TARDIS Log: Marco Polo

Where and when:

The TARDIS has materialised on the Plain of Pamir in the snowy foothills of the Himalayas. As the Doctor informs his companions of the predicament they are in - the complete failure of the ship's electrical systems - they decide to look for fuel for a fire. They encounter instead a Tartar warlord named Tegana and his men. Fearing they are evil spirits, Tegana is on the point of having them killed when they are saved by the intervention of a European man - whom Barbara recognises as the Venetian explorer Marco Polo.

The year is 1289, and Polo is returning to Cathay from a diplomatic mission. He is bringing Tegana to meet with his employer - the mighty Kublai Khan - so that a peace agreement can be reached between him and Tegana's liege Noghai. Polo is also escorting a young girl from Samarkand - Ping-Cho - for an arranged marriage to one of the Khan's elderly councillors.

Polo wishes to leave the Khan's service and return home to Venice, but isn't having much luck persuading him to let him go. He has become too valuable a servant. On learning of the "flying caravan" of the strangers, he hits upon the idea of presenting it to the Khan as a gift - one which will finally secure his release from duty.

The TARDIS is loaded onto a cart which then proceeds on a lengthy journey across the Plain, the Gobi Desert and on into Cathay, stopping off at various way stations on the route.

Initially they are making for Shang-Tu, where the Khan has his summer palace (an inspiration for poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Xanadu). However, a despatch rider intercepts the caravan and informs Polo that the venue for the meeting with Kublai Khan is now his capital at Peking.

The entire journey overland from the Plain of Pamir to Peking takes around three months.

At Peking it is revealed that Tegana actually intends to assassinate the Khan, with Noghai's army massing on the border ready to invade. Marco defeats him in a duel, but Tegana kills himself rather than face capture.

That Marco Polo and Kublai Khan existed as historical figures is beyond doubt. The latter was the grandson of Genghis Khan, and became the first ruler of the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty. Born in 1215, he ruled from 1271 until his death in 1294.

Marco Polo was born in Venice c.1254. In 1271 he accompanied his father and uncle on a journey to Cathay, following the Silk Road, for the purposes of trade.

He quickly became a favourite of Kublai Khan due to his organisational skills, and was sent on various missions of a diplomatic or military nature.

In 1291 he escorted a princess named Kokochin to Persia - the inspiration for Ping-Cho's role in this story - and after safely delivering her he then travelled on to Venice, via Constantinople. By the time he got home, he had been away for 24 years.

His homecoming coincided with war between Venice and Genoa. Polo fought for his city state but was taken prisoner. It was whilst in captivity that he narrated his story to his cellmate Rustichello da Pisa - and this is where some doubt creeps in...

His cellmate was the one who actually wrote the book The Travels of Marco Polo (also known as The Book of Marvels of the World) - and it is widely believed that he used a certain amount of poetic licence in the narrative - wishing, naturally, to present a best-seller. The overall history is generally accepted, but some of the specific incidents may have been fabricated to liven up the narrative.

There is certainly no mention of a strange Doctor or his magical blue flying caravan. Perhaps Rustichello thought this was pushing the fantasy too far to include, or Marco simply decided to keep this part of his adventures to himself.

After his release from prison, Marco Polo went on to enjoy a successful mercantile career in his home city, dying in January 1324. He is buried in the Church of San Lorenzo.

Unseen journeys:

Susan has seen the metal seas of Venus - but has never seen a moonlit night. She must mean "like this one" surely. She lived in London for five months and has been to other times in Earth's history and to other planets. One explanation might be that her over-protective grandfather only ever allowed her to go to the school and confined her to the safety of the TARDIS at all other times - which might go some way to explaining her lack of knowledge about British currency in 1963.

The TARDIS:

Despite the interior of the TARDIS only featuring in three short scenes, the ship does have a significant role to play in Marco Polo. It is, after all, purloined by the Venetian adventurer so that he can give it to Kublai Khan as a present. The Doctor and his companions are denied access to it, other than when he and Susan are permitted to sleep in it for one night during their trek across the Gobi Desert.

The TARDIS had materialised in a snowy landscape at the end of the previous story, and some time seemed to have passed before the travellers go outside to explore - after Susan and Barbara find what appears to be the footprint of a giant.

The Doctor goes back inside the ship, then emerges moments later to announce that there has been a failure in one of the key components. This is the 2LO circuit, which has burnt itself out. 

It is a vital part of the ship's electrical systems, and without it they have no heating or light. The Doctor also states that they won't have any water either, so presumably its loss means that the Food Machine has no independent power source. (It also implies that the TARDIS has no kitchen or bathrooms, unless they too are electrically powered).

