By Kate Orman

Obverse Books, out now

Fascinating insights into one of the best classic Doctor Who stories.

Pyramids of Mars is probably my all time favourite Doctor Who story. It’s by no means perfect but it has some of the best interaction between Tom Baker’s Doctor and Lis Sladen’s Sarah Jane Smith, a marvellous villain in the shape of Gabriel Woolf’s Sutekh, and one of my favourite episode endings (to part 1). It’s not exactly an underappreciated story, so whoever picked up the baton to write about this for the Black Archive was going to come under intense scrutiny.

I’m glad to say that this is another in the series – like Jim Smith’s The Massacre and Simon Guerrier’s The Evil of the Daleks – that presents some different angles on the material, and will make the inevitable further rewatch more rewarding.

Orman quite deliberately starts the book off at a bit of a tangent, picking up on the Doctor’s line about 1911 being one of his favourite years (and presenting an argument as to whether that really can be the true setting). It’s an unusual way of starting but allows her to introduce some of her themes.

The place of Sutekh (or whatever name he was known by) in Ancient Egypt is the next port of call, allowing Orman to diversify her frame of reference into both the “real” myths and the Doctor Who versions of them. Some of the oddities of this story, and Tom Baker’s performance in it, are discussed (and there’s a passing reference to Orman’s own partly Egypt-set New Adventure, Set Piece). Orman wisely doesn’t keep the reference purely to Pyramids of Mars – stories from the entire canon come under the microscope.

The next section gets into the whole area of vengeance, and the Mummy stories which are fundamental to Pyramids’ core. You may not fully agree with Orman’s readings of the Universal and Hammer movies, but there’s plenty of food for thought here. A briefer chapter discusses the links with Mars as well as Lewis Griefer’s original plans for the story, which were overwritten by Robert Holmes.

A chapter about Pyramid Power deals with a lot of different elements – from the scientific gloss that Doctor Who and others give to the supernatural, to hypotheses about Namin’s motivation, the source of Sutekh’s mesmeric influence, and other Egyptian-influenced contemporary TV stories, including Ace of Wands and The Tomorrow People.

The final short chapter throws up some very interesting ideas about the nature of Doctor Who itself, and how Pyramids of Mars and the Egyptians upon whose society it is in part based demonstrate alternate ways of looking at the show.

Unlike some other Black Archives, there’s little to no discussion of the assorted alternate takes on the material. There’s plenty out there – from Justin Richards’ Missing Adventure The Sands of Time, to Sutekh’s return on audio both from Big Finish and others – and it does feel like there are some Appendices missing, particularly given the space devoted to ITV’s series!

Verdict: As with many of these, you may not always agree with the writer, but the Black Archive once again provides food for thought. 8/10

Paul Simpson

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