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Snakedance

124 – Snakedance
Doctor Who serial
Snakedance.jpg
Dugdale and Lon watch as the possessed Tegan opens a secret room in the cave of the Mara.
Cast
Others
Production
Directed by Fiona Cumming
Written by Christopher Bailey
Script editor Eric Saward
Produced by John Nathan-Turner
Executive producer(s) None
Incidental music composer Peter Howell
Production code 6D
Series Season 20
Length 4 episodes, 25 minutes each
Originally broadcast 18 January–26 January 1983
Chronology
← Preceded by Followed by →
Arc of Infinity Mawdryn Undead
List of Doctor Who serials
Snakedance
Doctor Who Snakedance.jpg
Author Terrance Dicks
Cover artist Andrew Skilleter
Series Doctor Who book:
Target novelisations
Release number
83
Publisher Target Books
Publication date
3 May 1984
ISBN

Snakedance is the second serial of the 20th season in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four twice-weekly parts from 18 January to 26 January 1983.

The arrival of the TARDIS on Manussa, formerly homeworld of both the Manussan Empire and Sumaran Empire, triggers nightmares in Tegan, who dreams of a snake-shaped cave mouth. It is evident to the Fifth Doctor that the Mara is reasserting itself on her mind following her possession by the entity while on the Kinda planet of Deva Loka (Kinda). He attempts to calm her by taking her and Nyssa in search of the cave but Tegan is too scared to enter when they find it, and runs away. Alone and confused Tegan lapses under the control of the Mara once more, revelling in horror and destruction. The emblem of the snake soon returns to her arm.

Manussa is in the grip of a festival of celebration of the banishment of the Mara from the civilisation five hundred years earlier. In the absence of the Federator, who rules over the three-planet Federation, his indolent son Lon is to have a major role in the celebration, supported by his mother the Lady Tanha and the archaeologist Ambril, who is an expert in the Sumaran period. Lon is intrigued with the notion that the Mara might one day return as prophesied, but Ambril is unconvinced and believes such talk is the product of cranks. When the Doctor tries to get Ambril to take the threat seriously he too is dismissed as a maverick, though the young deputy curator Chela is more sympathetic to the Doctor and gives him a small blue crystal called a Little Mind's Eye, which is used by the Snakedancers, a mystical cult, in their ceremonies to repel the Mara. The Doctor realises the small crystal and its large counterpart, the Great Mind's Eye, can be used as focal points for mental energy and can turn thought into matter. This, he determines, is how the Mara will transfer from Tegan's mind to corporeal existence. He realises that the Manussans must once have been a very advanced people who could use molecular engineering in a zero-gravity environment. They created the Great Mind's Eye without realising its full potential, and the crystal drew the fear, hatred, and evil from their minds, amplified it and fed it back to them. Thus the Mara was born into Manussa and the reign of the Sumaran Empire began.


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