Pyramids of Mars

082 – Pyramids of Mars
Doctor Who serial
"Kneel before the might of Sutekh!"
Cast
Doctor Tom Baker (Fourth Doctor)
Companion Elisabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane Smith)
Others Gabriel Woolf — Sutekh Bernard Archard — Marcus Scarman Michael Sheard — Laurence Scarman Peter Copley — Dr Warlock Michael Bilton — Collins George Tovey — Ernie Clements Peter Mayock — Namin Vic Tablian — Ahmed Nick Burnell, Melvyn Bedford, Kevin Selway — Mummies
Production
Writer	"Stephen Harris" (Robert Holmes and Lewis Greifer)
Director	Paddy Russell
Script editor	Robert Holmes
Producer	Philip Hinchcliffe
Executive producer(s)	None
Production code	4G
Series	Season 13
Length	4 episodes, 25 minutes each
Originally broadcast	25 October–15 November 1975
Chronology
← Preceded by Followed by → Planet of Evil The Android Invasion

Pyramids of Mars is the third serial of the thirteenth season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from 25 October to 15 November 1975.

Contents 1 Synopsis 2 Plot 2.1 Continuity 3 Production 3.1 Cast notes 4 Outside references 5 In print 6 VHS and DVD releases 7 References 8 External links

Synopsis

Going slightly off course, the TARDIS materialises inside a Victorian gothic mansion which formerly stood on the site where U.N.I.T.'s headquarters exists during the time of the Fourth Doctor. The Doctor and Sarah quickly become aware that something is very wrong: the owner is missing and the estate has come under the control of a mysterious Egyptian. Cloth-wrapped mummies rise up and roam the grounds, killing anyone in their path.

A dangerous alien power is at work, and the Doctor recognizes the mastermind of all this as Sutekh the Destroyer, the last of the Osirians. The Doctor must stop the ruthless Sutekh at all costs, or there may not be a future for them to return to.

Plot

Egypt, 1911. Marcus Scarman is excavating a pyramid and finds that the door to the burial chamber is inscribed with the Eye of Horus. Scarman's Egyptian assistants panic and flee at the sight of the glowing hieroglyph, leaving the Professor to enter the chamber alone. As he holds a light up to see the undisturbed tomb, he is blasted by a ray that emanates from a seated and cowled figure.

The TARDIS is forced out of its flight path and Sarah sees an apparition of an alien, jackal-like face in the console room. The Doctor follows its energy source back to its point of origin and lands the TARDIS in the Scarman family home in England.

The Doctor and Sarah explore the priory and find what appear to be Egyptian artefacts in the storeroom in which the TARDIS materialised. Discovered by the butler, they are told that the house has been taken over by a mysterious Egyptian gentleman by the name of Ibrahim Namin.

In another part of the priory, Namin is confronted by Dr. Warlock, an old friend of Professor Scarman. The Doctor, Sarah and Warlock make their escape into the grounds of the estate. Instead of following, Namin removes the lid of another sarcophagus to reveal a mummy. Holding up his ring, he commands the mummy to activate and orders it to pursue them.

The Doctor, Sarah and Warlock hide in the woods until the pursuing mummies are called off by Namin. The three make their way to a hunting lodge used by Laurence Scarman, Professor Scarman's brother. Laurence is an amateur scientist whose marconiscope has intercepted a signal from Mars. The Doctor uses a more portable device to decode the signal as "Beware Sutekh".

The Doctor explains that Sutekh is the last of a powerful alien race called the Osirians, a megalomaniac who came to believe that all life was his enemy. He was pursued across the galaxy by his brother Horus and was finally defeated on Earth by the combined might of 740 Osirians. The Doctor returns to the house to stop Sutekh, followed by Sarah and Laurence Scarman.

Namin and the mummies — really service robots — greet the arrival of Sutekh's servant who travels to the priory via a spacetime tunnel, the portal of which is disguised as an upright sarcophagus. The Servant of Sutekh appears as a dark-helmeted humanoid figure dressed in black. The Servant ignores Namin's pleas for his life and kills him, declaring that Sutekh needs no other servant.

After killing Namin, the Servant is revealed to be Marcus Scarman, although he appears to be an animated corpse. Scarman uses the spacetime tunnel to communicate with Sutekh, immobile in his pyramid, who orders Scarman to secure the perimeter of the estate and to construct an Osirian war missile. After Scarman and the robots leave to execute their orders, the Doctor, Sarah and Laurence Scarman enter the main room. The Doctor disrupts the tunnel using the TARDIS key. Laurence hides the three of them in a priest hole for fear of being discovered by his brother.

In another part of the estate, a poacher finds a mummy trapped in one of his snares. He retreats but is prevented from escaping the estate by a deflection barrier. Marcus Scarman finds Warlock, questions him about the other people within the barrier and kills him.

The Doctor realises that he can stop Sutekh controlling his Servant and the mummies by using Namin's ring and Laurence Scarman's scientific apparatus. The poacher fires his shotgun at Marcus Scarman and is killed by the robots.

