fantastic at. Anyone who has seen The Prisoner would admit that the location of Portmeirion could have been put to *slightly* better use in this story, but there is no doubt that it livens up the screen considerably more than your typical Doctor Who set.

The story itself has some exciting twists and turns, the villain we are presented in part 1 does not end up being the ultimate threat, which is satisfying. It is let down by a couple of far-fetched elements in the plot, where annoying leaps of logic are made which pull you out of the drama.

The baddies are often wearing static masks, which work well in the cloak and dagger scenes but less well in the brightly lit conversational scenes, with the actors relying on their vocal acting chops (not the most engaging TV). The main character you are routing for in 14th Century Italy is another one of these limp, young, wet leaders (that we saw twice on Peladon) that seem to be "nice" rather than have any character. His friend Marco however is a very passionate and exciting character to follow - his brief interactions with Tom Baker were marvelous.