What I most like about the character of the Doctor is that he/she is never one to call themself the perfect hero. They make mistakes, just as human beings do. The Doctor in this story again makes a serious mistake, for which several human lives are lost, however unwittingly and unknowingly the mistake is made. In The Masque of Mandragora we have the Doctor accidentally bring back a hideous alien power with him in the TARDIS back in Earth history at the time of the Italian renaissance. And I truly enjoy this kind of approach to the character of the Doctor. He/she is no hero, he/she just always does his very best to keep loss of life to a minimum.
Lois Marks writing for starters here is at his strongest. He penned several excellent scripts for the series before. But here is where he seemed to find his true niche that he seems very comfortable with. All the characters in the story too are so brilliantly portrayed and written. There is not a blank mask in the pack for this story.
Tom Baker really needs no introduction. He is his usual excellent assured self all the way through this tale. Elisabeth Sladen and he are just beautiful to watch together on screen. Their chemistry is so intensely special that all scenes with them are made better just because they are in them. And Elisabeth Sladen again is highly unnerving when she does her possessed acting again in this story. She really wrong foots you as she is just so superb at acting taken over by a malignant will.
And the other cast members? Let’s begin with the fantastic John Laurimore as Count Frederico. He is the epitome of the nastiest and most unpleasant of villains. You see this right from the offset with his soulless and callous butchering of peasants who he has put to the sword without so much as a thought. He is arrogant and self-assured to the point where you keenly await his inevitable demise. John is faultless in his aggressive portrayal of the power mad Duke. That he comes to his end by looking into a white bright oval of a once human face is a helluva way to go too. Honestly, he joins the pantheon of brilliant Who villains who have graced the show over the years.
Gareth Armstrong as Prince Giuliano is also extremely well portrayed. Gareth gives Giuliano a rich vein of believability and fallibility. He comes over as very sympathetic and one roots for his character right from the get go. And his friendship with Tim Piggott Smith’s Marco is very very believably performed indeed. They share some excellent scenes together.
Norman Jones as the seer Hieronymus is absolute stunning in his portrayal. This is no surprise because Norman was an absolutely sublime actor indeed. All three times he graced Doctor Who he was superb. Hieronymus is a really unsettling character too. The costume design really adds a huge amount of menace to him. The golden mask he wears is scary and sends a shudder down the spine. His final climactic sparring's with Tom Baker’s Doctor is brilliantly charged indeed. It makes for a great end to the story. The trickery in the final scene where the Doctor uses the Hieronymus disguise to fool the other cultists is a superb scene and ends the story on a very high note.
Again, one of the only major problems of the story is that Lis as Sarah is the only decent female part in the whole drama. But these stories were made in a time when women weren’t overtly well served by TV in general, so I suppose I should have a little bit of leniency with it on this respect. But it must have been annoying for Lis being the only woman in frequent stories in her time on the show. But this is still not a major quibble. And she truly does do the ladies proud because Sarah Jane is just a wickedly awesome character.
The setting of Portmeirion in Wales is an extremely effective double for the villages of San Martino in Italy. This story truly does feel like it is in a foreign locale and this really works to the story’s benefit a lot. The filmed outdoor scenes look sumptuous and really add such a great grand backdrop to the great action of the story.
I think the Masque of Mandragora
rightfully deserves to be labelled a classic. It’s rich in character, rich in
costume design, rich in direction from an assured Rodney Bennett, and above all
it is a quality segment of Doctor Who storytelling. This is what the best of
the show is like. I can think of barely any other stories to display this so
well as does The Masque of Mandragora.
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