Excavating a Television Classic: Pyramids of Mars (1975)
- John J. Johnston
- Sep 2
- 30 min read
The Doctor (Tom Baker) and his companion, Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen) are travelling through the space-time vortex when an entity appears to enter the TARDIS, drawing the ship off course, to land in the locked storage room in a Victorian priory during the year 1911. The room is filled with ancient Egyptian coffins and other funerary paraphernalia from a series of archaeological excavations. The priory is home to Professor Marcus Scarman who has vanished during his recent excavation at Saqqara. In another part of the priory, Scarman’s old friend Dr Warlock (Peter Copely) is questioning the priory’s new inhabitant Ibrahim Namin (Peter Mayock) who has brought many of Scarman’s recent discoveries back with him from Egypt, apparently under Scarman’s instructions. Namin becomes increasingly aggressive when Scarman’s butler is suddenly and loudly murdered by an unseen assailant in the storage room. As the time travellers assist the wounded Warlock in reaching the safety of Laurence Scarman’s nearby hunting lodge, Sarah believes that she has seen a huge ambulant mummy stalking them through the surrounding woods. Laurence (Michael Sheard) is fearful for his brother’s safety when the Doctor detects an automatic warning message being transmitted from the planet Mars, ‘Beware Sutekh.’
Namin gathers his small taskforce of gigantic, lumbering mummies (Nick Burnell, Melvyn Bedford and Kevin Selway) around him to await the arrival of a cloaked and helmeted figure, which travels through a time corridor within an upright Egyptian coffin. Smoke swirls from everything the figure touches, including Namin, when it clutches the Egyptian by the shoulders, on order to wring the life from his body. The figure is revealed to be the deceased and reanimated Marcus Scarman (Bernard Archard) who will oversee the building of a rocket, designed to release Sutekh (Gabriel Woolf), last of the Osirians,[1] from his ancient imprisonment by his own alien race in a chamber beneath a First Dynasty mastaba at Saqqara. Sutekh is an extra terrestrial being from the planet Phaester Osiris, with extraordinarily powerful metal abilities, who plans to obliterate all life throughout the universe, beginning with the planet Earth, which has been his prison for millennia…
Introduction
The mummified dead of ancient Egypt have served as a potent and recurring feature of Egyptological reception since, at least, the publication of Louis Penicher’s Traité des Embaumements Selon les Anciens et les Modernes (1699), which relates, as truth, the unlikely tale of the spirits of two ancient Egyptians haunting a ship, carrying their mummies from Egypt to Europe.[2] However, even for ancient Egyptians, mummies held a degree of fascination with a magical tale, dating from the Ptolemaic Period (332 – 31 BC) featuring the spirit of the mummified sorcerer, Naneferkaptah, inhabiting the tomb and engaging unwary intruders.[3]
Since then, ambulant or sentient mummies have proliferated throughout modern fiction via the media of literature, film, and television. One of these iterations, the Doctor Who serial Pyramids of Mars (BBC, Paddy Russell, 1975), is much celebrated by aficionados of British science fiction and fantasy but rather less known by the Egyptological community. Of course, the mummies, themselves, are only one aspect of a far wider and richer universe, which over four, twenty-five minute episodes, elegantly blends Egyptological fact with apocalyptic fiction.
Beginnings
Doctor Who (1963 – present), television’s longest-running science fiction series, is ideally placed, with its central premise of unrestricted travel through all of time and space, to consider and, given its substantial impact upon the British cultural landscape, expand upon the popular reception of ancient cultures, and, indeed, more recent historical periods. The ancient world has always been of some interest to the series’ production teams, with the four-part, introductory serial, An Unearthly Child (1963), set within the confines of a bleakly savage prehistoric tribe, which is trying to recapture the secret of fire. Thereafter, during its first few years of production the Doctor (William Hartnell) and his companions would go on to visit Neronian Rome,[4] Homeric Troy,[5] and, albeit briefly, Old Kingdom Egypt, during the construction of Khufu’s pyramid at Giza – an event interrupted by both Daleks and Time Lords.[6]
However, it is, perhaps, with the four-episode serial, Pyramids of Mars, transmitted on consecutive Saturday evenings between 25 October and 15 November 1975, that the series most thoroughly engages with the reception of the ancient world, drawing upon not only the history, mythology, and iconography of Pharaonic Egypt, but perhaps more obviously upon many of the tropes which have accreted to the popular understanding of this ancient culture as mediated through film, television, and literature.
