Rate and Discuss: Marco Polo

[SiHart]

The Doctor and Co take a trip with Marco Polo to the palace of Kublai Kahn, across the Gobi desert, the singing sands and via the cave of 500 eyes...

What do you think of Marco Polo?

[Rob McCow]

Just in case the server goes down again, I'll say in summary:

Probably brilliant, but we won't ever know for sure.

[Paul Monk]

I remember when I got the missing soundtrack for this story, thinking "Oh my god. This is going to be a struggle. A seven part historical"

And the episodes whizzed by. It was really good and more importantly there didn't appear to be much in teh way of padding. The characters were brilliant and really well rounded. No-one was completely evil which was good. It gets a thumbs up from me.

I do wonder though, whether it would suffer from being retruned to the archive. As a soundtrack you can imagine the vast desert scenes and other landscapes and I wonder if it would be disappointing if you could see it was a tv studio.

[SiHart]

There's somethign about it that sets apart- maybe it's the diary entires that act as narration or that the characters are so well played and written or that it feels like it takes place over weeks and months rather than a few hours. It's BIG!

I really like this one. I'd love to be able to see it and see if the sets and costumes looked as good on screen as they do in the photos.

[Zbigniev Hamson]

No-one was completely evil which was good.

I think you're being exceedingly generous to Tegana there. I suppose he might have stroked a cat or something at some point in his life though...

[Alex Me]

I admit I have only "Seen" this once, the Loose Cannon recon they did a fair few years back now. It's a rather unique story, showing how who might of gone if things had been different, but it might of not been the huge success it is now. The first few episodes are good, but I found it really started to drag during the second half, where the plot does not advance much till the final episode. 6/10

[SiHart]

I don't think this story is about plot as much as its about the journey they take. Notice how the TARDIS crew are a proper group of friends by the end of this story. They're stuck together on the caravan with Marco and their mistrust of each other from the previous serials ebbs away by the end of this one, as they band together to try and escape when they can. Or something anyway.

[Andrew Curnow]

I've never heard it, and it's a l-o-n-g time since I read the book, so I don't really have much to offer. Except that ZH did make me chuckle:

I think you're being exceedingly generous to Tegana there. I suppose he might have stroked a cat or something at some point in his life though...

[J.R. Southall]

I'm with Andrew I'm afraid; my knowledge of Marco Polo is sadly about the lowest of my Who knowledge. It's probably one of the stories I'd most like to see animated, for that very reason ... and it's one of the few I've never got around to catching up with on recon. So I'm going to have to pass!