The Doctor has Susan go into the TARDIS to fetch the circuit out to him, and he thinks it unlikely that he will be able to repair it before nightfall. It appears to be a chunky black box, full of wiring.

After examining it, the Doctor announces that he will have to make a new one, and this could take days.

It's another vital component, like the Fluid Link, for which the Doctor has no spares.

The TARDIS appears to have some form of altimeter, as the Doctor is able to state that they are several thousand feet above sea level (though this may simply be the result of his visual observation of the terrain and an assessment of the oxygen levels).

Marco Polo takes the Doctor's key - and he hasn't gotten round to making a new one for Susan yet (lost when used to sabotage the Dalek city's surveillance systems). He will make a new key, in a single night, whilst they are stopped at an oasis. He uses it to sneak into the TARDIS to repair the 2LO circuit, until Marco finds out and the ship becomes too well guarded.

In reference to the 21-barrel lock mentioned in The Daleks, the Doctor does warn Polo not to use the key himself. (The odd thing is that Polo never once shows any interest in seeing the inside of the "flying caravan" which he sees as key - no pun intended - to his release from service. Not once does he insist on being shown the interior).

The TARDIS can be lifted onto, and carried by, a wooden cart, drawn by a single horse. Its weight must therefore equate to that of whatever it currently resembles.

As mentioned, the Doctor and Susan are permitted to spend a night in the TARDIS when they are in the middle of the desert. The caravan's water supply has been sabotaged by Tegana, and the nearest oasis is a day's ride away.

Unfortunately, we don't get to see the Doctor's sleeping place. The episodes are lost, and the only telesnaps of this brief scene are two close-ups of the Doctor's face as water drips on it. There's simply a black background. All we do know is that Susan is sleeping next to him, as he tells her to wake up and fetch some means to capture the water. The suggestion is that he is in her room, sleeping on the bed that Barbara was using.

The Doctor does sleep - so must have his own bedroom. That he is sharing here might simply be down to the fact that he has a touch of heatstroke and Susan wants to keep an eye on him.

The reason that water is forming inside the TARDIS is condensation. The ship's interior is being heated by the sun during the day, then cooling at night - meaning that the ship is susceptible to atmospheric conditions outside its shell, despite it supposedly existing in a separate dimension. (The loss of power may be the reason for this, with some protective shielding also disabled).

The Doctor attempts to get the TARDIS back by playing backgammon with Kublai Khan. He starts off well, winning 35 elephants with ceremonial bridles, trappings, brocades and pavilions; 4000 white stallions; 25 tigers; the Sacred Tooth of Buddha; and all the commerce of Burma for one year. He then hits a losing streak and is left with only a piece of the Khan's new paper currency.

That Ulster coat which used to belong to Gilbert & Sullivan is left behind somewhere, but Ian, Barbara and Susan all depart with 13th Century Chinese silk outfits to add to the TARDIS wardrobe. 

Ian will like his so much he wears it for the next story...

Behind the Scenes:

The obvious starting point for this story would have been in the TARDIS console room, when it suffers its electrical breakdown. However, director Waris Hussein and designer Barry Newbery decided to use the limited space of Lime Grove Studio D to concentrate on the story-specific sets required for the opening episode.

The console room set is used only once throughout this entire seven episode story. This is for the sequence at the end of Rider From Shang-Tu, the fifth episode, when the travellers have gained access to the ship but are waiting for Susan to join them. We only have a couple of telesnaps from this scene also, and it looks like only one corner of the set was used, comprising a couple of walls. One has the roundels, whilst the other has a series of vertical lights and is actually a large rectangular pillar-like block which was used in several of the early stories.

Assassin at Peking closes with a shot of the Doctor and his companions standing around the console - but this is clearly set up in front of black drapes in a corner of the studio. Again, this would be due to the size and number of sets needed for the final episode. A star-scape is superimposed over this scene.

We can detect the hand of Story Editor David Whitaker throughout these early stories. There was no real need for the Doctor to take his hand-held radiation meter outside the TARDIS on arriving on prehistoric Earth - there's a built-in meter on the console after all - but it had to be disposed of before the travellers reached Skaro, otherwise The Daleks would have been a very short story indeed. Likewise, Susan had to lose her key in the Dalek city for this story to work. We know she had one as she let herself into the TARDIS on coming home from school before the Doctor got back. The plot relies on there being only a single key to the ship.

2.L.O. was the old BBC radio transmitter for London, based in Marconi House on the Strand. It got its name from being the second London radio licence issued by the Post Office. It began broadcasting in May 1922 under the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company, before being operated by the BBC from November that year.