A historical a day keeps the Doctor away, right? After being spoiled by these in the Hartnell years, I now tend to grab onto the rare historicals with both hands. Although Pyramids of Mars sort of, kind of counts, if you squint, The Masque of Mandragora is the first proper historical of the Tom Baker era. There will only be two others, and then the format will disappear again until The Visitation in 1982. I find this a little hard to believe; after all, period dramas are what the BBC is the best at, what they have the most existing stages and costumes for, and therefore the most bang for one's buck. The fact that Doctor Who eschewed this opportunity and went full-bore into expensive monsters and spaceship sets during a period of hyperinflation of the British pound is utterly beyond me. I'm sure my personal like of historicals doesn't factor into that confusion at all...
It's appropriate that a writer who started on Doctor Who in the Hartnell years is the one to bring us this story as his last script for the program. This was a passion project for Louis Marks, who studied Renaissance Italy academically and was surely hankering for a while to put this to use. I've done a little "studying" of my own, actually, having put a few thousand hours into Europa Universalis IV, a strategy game which takes place in the same timeframe. Therefore, I felt somewhat at home in the picturesque Italian town of, uhm, Portmeirion, Wales. Is it 2005 already?
Jokes aside, it is terribly convenient that someone decided to build a replica of an Italian village somewhere in the UK, so the outdoor crew absolutely lucked out. The sets aren't bad either, and everything looks and feels like the 15th century as it should. I once again detect the hand of the historical-skeptic Robert Holmes in some of the dialog, as a few of the lines have the same amount of florid absurdity as the ones in The Time Warrior.
Holmes and Marks aren't the only ones having fun, since Tom Baker seems to just eat this one up. If anything, he seems to be enjoying it too much, with his "salaaami sandwich" at the end being perhaps just slightly too over-the-top for my liking. I bet the kids loved it, though.
I appreciate this story slightly more for its aesthetics and execution than its script. While it's a fun idea that the Renaissance was a time caught between reason and superstition, the plan of the Mandragora doesn't make a massive amount of sense. It's a pretty good story overall, and certainly one I'll be watching again.
Looks like all I had written down aside from that were cheap cracks about Giuliano "craving for contact with men... of understanding". So hey, seems like it's just about time for me to move on to The Hand of Fear.
(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 29 April 2021.)
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