During an interview conducted in 1984, Philip Hinchcliffe, series producer from 1974 to 1977, and responsible for overseeing production of Pyramids of Mars, recalled,
We – Bob Holmes and I – had a policy on Doctor Who that had grown out of a theory we’d both discussed. We maintained that most of the children in Britain likely to watch Doctor Who were already watching it. And so, therefore, to maximise our audience we had to aim upwards. We had to raise our standards and appeal to the adults by adding other sides to the melodramas we were producing. We had to give them more excitement, more humour and, overall, make the stories more gripping, to attract previously untapped strata of viewers who didn't normally watch Doctor Who.[7]
One of the ways in which Hinchcliffe and his Script Editor, Robert Holmes, sought to achieve this was by developing the series’ Gothic sensibilities. By 1975, Holmes was becoming increasingly drawn to recognisable themes and characters from the literature and cinema of what is frequently termed Gothic horror. In only lightly reworking these elements for Saturday evening viewing, the production team sought, deliberately or otherwise, to cover ground similar to that only recently trodden in cinemas by the British production company Hammer, from the late 1950s to the early 1970s. Consequently, during the twenty-six episode season containing Pyramids of Mars, serials drew inspiration from such diverse horror influences as the folklore of the Scottish highlands, Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novella The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Earth Dies Screaming (UK, Terence Fisher, 1960), Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein, H. Rider Haggard’s novel of Egyptomania, She: A History of Adventure (1886-7), John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids (1951), The Thing from Another World (US, Christian Nyby, 1951) and Nigel Kneale’s important television serial The Quatermass Experiment (BBC, Rudolph Cartier, 1952).
Arguably, Pyramids of Mars is the truest expression of Holmes’ fascination with the horror genre, containing, as it does, tombs, coffins, ambulant mummies, reanimated corpses, possession, numerous grotesque murders, and the oppressive threat of the past. None of these were especially new to Doctor Who but few past serials had embraced them with such enthusiasm.
Phillip Hinchcliffe recalled, some years later that Robert Holmes was particularly keen to produce a serial set within a somewhat Gothic Egyptological milieu, based on the visual opportunities and fabulously exotic props afforded by such a serial. Together, Holmes and Hinchcliffe would produce the series’ most assuredly Victorian-Gothic pastiche for their eventual swansong The Talons of Weng Chiang (BBC, David Maloney, 1977), combining elements of Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu novels, the Whitechapel murders, Limehouse opium dens, Sherlock Holmes, scabrous giant sewer rats and a psychopathic musical-hall dummy in an atmosphere of swirling mists and rattling hansom cabs.
Cultural Influences
The works of pseudo-archaeologist Erich von Däniken[8] were incredibly popular with the general public, attracted to burgeoning New Age theories during the 1970s and their influence upon Holmes’ scripts for the serial goes without saying: Sutekh is an ancient alien, an Osirian, from the planet Phaester Osiris and as the Doctor explains to Sarah that ‘The wars of the gods entered into mythology; the whole of Egyptian culture is founded upon the Osirian pattern’.[9]One can easily imagine a host of von Däniken adherents nodding sagely and somewhat humourlessly. However, it should be remembered that prior to von Däniken’s works, such concepts existed wholly within the realm of fiction: screenwriter Nigel Kneale posited the idea of aliens augmenting prehistoric humans in his hugely influential television serial Quatermass and The Pit (BBC, Rudolph Cartier, 1958/9), revisited to a considerable degree by Doctor Who, itself, with The Daemons (BBC, Christopher Barry, 1971) in which the alien Azal (Stephen Thorne), ‘who looks like the very Devil’,[10] erupts from an archaeological site in Wiltshire. One of the first such examples may be traced to Edison’s Conquest of Mars,[11] – an unofficial and unauthorised 1898 sequel to H G Wells’ The War of the Worlds (1897) – in which the Martians are revealed to have been the architects of the Giza pyramids. Speaking from personal experience in museums and lecture theatres, it is a concept, which, in the real world, sadly, continues to bedevil Egyptology, as the boundaries between the reality and fantasies of our ancient past become increasingly – and often deliberately[12] – muddied for large sectors of the non-academic community.
