Doctor Who and the Pyramids of Mars
- greatbigquiveringp
- Dec 16, 1976
- 3 min read
About Time 4 bafflingly identifies a Bram Stoker play called The Curse of the Scarab as the inspiration behind 'Pyramids of Mars'. I don't think any such play exists as the only play I can find by Stoker is his adaptation of Dracula and that was a one-night only affair created purely for the purpose of protecting his copyright (https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/bram-stokers-stage-adaptation-of-dracula). Actually, odd as it sounds, I think they might be getting confused with the fifth Doctor DWM comic (http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/The_Curse_of_the_Scarab_(comic_story)).
There is of course Stoker’s novel The Jewel of Seven Stars, which revolves around a mummy and was the basis for the Hammer film Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb, which is what Phil Sandifer picks as Robert Holmes's muse (‘the Doctor shows up in what is basically Blood From The Mummy's Tomb - a specific horror film’ (http://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/i-dont-exist-in-your-world-pyramids-of-mars/) - The Discontinuity Guide plumps for both, plus The Mummy, another Hammer horror film.
I’m not sure I’d go as far as saying ‘Pyramids of Mars’ is tightly modelled on Blood from the Mummy's Tomb (15 minutes' worth of children’s puzzles would have been the giveaway and, as a sidenote, Dicks is extraordinarily respectful of Part Four in this). So let's just settle on Hammer as the major influence on this as it is for so much of the Hinchcliffe era.
And that opens up something of a problem, not always, as 'The Brain of Morbius' stands testament to, but a lot of the time. The heyday of Hammer horror stemmed from their sitting at the crossroads where increasingly lurid gore and titillation were permitted but still viewed as illicit enough to prove a big draw. This isn't to undermine any specific films they produced, many of which either actively thrived on their ability to confront the seductiveness of evil or just treated these aspects as window dressing - indeed, founding a cinematic style on Gothic literature without gruesome violence and insistent sexuality would be a bit odd. It even makes sense that it would prove the inspiration for a mode of children's, or at least young teens', stories since sex and coming-of-age sit so obviously together.
Generally, the show is rather good at channelling that sex drive somewhere equivalent. Frankenstein
revolves a lot around fear that the monster'll breed, and 'The Brain of Morbius' translates that as the ancient Time Lord's desire for immortality (Yes, the desire to cheat death, along with the creature composed of stitched-together bits, obviously comes from the novel, but Philip Madoc's the one who plays the doctor's role, wanting to play God - by making the monster complicit in its resurrection, Holmes is feeding the monster's later desire for a mate back into the act of reanimation). Similarly, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde plays on fears of a man who lacks all inhibition, and 'Planet of Evil' turns that dark side into something antithetical to all nature, a boundary to knowledge and experience that must not be crossed - unspeakable acts become something that simply cannot be described.
But what's the sex drive behind Blood from the Mummy's Tomb, beside the fact Valerie Leon's modern spends half the film in a strange nightie and her ancient one is dumped in a top that doesn't manage to reach the bottom of her breasts? The best I can come up with is that it centres on Margaret turning 20 and deciding she wants to unleash her slumbering sexual power, Queen Tera, and she does this by amassing a load of gifts, whatever the cost, before discovering that, should she truly awaken her sexuality, it'll actually consume her, so she ends up fighting it instead. I can't see much of 'Pyramids of Mars' in there. It doesn't even have anything resembling a mummy, save the bandage-smothered Valerie Leon in hospital at the end.
Actually, sod it. At this point, I was going to go off on one about how Hammer horror just isn't a very sustainable model for Doctor Who and it's not surprising it was burning out before Hinchcliffe left anyway, what with not being able to make the villain the protagonist, like they are in all the best Hammer horrors, or tackle sexual awakening and so on. This is precisely the problem Lawrence Miles and Tat Wood identified with 'The Smugglers' and its attempt to do Kidnapped.
However, in the process of writing that brief synopsis above (above but one now), a much bigger question occurs. Why on Earth does anyone think Blood from the Mummy's Tomb or The Jewel of the Seven Stars is the blueprint for 'Pyramids of Mars'? They're nothing like each other. No wonder Miles and Wood had to resort to a fictional stageplay when asking where it all came from.
Anyway, for a proper look at the novelisation, one which doesn't bottle it quite so dramatically midway through, click on the cover to the right...
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