The Doctor finds Namin's corpse and retrieves the ring. All three proceed into the TARDIS to avoid detection. Sarah suggests they should just leave in the TARDIS, because they know that the world did not end in 1911. The Doctor demonstrates otherwise by moving the TARDIS forward to 1980. There, the TARDIS doors open onto a blasted wilderness, with thunder, rain and lightning hammering down on to ash fields. They have no choice but to return to 1911 and stop Sutekh or the future will be lost.

Back in 1911 the Doctor makes a jamming unit to prevent Sutekh controlling his servants. Laurence finds it too hard to deal with the Doctor's assertion that Marcus Scarman is dead and that the being with his appearance is just a puppet. Laurence overhears the Doctor telling Sarah that when the jamming device is activated, all of Sutekh's servants will stop, Marcus Scarman included.

At the crucial moment when the device is activated, Laurence attempts to stop it from happening. The robots overrun the hunting lodge after finding and killing Clements. They knock Laurence out and throw the Doctor to the floor...

One of the robots attacks the jamming device and is disabled by a sudden discharge of power. Sarah, using the ring they took from Namin, orders the robots to return to Control.

Surveying the ruined equipment, the Doctor decides to blow up the partially assembled rocket in the stable courtyard of the Priory. Laurence suggests using blasting gelignite, which the poacher kept in his hut. The Doctor and Sarah leave to obtain the gelignite, ordering Laurence to strip the bindings from the deactivated robot.

The Doctor finds the energy barrier and deactivates it. The deactivation is detected by Sutekh, who orders Marcus Scarman to investigate. Marcus finds Laurence in the hunting lodge. Laurence tries to make Marcus remember his childhood in order to revive his humanity, but fails, and Marcus tortures Laurence in order to find out more about the Doctor.

Sutekh interrogates the Doctor and discovers he is a Time Lord from Gallifrey. Sutekh locates the TARDIS and decides to use it to transport Scarman to the Pyramids of Mars in order to deactivate the Eye of Horus, the force that is trapping him. Sutekh subjects the Doctor to mind control and returns him to the priory as another of his servants. He orders Scarman to bring a robot and Sarah into the TARDIS to travel to Mars.

On Mars, Sutekh orders Scarman to dispose of the Doctor and the robot throttles him. Scarman and the robot then find the way out of the first chamber beneath the pyramid and leave Sarah weeping over the Doctor. The Doctor wakes up, revealing that his respiratory bypass system allowed him to avoid death, and they then set off in search of Scarman.

The Eye of Horus is located at the end of a corridor beneath the pyramid. The corridor is divided in to a series of chambers and progress through the chambers is dependent upon solving logical and philosophical problems. Sutekh navigates Scarman and the robot through each problem with no deliberation but the Doctor and Sarah are slower.

Scarman and the robot reach the chamber containing the Eye of Horus. Scarman destroys the Eye before falling to the floor and decaying to dust. Arriving too late, the Doctor realises that the loss of the imprisoning force will not be felt on Earth for two minutes, that being the time that radio signals take to travel from the pyramid on Mars to the prison chamber in Egypt. They return to Earth. Sutekh begins his journey through the time tunnel back to earth; at the same time the Doctor removes a module from the TARDIS and attaches it to the other end of the tunnel springing a "temporal trap," immobilizing Sutekh in the timestream, and instead forcing him to a point 10,000 years in the future, ageing him to death.

As the Doctor and Sarah pack up and prepare to leave, a thermal imbalance in the time tunnel causes it to catch fire. Sarah remembers that the UNIT headquarters was built on the remains of a burnt priory. The two leave in the TARDIS as the priory is consumed in flames.

Continuity

• At the start of the story, Sarah Jane enters wearing a dress that she has just found in the wardrobe. The Doctor calls her 'Vicky', and then says that his former companion Victoria used to wear the dress.
• The Doctor claims he has lived "for something like 750 years" and agrees that this makes him middle-aged.
• Sarah Jane Smith refers to her encounter with "mummies" in an argument with Rose Tyler during the episode "School Reunion".
• Sarah remarks that the puzzles are similar to those in the Exxilon City in Death to the Daleks, although she personally never entered the City.
• At the end of the episode, the Doctor alludes to having been blamed for starting the 1666 Great Fire of London. In the Fifth Doctor episode The Visitation the fire was shown to have been sparked by an exploding hand weapon.

Production

Serial details by episode

Episode	Broadcast date	Run time	Viewership (in millions)
"Part One"	25 October 1975 (1975-10-25)	25:22	10.5
"Part Two"	1 November 1975 (1975-11-01)	23:53	11.3
"Part Three"	8 November 1975 (1975-11-08)	24:32	9.4
"Part Four"	15 November 1975 (1975-11-15)	24:52	11.7
[1][2]