Quite apart from the fictions of extra terrestrial interference, in the early 1970s, ancient Egypt was the subject of considerable media attention in the UK. In order to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb, the British Museum hosted, from 30 March to 30 December 1972, a major exhibition featuring no less than fifty artefacts from the tomb of king, including the iconic funerary mask.[13] In total, some 1,694,117 people attended the exhibition across its nine-month residency, with substantial queues reaching around the museum’s forecourt and into the surrounding streets.[14] The BBC broadcast, not only a documentary series, Tutankhamun’s Egypt,[15] but also a guided a tour of the exhibition from broadcaster and historian Magnus Magnusson, on BBC2 on 28 March,[16] less than 48 hours before the exhibition’s opening The documentary’s success, coupled with public interest in the topic, warranted a further screening, this time on BBC1, just three months later.[17]
Although the hullabaloo surrounding the British Museum’s Tutankhamun exhibition had long since diminished by the time of Pyramids of Mars’ eventual transmission, there was a renewal of public interest in ancient Egypt, as substantial publicity was being afforded to the revised version of the exhibition, which was being advertised as embarking on a six venue tour of the United States between 1976 and 1979.[18]
However, it’s worth noting that on 9 August 1972, in the middle of the exhibition and undoubtedly intended to capitalise on its success, children’s fantasy series and achingly 1970s Doctor Who manqué, Ace of Wands embarked on a four episode serial The Power of Atep (Thames Television, Nicholas Ferguson, 1972). Penned by long-time Doctor Who contributor Victor Pemberton, the serial involved a missing mummy, mind control, and a visit to the tomb of an ancient Egyptian sorcerer. As a series, Ace of Wands privileged supernatural elements above science in a manner, which Doctor Who had always been at pains to eschew. Arguably, however, as is the case in Pyramids of Mars, many of the Doctor’s foes control a degree of scientific knowledge, which is often, according to the third of Arthur C Clark’s ‘three laws’, indistinguishable from magic.[19]
Script
Whilst working on the serial Genesis of the Daleks (BBC, David Maloney, 1975), Holmes had contacted the television screenwriter Lewis Greifer, to draft a screenplay, knowing he held an interest in ancient mythology and was particularly fascinated by the possibilities afforded by the nascent but developing New Age interest in ‘pyramid power’[20]and the interest engendered by the photographs transmitted from the surface of Mars by Mariner 9 on 8 February 1971.[21] Unfortunately, upon delivery of his manuscript, it rapidly became evident that Greifer’s script, The Pyramid of Mars, was entirely unworkable on a BBC budget, being set to a large extent at night in the Egyptian galleries of the British Museum, an institution, which did not, at that time, welcome the attentions of television drama productions.[22]
Greifer’s script revolved around the germination of 10,000 year old alien seeds, recovered from an Egyptian tomb, which are to be germinated on the planet Mars. Griefer evidently assumed that the villain of the piece, the Egyptian crocodile deity Sobek, would be appropriate for Doctor Who which had, throughout its history, incorporated numerous monstrously reptilian adversaries for the Doctor. Interestingly, the concept of viable seeds from an Egyptian tomb connects strongly with fascination for ‘mummy wheat,’ which began in the early 1800s and was not finally disproven until 1951.[23]
Holmes was deeply concerned by what he read, stating, some years later, that, ‘The problem with Lewis was that he was incredibly complex with his plotting, which was fine for the other shows he worked on like Special Branch[24] and Fraud Squad[25] but you need a certain clarity with Doctor Who, so that the audience can see where the story is going. Quite frankly, Lewis got lost in the script.’[26] In any event, when it became apparent that Greifer had returned to his role as visiting professor of Television Drama at the University of Tel Aviv[27] and was, in those dark days before email, essentially unavailable for the major revisions which his script required, Holmes had no alternative but to set to work on an entirely new script with an Egyptological slant, retaining only a slightly amended version of Greifer’s title: Pyramids of Mars. The serial was, consequently transmitted with a writer’s credit for the pseudonymous ‘Stephen Harris’. Holmes stated, ‘I wanted the mythology, I got all that from a book [The New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology]. And basically, I wanted a rerun of The Curse of the Tomb [sic] or one of those mummy films.’[28]
Holmes spent most of February and March 1975 rewriting the scripts with Paddy Russell, who had been engaged to direct Pyramids of Mars. Russell remembered that the serial ‘was a problem because the scripts weren’t very strong. We had to keep rewriting it to get a balance on it. Egyptian [sic] was an interest of mine, so I did pay an awful lot of interest to it. The characters were sketchy and the plot had terrible holes in it. When I first read it, it felt like a first draft. I’ve got a very logical mind. I’m terrible for tearing apart thrillers, looking for loose ends […]. On Pyramids I worked closely with Robert Holmes. I came to the production six weeks ahead of shooting. Time enough to go through the scripts and alter things I didn't feel were working.’ [29]
Indulging his personal fascination for late Victorian literature, Holmes’ script drew upon Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1892 short story ‘Lot No. 249’, with its murderous mummy lumbering about through leafy Oxfordshire lanes and Bram Stoker’s 1903 novel The Jewel of the Seven Stars, with its dormant but malevolently potent ancient sorceress, utilising the members of a contemporary archaeological team in order to effect her resurrection.
