Doctor Who: Countdown To 50- Week Fourteen

PYRAMIDS OF MARS
What with its seven-year timespan, the Tom Baker/Fourth Doctor era of Doctor Who in its late-1970s run was filled with ambitious and often quirky new tales for everyone's favourite Time Lord. Pyramids Of Mars certainly fulfills both of those criteria, dealing with the Doctor and Sarah-Jane's encounter with a menace seemingly built on the memories and beliefs of the Ancient Egyptian people.

Indeed, the idea of antagonist Sutekh as a manifestation of a society only known to us through artefacts is an intriguing one. Whereas stories both classic and modern such as Terror Of The Autons, Blink and The Bells Of Saint John have often played about with the concept of an everyday ideal or object for humankind being turned against them, it could be argued that Pyramids' threat is almost as alien to the viewer as the Daleks given what little we truly know about Egyptian society. Nevertheless, there's plenty of the show's trademark mystery and fear factor on show here, even if the TARDIS landing in a distorted version of Earth's reality is a premise that's been done many times by Who before and after this story.

For this reviewer, personally where Pyramids actually fails to a certain degree is with its central heroes. Something which 2012's Series Seven Part One explored to some success was the idea that the Ponds were almost as arrogant as the Doctor in knowing what to expect during their battles through time and space, yet here that Baker's Doctor and the charming Liz Sladen's Sarah-Jane appear so irksomely confident in the face of extreme danger borders on complacency on the part of the show's current writers too. Part of what makes the upcoming Series Seven Part Two episodes Cold War and Hide look so exciting is that they'll place the Eleventh Doctor and Clara into a situation of extreme fear and danger, a sense of danger that's lacking in good measure here.

All the same, where Pyramids Of Mars is let down by the rather complacent portrayals of its central characters- though Tom Baker has often come under scrutiny for that inconsistency in my opinion- it still nevertheless presents once again the sense of mystery and character drama that generally makes the show such a hit. This isn't one of Doctor Who's greatest moments by a long shot, but there's still enough charm housed within the proverbial sarcophagus to make it a pleasant watch.

NEXT WEEK: THE ROBOTS OF DEATH