• The story as originally written by Lewis Greifer was considered unworkable. As Greifer was unavailable to do rewrites, the scripts were completely rewritten by Robert Holmes. The pseudonym used on transmission was Stephen Harris.
• The exterior scenes were shot on the Stargroves estate in Hampshire, which was owned by Mick Jagger at the time. The same location would be used during the filming of Image of the Fendahl.
• The Doctor notes that the Osirians had "dome-shaped heads, and cerebrums like spiral staircases". The unmasked Sutekh at the end of the serial (resembling the Set animal) does not have a domed head.
• Pyramids of Mars contributes to one of the contradictions in the Doctor Who universe: the UNIT dating controversy.
• Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen improvised a number of moments in this story, most notably a scene in Part Four where the Doctor and Sarah start to walk out of their hiding place and then when they see a mummy, quickly dart back into it. Baker based the scene on a Marx Brothers routine.
• The new TARDIS console, which debuted in the preceding story Planet of Evil, does not appear again until The Invisible Enemy. Owing to the cost of setting up the TARDIS console room for the filming of only a handful of scenes, a new console set was designed for the following season.
• Several scenes were deleted from the final broadcast. A model shot of the TARDIS landing in the landscape of a barren, alternative 1980 Earth was to be used in Part Two, but director Paddy Russell decided viewers would feel more impact if the first scene of the new Earth was Sarah's reaction as the TARDIS doors opened. Three scenes of effects such as doors opening and the Doctor materializing from the sarcophagus were removed from the final edit of Part Four because Russell felt the mixes were not good enough. These scenes were included on the DVD, along with an alternate version of the poacher being hunted down in Part Two, and a full version of the Osirian rocket explosion.
• Although the name of Sutekh's race is pronounced "Osiran" throughout the serial, the scripts and publicity material spell it as "Osirian" in some places and as "Osiran" in others.^[3] Many fans use the "Osirian" spelling, as do some reference works such as the Battles in Time collectable card game and the Virgin Missing Adventures sequel novel The Sands of Time. Another member of the Osirian race also appears in the Big Finish Productions audio drama The Bride of Peladon.
• Gabriel Woolf reprised his role as Sutekh in the Faction Paradox audio dramas Coming to Dust (2005), The Ship of a Billion Years (2006), Body Politic (2008), Words from Nine Divinities (2008), Ozymandias (2009) and The Judgment of Sutekh (2009), from Magic Bullet Productions.

Cast notes

• Features a guest appearance by Michael Sheard; he was cast by director Paddy Russell without any audition, purely on the recommendation of production assistant Peter Grimwade. Sheard previously featured in The Ark and The Mind of Evil and would later appear in The Invisible Enemy, Castrovalva and Remembrance of the Daleks.
• George Tovey was the father of Roberta Tovey, who appeared as Susan in the films Dr. Who and the Daleks and Daleks - Invasion Earth 2150 AD.
• Gabriel Woolf would go on to provide the voice of The Beast in the 2006 episodes "The Impossible Planet" and "The Satan Pit". He also provided the voice of Governor Rossitor in the Big Finish Productions audio plays Arrangements for War and Thicker than Water.
• Bernard Archard previously played Bragen in The Power of the Daleks.
• Michael Bilton previously played Teligny in The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve.

Outside references

• The Doctor, Sarah and Laurence Scarman hide in a priest hole in the priory. This is an anachronism that even the Doctor comments on, since priest holes were a feature of the Elizabethan era and earlier, and not of Victorian architecture ("A priest hole? In a Victorian Gothic folly? Nonsense!").
• The puzzle in which Sarah is imprisoned in a tube is a variation of the classic logic puzzle, Knights and Knaves.

In print

Doctor Who book
Doctor Who and the Pyramids of Mars
Series	Target novelisations
Release number	50
Writer	Terrance Dicks
Publisher	Target Books
Cover artist	Chris Achilleos
ISBN	0-426-11666-6
Release date	16 December 1976
Preceded by	'
Followed by	'

A novelisation of this serial, written by Terrance Dicks, was published by Target Books in December 1976. The novelisation contains a substantial prologue giving the history of Sutekh and the Osirians and features an epilogue in which a future Sarah researches the destruction of the Priory and how it was explained. An unabridged reading of the novelisation by actor Tom Baker was released on CD in August 2008 by BBC Audiobooks.

VHS and DVD releases

• The story first came out on VHS and Betamax in an omnibus format in February 1985. It was subsequently released in episodic format in February 1994.
• It was released on DVD in the United Kingdom on 1 March 2004.
• The story was released on 31 October 2011 as an extra on The Sarah Jane Adventures Series 4 DVD and Blu-Ray boxset as a tribute to Elisabeth Sladen who had died earlier in the year.^[4]

References

External links

• Pyramids of Mars at BBC Online
• Pyramids of Mars at Doctor Who: A Brief History Of Time (Travel)
• Pyramids of Mars at the Doctor Who Reference Guide

Reviews

• Pyramids of Mars reviews at Outpost Gallifrey
• Pyramids of Mars reviews at The Doctor Who Ratings Guide

Target novelisation

• Doctor Who and the Pyramids of Mars reviews at Outpost Gallifrey
• Doctor Who and the Pyramids of Mars reviews at The Doctor Who Ratings Guide
• On Target — Doctor Who and the Pyramids of Mars

Doctor Who season 13 serials Terror of the Zygons Planet of Evil Pyramids of Mars The Android Invasion The Brain of Morbius The Seeds of Doom