Snakedance (TV story)

"You'll always know... that you discovered them - once."

- Lon

Snakedance was the second story of Season 20. A sequel to Kinda, it featured the return of the Mara.

Synopsis
Tegan falls once more under the influence of the Mara and directs the TARDIS to the planet Manussa. There the Federator's son Lon and his mother Tanha are preparing for a ceremony to celebrate the banishment of the Mara five hundred years earlier.

The Mara takes control of Lon and uses him and Tegan to obtain from Ambril, the Director of Historical Research, the 'great crystal' - the large blue stone that originally brought it into being by focusing energy from the minds of the planet's one-time inhabitants. The Mara now plans to use the crystal during the ceremony to bring about its return to corporeal existence.

The Doctor and Nyssa, aided by Ambril's assistant Chela, locate Ambril's aged predecessor Dojjen, who predicted the Mara's rebirth before wandering off into the wilderness. The Doctor allows himself to be bitten by a snake in order to enter a state of mental commune with Dojjen, who tells him that fear is the only true venom and that in order to defeat the Mara he must find the still point within himself.

The Doctor and his friends then return to the caves where the ceremony is being held. The Doctor, by concentrating his thoughts with the aid of a small replica of the great crystal, is able to find the still point and repel the Mara.

Plot
to be added

Cast

 * The Doctor - Peter Davison
 * Tegan - Janet Fielding
 * Nyssa - Sarah Sutton
 * Lon - Martin Clunes
 * Ambril - John Carson
 * Tanha - Colette O'Neil
 * Chela - Johnathon Morris
 * Dojjen - Preston Lockwood
 * Dugdale - Brian Miller
 * Fortune Teller - Hilary Sesta
 * Hawker - George Ballantine
 * Puppeteer - Barry Smith
 * Megaphone Man - Brian Grellis

Crew

 * Assistant Floor Manager - Maggy Campbell
 * Costumes - Ken Trew
 * Designer - Jan Spoczynski
 * Film Cameraman - John Baker
 * Film Editor - Alastair Mackay
 * Incidental Music - Peter Howell
 * Make-Up - Marion Richards
 * Producer - John Nathan-Turner
 * Production Assistant - Rita Dunn, June Collins
 * Production Associate - Angela Smith
 * Script Editor - Eric Saward
 * Special Sounds - Dick Mills
 * Studio Lighting - Henry Barber
 * Studio Sound - Martin Ridout
 * Theme Arrangement - Peter Howell
 * Title Music - Ron Grainer
 * Visual Effects - Andrew Lazell

Story Notes

 * In 1995 Steven Moffat was a participant in a wide-ranging, public discussion about Doctor Who with Andy Lane, David Bishop and Paul Cornell. He ranted about the "crap" nature of the majority of the 1963 version of the show, but called Snakedance "one I couldn't really fault".  He would build upon this opinion in a 1996 essay, in which he called Snakedance and Kinda "the two best Who stories ever".
 * Brian Miller, whose wife Elisabeth Sladen had portrayed the Doctor's companion Sarah Jane Smith, appears as Dugdale.

Ratings/Appreciation Index

 * Part 1 — 6.7 million viewers | 95th place | AI 65
 * Part 2 — 7.7 million viewers | 75th place | AI 66
 * Part 3 — 6.6 million viewers | 98th place | AI 67
 * Part 4 — 7.4 million viewers | 78th place | AI 67

Myths
to be added

Filming Locations

 * BBC Television Centre (TC6), Shepherd's Bush, London

Discontinuity, Plot Holes, Errors

 * Lon claims that the fake crystal is made of glass. It smashes like plastic or polystyrene.
 * When the time has finally come that Dojjen has been waiting and preparing for, for so many years, why a) Is he so far from the city, having to be specifically summoned by the Doctor, and b) Does he not accompany the Doctor and the others to the cave to help defeat the Mara? He knew he had grown too weak and feeble to face the Mara, and had given up hope. Only when the Doctor signalled him with the crystal did he see that there might still be a chance, if he could impart his knowledge to the Doctor in time.
 * Surely someone would have worked-out the patently obvious point of the 'six faces of deception' headpiece before the Doctor did. It has never been on public display. Ambril found it alone and has kept it exclusively for his own collection, and he is somewhat dim/shortsighted.
 * If 'evil cannot face itself' as the Doctor had asserted in Kinda, then the Mara's explanation to Tegan in the hall of mirrors that not being held in a circle meant it could look at its own reflection, makes very little sense. It would only mean that it could escape its own reflection, not that it would find looking at it any easier to do. The Mara facing its own reflection was only one aspect of what made the circle work on Deva Loka. Each mirror was being held remember, by one of the telepathic Kinda. With all of them working in unison in this way, they created a powerful psychic barrier (akin to finding their own 'still point'), which was the true cause of the Mara's banishment on that occasion. Or maybe the Mara is strong enough to face one of its selves, just not more. Remember the circle meant he was looking at lots of reflections. It's like if you were split into two and you had a fight, it would probably end in a draw; whereas if there was twelve of them, then you would lose.

Continuity

 * The Mara previously appeared in DW: Kinda.

Timeline

 * This story occurs after ST: Men of the Earth
 * This story occurs before DWM: Blood Invocation

DVD and Video Releases
to be added

Novelisation

 * Main article: Snakedance (novelisation)


 * Novelised by Terrance Dicks in 1984.