Doctor Who: Snakedance – Written by Terrance Dicks & Read by Geoffrey Beevers (BBC Audio)

Snakedance was the second story in Peter Davison’s Fifth Doctor’s tenure to feature a monster known as the Mara. Christopher Bailey wrote both, and in a sense, they offered something that has become fundamental to Russell T Davies’ second stint in the showrunner’s chair – a monster not born in science-fiction so much as in esoteric fantasy, cultural myth, philosophy and even religion.

The Mara is an innately difficult concept to get one’s head around, but anyone that can handle the idea of a talking snake in the Garden of Eden tempting innocent humans to do evil things is pretty much there. The Mara (which seem to be both plural and singular) live in the “dark places of the inside” – manifesting our darkest, most unworthy thoughts in our heads and dreams, but escaping into the material world as a giant, often deeply unconvincing serpent.

When it first showed its fangs in Kinda, it had very nearly everything you could wish for. A jungle setting, a supposedly primitive but actually spiritual indigenous population of telepaths, a colonising force of spacefaring earthlings, a look at the dark side of companion Tegan’s psyche, and some absolutely stellar performances, not least from Janet Fielding as Tegan, and Jeff Stewart as Dukkha, her most sadistic inner Mara. 

When the Mara proved enough of a hit to secure a second story the following season, despite an incredibly poor inflatable snake at the end, Bailey did something intensely clever.

Where the first story had manifested the “demon” in a world where indigenous people were essentially invaded by the “civilised” spacefarers, in Snakedance he showed us two civilisations grown indolent, bored and cynical, dismissing the spiritual tales of the Mara as so much hokey nonsense to be packaged and sold to tourists.

There are two fundamental factions on the planet of Manussa, which we’re told is the “home world” of the Mara. Native Manussans either regard stories of the time when their planet was the basis of a great empire under the Mara as architecturally interesting, or intensely packageable as a source of tourist tat. 

Then there are the Federation people, in this case a royal family in all but name, who are each repellent in their own way. Tanha, the wife of the Federator, is all brittle charm and potentially dark longings for freedom, pinned within a cage of duty. 

But her son Lon (played on TV by a young Martin Clunes, already breaking out the “Dear gods, why me?” expression that would go on to make him a hit as Doc Martin) is perennially, almost life-insultingly bored by everything on the planet he is one day destined to rule.

Whereas the Mara in Kinda gets into the world through a mind sharp with loneliness and loss, in Snakedance it is both personal and cultural indolence that gives the serpent of dark thoughts a way into the world.

Once-meaningful ceremonies and ritual have been debased for tourist-fodder, and the Mara, through Tegan and Lon, determines to restore the reality to the roleplay and resurrect itself, reincarnating the ultimate evil.

There is, however, a third faction on Manussa. It’s minimised and ridiculed, but the Snakedancers are a tribe of simple-living spiritual practitioners who believe the truth of the Mara legends and work to repel and overcome the serpent whenever it appears.

As in Kinda, it is the simple spiritual people who accept the truth of the Mara but are not overawed or overpowered by it who ultimately restore balance to the universe, and in Snakedance particularly, they stand as a counterweight both to indolence, to cynicism, and to materialism.

Yes, in case you were wondering, this was perfectly intriguing family TV in the Eighties.

So, what’s the audiobook version of the novelisation like?

Well, there are some things to note. In both Kinda and Snakedance, the original scripts by Christopher Bailey were freaky and surreal and philosophical and meaningful and not a little joyful, as well as being thought-provoking and just plain scary as hell.

Both times, Target back in the day gave the job of novelising the stories… to Terrance Dicks.

Almost everybody loves Uncle Terrance, it’s pretty much against the law of the fandom not to – but a less airy-fairy, spiritual or even philosophical writer it would be hard to imagine. He frequently claimed that his only “philosophy” of Doctor Who was to make sure that a) something got made that filled the screen at broadcast-time, and b) that wherever possible, whatever filled the screen was a good yarn.

