Tegan’s nightmares have returned. Seeking to banish the snake-like Mara from his companion’s psyche, the Doctor sets course for Manussa, the creature’s point of origin. But the TARDIS arrives instead in the heyday of the Manussan Empire, where infotainment impresario Rick ausGarten is preparing to turn dreams into reality. The sun is setting on the Manussan Empire… and it’s all the Doctor’s fault.
THE CRADLE OF THE SNAKE
Peter Davison’s three seasons on Doctor Who were marked by recurrent themes and motifs: grim science fiction tales with high body counts, explorations of the Doctor’s helplessness in the face of an increasingly unforgiving universe, etc. Hidden in this oft-downbeat era, however, were two gems: “Kinda” and “Snakedance,” Christopher Bailey’s literary Buddhist metaphors. Both stories were centered by Tegan’s possession by the Mara, a demon of the subconscious – and so, with Janet Fielding’s return to Big Finish, Marc Platt was called upon to write a third Mara story: “The Cradle of the Snake.” Sadly, and surprisingly for a writer of his caliber, he seems to miss the point of the earlier stories entirely.
To his credit, Platt attempts to avoid a mere rehash of the earlier Mara stories, and does so primarily by shifting focus away from Tegan and onto the Doctor. This allows Peter Davison – and later Sarah Sutton – to play the villain for a change, and he tears into the role of troublemaker with obvious enjoyment. Of course, something like this happened as recently as the Stockbridge trilogy, but the performances overcome any sense of fatigue. More problematic is how this is portrayed: in the television stories, we spend a significant amount of time in Tegan’s mind as she converses with the various aspects of herself and the Mara. Here, there’s none of that with the Doctor: we barely see his internal struggle at all, and when we do it’s presented with much more typical dream imagery.
Indeed, “The Cradle of the Snake” papers over almost everything that gave subtlety to the Mara television stories. The Mara is a creature of the subconscious, manifesting out of the dark dreams and desires of ordinary people. This is quite similar to the Buddhist concept of the same name, a demon of temptation and a failure of spirituality. Bailey supplemented this in his script: the beings Tegan meets in her subconscious are given similar Buddhist names, each representing concepts such as stress or understanding. In “Cradle,” we are told that the Mara is a demon of temptation, but its behavior is little more than that of a cult leader. There’s little to no subtlety here: the Mara is a creature that enjoys chaos, and thus recruits a cult to promote it. One of the characters asks why a creature like the Mara would even want to start an empire in the first place, and tellingly there is no good answer given to this question.
Additionally, the manifestation of the Mara continues the problems seen in the TV episodes. While audio does not have the visual limitations of television – that giant snake can look as fearsome or as terrible as you can imagine – it rapidly becomes apparent that the snake doesn’t actually do anything other than roar. On TV, the appearance of the snake was kept to the final moments of each episode, thus allowing the viewer to imagine the horror that could have been wrought had the snake been freed. Here, the snake hangs out for the entire fourth episode and manages to be entirely unthreatening.
Other issues abound. “Snakedance” made the “still point” a significant plot element, something the Doctor had to learn to reach from a powerful shaman. “Cradle” uses it as a throwaway line, something the Doctor can visit whenever he likes. The inconsistency isn’t the problem so much as the thematic implication: the still point is supposed to be the Mara’s antithesis, but we don’t see it that way. I’m also bothered by the appearance of this episode’s shaman – while every character had stereotypical elements, Dadda (Vernon Dobtcheff) veers awfully close to a troubling presentation given his accent and cod-mysticism and instrument shaking.
So what did I like about it? The performances of the regulars, mostly – Davison and Sutton are having a ball, Fielding gives an emotional performance as a reluctant heroine, and Mark Strickson gets to show how Turlough has changed since his Black Guardian days. Even the supporting cast isn’t free of criticism – while Toby Sawyer impresses as Baalaka, Madeleine Potter is horribly unconvincing as Yoanna. I do like the production, but I’m not sure the decision to create a new “sting” for the revelation of the mark of the snake was a good idea – it ultimately serves as another reminder of the differences from the TV stories.
Generally speaking, I try not to judge stories by their predecessors. But as “The Cradle of the Snake” is such a direct successor to the two previous Mara stories, I don’t feel I have much choice – and as a result I find it seriously lacking. What we have here is an unimpressive Doctor Who monster story made worse by the fact that it features one of the series’ most imaginative nemeses.
What a disappointment.
4/10