And so Tegana makes everyone come back out of the TARDIS and return the key once more. There is so much intrigue in this episode it is hard to keep up, but it's hugely enjoyable. Tegana is right at the centre once more and must rank as one of the series' earliest and best villains, well drawn and beautifully acted.
The pace has lifted - at last we meet the Mighty Kublai Khan who turns out to be a frail, if incredibly powerful, old man.
And there is room for comedy with Gabor Baraker's turn as Wang-Lo the Inn Keeper and more especially involving the Doctor and the Khan. The Doctor is almost crippled by so much travel on horseback. Having the Khan and he meet as two rickety old men allows an instant intimacy which prevents the dialogue being restricted by the pomposity of the court.
Ian comes clean to Marco about the TARDIS being able to travel through time, but this ultimately backfires amongst Tegana's machinations.
There a deft mid-episode cliffhanger with:
"The TARDIS has been stolen!"
Eventually though, Ian finds the TARDIS, rescues Ping-Cho, wrestles her money back from Kuiju and finds that the mercenary was paid by... Tegana, who appears, right on cue, to nonchalantly challenge Ian to a sword fight and feature in his fourth cliffhanger of the story. Smooth. A great villain indeed.
A note here about the production values of this serial which, if the wealth of set photographs that exist are anything to go by, were extraordinarily high in terms of sets and costumes, both of which are exquisitely detailed. There is even a monkey:
An odd thing has happened as I've been watching this story that maybe mirrors the long journey, about 30 days, of the story itself. I started off enthusiastically enough, waned a little in the middle, but now I am hooked and a little bit in love with it once more. I confess that I was going to go straight on to the final episode this afternoon, but now I feel like savouring almost being at the end. A little like our travellers themselves.
Until perhaps tomorrow then, dear readers. A pleasure deferred.
Next episode: Assassin at Peking