There is, perhaps naturally given that stunning mismatch of authorial intentions, something lost in translation between the TV Snakedance and the novelisation. But before we malign Dicks too much as an unsentimental storyteller, let the record show that the novelisations of both Kinda and Snakedance absolutely do the job of translating the TV version into a novel format, and they do it well. 

The moments where Dicks brings storytelling and world-building to the fore slightly more are well-judged, and leave you feeling like you have a stronger understanding of the worlds on which the Mara surfaces. In a sense, Dicks brings the science-fiction back into worlds that could otherwise feel a little too esoteric to sit comfortably within Doctor Who (at least in the Eighties).

And there are moments here where Dicks deliciously understands that his job is best done by printing the legend – his rendering of Clunes’ Lon keeps the exhaustion, boredom and privilege that oozed like a stink out of the TV performance, and it remains absolutely as entitled as it needs to be to powerfully show the kinds of mind to which something like the Mara would be attracted. 

So what you get from the novelization of Snakedance is a balanced piece of esoteric science-fiction, different enough from mainstream Eighties Doctor Who to still make you sit up and take notice, but also sharply satirical in its depiction of the kinds of mind that could doom a society – those who unpick every wonder, unweave every rainbow, and are left with no option but to wallow in their own sparsely unmagical worldviews.

No really, this was perfectly acceptable from a TV tie-in novelisation of a family science-fantasy show in the Eighties. 

Now, given that Snakedance the novelisation brings that balance without ever once blunting its satirical power, how does it fare on audio?

Well, for Kinda, BBC Audio invited Janet Fielding, who played Tegan in the show and who, in both character and performance, was absolutely central to the narrative, to read the audiobook. 

It was superbly right that she was given the chance to embody everybody in that story, but, even though she’d probably clip a cheeky scallywag round the earhole for saying so, the variety of voices required to bring Kinda properly to life on audio did not seem to be her comfort zone.

Step forward Geoffrey Beevers on reading duties for Snakedance. Beevers is an actor with phenomenal range, and a very neat line in silken menace for someone who is, by all accounts, a perfectly lovely human being. 

So significant is that vocal quality that he was chosen to stand among the pantheon of TV Masters (ironically enough, in another science-fiction retelling of the Eden story of a persuasive evil in a garden, The Keeper of Traken), and has since gone on to become a fan favourite incarnation of the Master at Big Finish audio, adding everything from squeaky glee to seductive destruction to the Master’s repertoire.

Reading Snakedance, he delivers beyond any reasonable expectation, both as narrator, generator of memorable character, and above all, as the voice of the Mara (this time with a significant whack of modulation to give it some proper Snake Lord of the Dark Places welly).

He never feels like he’s rushing through the story, but nevertheless, his reading is such that Snakedance feels like a fast listen. You hang on his every joy-wringing sibilant. If he wasn’t already the Master, Beevers could well make you believe in the embodiment of evil in the dark corners of everybody’s mind.

So Snakedance on audio ends up being a delicious piece of dark, believable satire. It re-introduces the Mara, shows us jaded and stagnant civilisations that have turned all the mystery of metaphysics into cheap and sellable junk, and then shakes that society to its sandals. 

Beevers is worth the price of admission on his own, turning as he does a balanced mixture of spiritual fantasy and satirical sci-fi into something that shudders down your spine with the power of his seductive serpent of the dark places. If the Mara doesn’t stay with you after listening to Snakedance, you’re probably entirely incorruptible and on the side of the angels.

But after listening to Beevers’ reading, you may not be sure that’s a thing you particularly want to be, because, as with his Master, while he makes his evil monsters thoroughly corrupted, he also makes them entirely seductive and terrifically good fun. 

Join the circle of the snake – embrace the Snakedance, and let it slither into your brain. You won’t regret it… Tony Fyler

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