The Bishop on Doctor Who: 'The Pyramids of Mars'

‘The Pyramids of Mars’ leaves a lot of questions unresolved; or, perhaps, unresolvable. Is Scarman the servant of Sutekh, or a cadaver taken over by Sutekh? Why does he first appear in the form of a black spacesuit, with Sutekh’s voice and personality, only to change for no particularly useful reason into Scarman, with Scarman’s voice and something resembling his personality. (So the kids can point at the screen and scoff? 'It's not the real Scarman, silly!') Why does Sutekh have to tell Scarman what to do when he could just control his body, as he does the Doctor’s? Ditto the service robots: why is Sutekh controlling Scarman controlling the mummies, when he could presumably just skip the middle man? Is Sutekh clairvoyant or not? He manages to spot and stop an explosion about to blow up his rocket, but doesn’t notice anyone planting the explosives, nor seem to realise when one of his telepathically controlled service robots is replaced by Tom Baker, hovering round like a sheepish schoolboy working up the nerve to ask a girl on a date. Why does Horus protect the ultra-secure entrance to his can't-be-broken-into-at-any-cost Martian base with question four out of Challenging Logic Puzzles for Clever Boys Aged 8 and Up? And what’s the deal with that little Egyptian fellow: does he realise that he’s in a story called ‘The Pyramids of Mars’, and sit down at the pipe organ to help out with the incidental music?

Oh well. ‘The Pyramids of Mars’ may not be the tightest Doctor Who ever, or the fastest, but it does feature the most chemistry between two leads since the invention of the galvanic cell. And, more importantly, Robert Holmes and Gabriel Woolf teaming up to produce this.

And this.

Damn, that’s the stuff.