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.

Episode #118 : Kinda

"An apple a day keeps the... Ah, never mind."

Episode 118:  Kinda.
Companions: 5th Doctor, Tegan, Nyssa and Adric.
Air Date:       1st to 9th February 1982.

The TARDIS visits the planet Deva Loka, where Nyssa remains behind in the ship to recover from a mild mental disorientation while the Doctor, Tegan and Adric explore. Tegan falls asleep under some wind chimes and becomes possessed by an evil force, a Mara. Also on Deva Loka is a survey team assessing the planet for colonisation, but three of their number have disappeared and the remainder - Sanders, his deputy Hindle and the scientist Todd - are encountering difficulties in their dealings with the outwardly primitive but telepathically gifted native people, the Kinda. Hindle becomes mentally unstable, but his mind is eventually cleared by a Kinda device called the Box of Jhana.

Kinda is based on Buddhist concepts, with Buddhist names and themes throughout the story. The name of the planet "Deva Loka" means "realm of the Gods". The Mara derives from a demon of the same name in Buddhist mythology which, as in Doctor Who, symbolises temptation rather then evil (at least, in the sense of "sinfulness"). In Kinda, Dukkha, Panna, Karuna, Anatta and Anicca's names and functions all derive from Buddhism as well. Dukkha is "suffering", Panna is "wisdom", Karuna means "compassion", Anatta is "not-self" and Annica means "impermanence". In Snakedance, the character of Tanha appears; Tanha is "thirst", which figuratively means "restlessness" or "craving". In addition, the story contains Biblical references (an arboreal paradise, a serpent, and apples).

Kinda is another very poor adventure for our time travellers though for many fans it has improved with time. I, however, feel the opposite. The only good thing that this story has going for it is that for a change it focuses more on the companions than the Doctor.  Adric once again seems very naive despite the adventures he has had with the Doctor. Tegan on the other hand is very much the focus of the story. Because of her the evil force known as the Mara is able to enter the physical universe at first possessing her before moving on to a local Kinda body. Nyssa however only appears at the start and the end as she spends the story asleep in the TARDIS.

What fails the story is the weak dialogue, scenes where the male colonists revert to naughty children, and the dreadful rubber snake that is the true form of the Mara. If perhaps production values had been better this might have been a better adventure. It would have worked well had it been more of a horror story than it attempted to be.