DVD review (region 2)
Directed by Rodney Bennett
Starring Tom Baker, Elisabeth Sladen, Anthony Carrick, John Laurimore, Gareth Armstrong, Tim Pigott-Smith
Release date 8 February 2010

Escaping the Mandragora Helix, the Doctor (Tom Baker) accidentally unleashes Mandragora energy upon Renaissance Italy…

The single element that turns The Masque of Mandragora from a well-put-together example of BBC costume drama of the mid-1970s into a top-flight classic Doctor Who tale is the location filming. The standard BBC period drama approach would normally be enough to turn almost any historical Doctor Who adventure into something special. However, the almost unavoidable (producer Philip Hinchcliffe says it can be filmed nowhere else in a 1976 memo) decision to film the Renaissance-set adventure in the Italianate folly of Portmeirion was inspired. Although most closely associated with late-1960s mindbender The Prisoner (which Hinchcliffe seems to have missed: obviously having too much 1960s-style fun), Clough Williams-Ellis’s North Wales resort gave director Rodney Bennett a lot of versatility in staging the drama.

The same location makes for a nicely different ‘making of’ documentary with The Secret of the Labyrinth (the original working title for the 1976 serial) featuring Hinchcliffe, director Bennett and production unit manager Chris D’Oyly-John all on the location discussing the challenges and benefits of filming there almost 35 years ago. Other talking-head interviews recorded in studio are backed by Portmeirion scenes and locations, and the area also makes for a more-interesting-than-usual Then and Now feature.

It’s great to hear such reminiscences as John Laurimore describing his role as the evil Count Frederico as “an actor’s delight” and Tim Pigott-Smith classing 1970s BBC as the “Rolls-Royce” of drama production. Pigott-Smith in particular has much to say about Tom Baker’s high-jinks on the show, and Baker himself appears on the commentary (alongside Hinchcliffe, D’Oyly-John and Giuliano actor Gareth Armstrong) — although he spends much of his time marveling at the dialogue and pointing out bit players like Pat Gorman, Stuart Fell and Harry Fielder. Hinchcliffe talks gleefully about stealing his inspiration from Roger Corman’s The Masque of the Red Death, and reveals the problems of working with horses.

Louis Marks’s script is a winner, dramatising the clash between science and superstition, skillfully working in the Doctor (Baker) and Sarah (Sladen) and dealing with the demands of cliffhanger serial drama at the same time. Bennett’s direction makes the best of the location and makes great use of the Barry Newberry-designed sets (Newberry talks about his classical art influences in the 26-minute ‘making of’ documentary). All the actors are spot-on in their portrayals, playing it straight. As Pigott-Smith points out, they had to — it was Baker as the Doctor who gets to have fun.

What’s refreshing about these older stories is the self-criticism (and not the dour variety too often offered by Raymond Cusick these days). Hinchcliffe’s praising of parts of the production is given so much more weight as he also criticises those things that didn’t work or that they got wrong. Perhaps it’s the value of hindsight over a greater distance of years, but the makers of recent Confidential episodes could have done with digging deeper into the “hurrahs” and “brilliants” of the now-exiting production team.

Other extras include a timely exploration of the changing TARDIS interior (with a new one about to be unveiled in The Eleventh Hour) including some waspish observations from one-time script editor Christopher H. Bidmead, and a fitfully funny ‘spoof’ making of (with a great Andrew Pixley joke among many others that only seriously involved fans will get: why do they waste disc space on this self-indulgent tosh?). Brian J. Robb

VERDICT: 9/10
One of the finest examples of Doctor Who co-opting the BBC’s costume drama expertise in service of a great science fiction adventure tale.