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Marco Polo (Doctor Who)

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004 - Marco Polo
Doctor Who serial
Marco Polo, Susan, Doctor, Ian (Mark Eden, Carole Ann Ford, William Hartnell, William Russell)
Doctor	William Hartnell (First Doctor)
Companions	Carole Ann Ford (Susan Foreman)
	Jacqueline Hill (Barbara Wright)
	William Russell (Ian Chesterton)
Writer	John Lucarotti
Director	Waris Hussein (episodes 1-3,5-7) John Crockett (episode 4)
Script editor	David Whitaker
Producer	Verity Lambert Mervyn Pinfield (associate producer)
Executive producer(s)	None
Production code	D
Series	Season 1
Length	7 episodes, 25 mins each
Episode(s) missing	All 7 episodes
Originally broadcast	February 22–April 4, 1964
Chronology
← Preceded by	Followed by →
The Edge of Destruction	The Keys of Marinus
IMDb profile

Marco Polo is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in 7 weekly parts from February 22 to April 4, 1964. Although audio tracks and still photographs of the story exist, none of the footage of this serial has survived. This is the first "pure historical" Doctor Who story, in that there are no science fictional elements other than the fact that the Doctor and his companions have travelled to the past.

1 Synopsis
2 Plot
3 Cast
- 3.1 Cast notes
4 Historical episodes
5 Continuity
6 Production
- 6.1 Missing episodes
7 In print
8 Broadcast, CD and DVD releases
9 External links

The TARDIS lands in Central Asia in 1289, where the First Doctor and his companions fall in with Marco Polo as his caravan makes its way along the fabled Silk Road from the Pamir Plateau, across the treacherous Gobi Desert and over the Himalayas to end up in Peking at the height of its imperial power.

The TARDIS lands in the Himalayas damaged, and are picked up by Marco Polo's caravan on its way to see the Emperor Kublai Khan. The story concerns the Doctor and his companions' attempts to thwart the machinations of Tegana, who attempts to sabotage the caravan, and assassinate Kublai Khan. The Doctor and his companions must also attempt to regain the TARDIS, which Marco Polo has taken to give to Kublai Khan to try to return to the Emperor's good graces. They are finally able to thwart Tegana, and, in doing so, regain the Emperor's respect for Marco Polo, who allows them to depart.

Dr Who — William Hartnell
Ian Chesterton — William Russell
Barbara Wright — Jacqueline Hill
Susan Foreman — Carole Ann Ford
Marco Polo — Mark Eden
Tegana — Derren Nesbitt
Ping Cho — Zienia Merton
Kublai Khan — Martin Miller
Chenchu — Jimmy Gardner
Malik — Charles Wade
Acomat — Philip Voss
Ling-Tau — Paul Carson
Wang-Lo — Gábor Baraker
Kuiju — Tutte Lemkow
Empress — Claire Davenport
Yeng — O. Ikeda
Man at Lop — Leslie Bates
Mongol Bandit — Michael Guest
Vizier — Peter Lawrence
Office Foreman — Basil Tang

Actors shortlisted for the role of Marco Polo included Clement Freud, Richard Hearne and Ernie Wise.
Actors Mark Eden, Derren Nesbitt, and Martin Miller were later cast in The Prisoner episode It's Your Funeral.

Historical episodes such as Marco Polo, which featured no science fiction elements beyond the basic premise of the show, were relatively common for the first few seasons of Doctor Who. Marco Polo is notable for featuring many educational elements, both historical and scientific, as was originally part of the show's remit. The next historical adventure arrived later in the first season with The Aztecs, and such stories continued to be regularly featured until 1967, when the purely historical format would be discontinued after The Highlanders. The format enjoyed a brief revival in 1982 with Black Orchid, and in novel form with 1995's Sanctuary, and in the Big Finish audio series of Doctor Who, has made a resurgence, with a conscious decision being made to have each Doctor have at least one purely historical episode. Examples include The Marian Conspiracy, Other Lives, The Fires of Vulcan, and The Council of Nicaea. However, this format has not been repeated in any televised form.

The Doctor is mostly absent from the whole of episode two The Singing Sands with only a few lines. When the character properly returns in episode three, Hartnell's portrayal of the Doctor shows less cantankerousness and more empathy. While occasionally dictatorial and selfish, the Doctor is no longer spiteful or bitter; neither would he contemplate murder in response to threatening situations, as he had done in An Unearthly Child and The Edge of Destruction.

The seven episodes of the serial had individual titles. They were, respectively, "The Roof of the World", "The Singing Sands", "Five Hundred Eyes", "The Wall of Lies", "Rider from Shang-Tu", "Mighty Kublai Khan" and "Assassin at Peking".

This is one of only three stories, along with "Mission to the Unknown" and The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve, of which not a frame of footage survives. (See Doctor Who missing episodes.) "Telesnaps" (images of the show during transmission, photographed from a television set) of episodes 1-3 and 5-7 do exist, and are in the possession of the director, Waris Hussein. The audio soundtrack also still exists, having been recorded "off air" during the original television transmissions.

Doctor Who book

Marco Polo
Series	Target novelisations
Release number	94
Writer	John Lucarotti
Publisher	Target Books
Cover artist	David McAllister
ISBN	0 426 19967 7
Release date	11 April 1985
Preceded by	The Caves of Androzani
Followed by	The Awakening

A novelisation of this serial, written by John Lucarotti, was published by Target Books in December 1984.

The audio soundtracks were released in a three CD set in 2003, as part of Doctor Who's 40th anniversary. This CD set is unique in containing a map of Cathay (China) as represented during the period of the Doctor's visit to China, and also explaining historical inaccuracies. Further, the first disc in the set contains data as well as audio; the data includes MP3 files of the soundtracks without additional narration (which is provided on the CDs by William Russell, filling in details when action was mostly visual), PDF files of the narration scripts, and computer wallpaper versions of the aforementioned map of Cathay.
In 2002, Loose Cannon Productions, a group of fans who have produced several reconstructions of missing Doctor Who serials using still photos, clips, and surviving audio recordings, released a specially "colorised" reconstructed version of this serial, using the large number of colour photographs taking during the production. Mark Eden, who played Marco Polo, recorded an introduction for this release, including a brief segment where he reprised his role from the serial. Unlike most Doctor Who reconstructions, this project made no use of the existing telesnaps, as they had not yet been made available during the making of the project.
The 2006 DVD box set, The Beginning, has a condensed form of this story included as an extra on The Edge of Destruction. This version of the story, compiled by Derek Handley, lasts for just 30 minutes, and consists of parts of the audio track and telesnaps.