Episode #124 : Snakedance

"Dreams are important... never underestimate them."

Episode 124:   Snakedance.
Companions:   5th Doctor, Tegan, and Nyssa.
Air Date:         18th to 26th January 1983.

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.

Snakedance is a sequel to the earlier story Kinda. Sort of. It uses elements of that story such as the possession of Tegan and some of the Hinduism but seems to forget where it came from before. Snakedance is definitely better than Kinda by a big margin but it doesn't feel like it really has much of a connection to its predecessor.

The biggest flaw I find is in relation to the Mara itself. Sometimes less really is more. In Snakedance the Mara goes from being some sort of dream spirit entity to being revealed as a psionic creature made up of the darker elements of mind from the old Manussan people. I found that this revelation weakened the concept of the entity and leaves me scratching my head when I look back at how it was shown in Kinda.

Lon is played by a very young Martin Clunes, many years before he would achive fame in Men Behaving Badly.

I cannot fault Snakedance in that it is esentially what I have come to expect from the show at this time. It is average in all regards though I give bonus points for some of the creepier possession scenes involving Tegan.