(587) Snakedance - Part 4

I went into watching this episode quite upbeat thinking that after the improvement in the previous episode that this episode would be a fine end to an ultimately underwhelming adventure. Sadly this isn’t the case because the episode starts off in quite a slow fashion and its takes about ten minutes before the episode started to get going and lead up to the crowning of Lon and ultimately the Mara completing its plan.

There are some good moments which worked quite well and these included the whole ‘coronation’ scene where Lon is about to put the crystal in the gap and I thought this is where the madness really shows and its actually quite a good end to the story. The thing is that Tegan again doesn’t appear for quite a long time and when she does she instantly makes the whole thing come alive. Some credit for this does have to go to Martin Clunes who plays it perfectly. This is despite the fact that he has to change in one of the most ridiculous costumes that I have ever seen and its used on TV whenever people want to do one of those ‘Before They Were Famous’ type programmes. How Clunes managed to deliver his lines with that on is a mystery. Back to Janet Fielding and her best moment comes when her head is positioned in the Mara and its one final reminder of how good she has been in this story and how good she was in ‘Kinda’.

Ok so I haven’t been a big fan of this story but the second half was definelty the stronger with the better writing and the better directing and acting that came from this. I have perhaps been too harsh on this story because whilst it might not have worked it was the sort of story that Doctor Who should be a least trying. The effects worked really well and showed how far they had come in twelve months because the big snake effect in Kinda was only made better with the addition of CGI, no new CGI was needed for this adventure as they effects stand up and even the ones that don’t work quite as well are still watchable.

The ratings for this story averaged at 7.28 which is down from the 7.44 which is Arc of Infinity got. At the moment this is the second weakest story ahead of Four to Doomsday. I think that is perhaps the right position for it because at the end of the day this is a story that is far weaker than the first Mara story and I think that as we know what was going to happen it kind of too some of the magic off what Christopher Bailey came up with. Due to the second half of the story Christopher Bailey and Fiona Cumming managed to snatch victory (or at least a draw!) from the jaws of defeat.