Arguably, these two tales sit, glittering darkly, at the heart of most modern mummy literature, film, and television. However, such was his love of cinema, Holmes also drew upon later cinematic iterations of these texts – whether or not explicitly cited – Universal’s The Mummy (US, Karl Freud, 1932) and the Hammer Films, The Mummy (UK, Terence Fisher, 1959), and Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb (UK, Seth Holt, 1971). Indeed, it is the latter film, an adaptation of Stoker’s aforementioned novel, which is, perhaps, the most telling here, as the characters make lengthy and elaborate preparations to revive the largely absent Tera much as Namin, Scarman, and the mummies pave the way for Sutekh’s resurgence.
The resulting script is a distinctly less byzantine tale than that proposed by Greifer, the episodes being primarily played out in the estate of an isolated country priory, filled with Egyptian relics, in the Home Counties of 1911, drawing upon the aforementioned fictional tales and the Victorian/Edwardian fascination with collecting Egyptian antiquities.[30]
Production
Establishing shots of the Fifth Dynasty pyramids of Abusir and archaeological excavations at Saqqara, accompanied by Dudley Simpson’s appropriately orientalising incidental music, lend an aura of verisimilitude far beyond the series’ budget of the time,[31] hailing from the documentary The Catacombs of Sakkara,[32] first transmitted under BBC2’s Chroniclestrand on 11 April 1970, which focused on the work at this most ancient of sites by W B Emery, then Edwards Professor of Egyptian Archaeology and Philology at University College London.[33]
This site contains many of the earliest Egyptian royal burials: mastaba tombs, described within the script, somewhat misleadingly, as ‘blind pyramid[s],[34]’ dating from Dynasties I – III. It is here that the date assigned to these episodes becomes somewhat less than arbitrary: this necropolis was not discovered until 1912 and, therefore, the series appears to deliberately avoid the possibility of conflict with the history of Egyptological scholarship. Whilst this fact would be little recognised by the viewing public, it is an element, which would, undoubtedly, have given some enjoyment to Holmes and Russell as they worked on their scripts. It reminds one distinctly of John L Balderston’s decision to have Imhotep’s tomb discovered in the Egyptian sands one year prior to the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb: a little, knowing, historical acknowledgement.[35]
As the tale begins, Marcus Scarman (Bernard Archard), ‘Professor of Archaeology, Fellow of All Souls, Member of the Royal Society’,[36] enters an underground burial chamber, beneath a mastaba in Saqqara. The interior of the tomb, designed by Christine Ruscoe, is filled with paintings recognisable from Egyptian tombs of the XVIIIth and XIXth Dynasties: fishing and fowling from the tomb of Menna,[37] female dancers and musicians from the tomb of Nakht,[38]and deities Osiris, Isis, Khepri with Nefertari from that queen’s gloriously decorated tomb.[39] There is also a beautiful but ostentatiously obvious replica of a throne from Tutankhamun’s tomb, which appears to have been made originally by Bernard and Margaret Robinson for the Hammer Film, The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb (UK, Michael Carreras, 1963). It is a prop, which surfaced with astonishing regularity, in British film and television productions on numerous occasions during the 1960s and 1970s. Scarman states that the tomb must date from ‘the First Dynasty of the Pharaohs’, but this is evidently not the case and there is an obvious and pressing reason: such tombs would not be immediately recognisable to the majority of the viewing audience but these depictions speak of Egypt. Diagetically, of course, it is probable that the cult of Sutekh, of which Namin is evidently a member, and described in some detail in the serial’s novelisation[40] return periodically in order to maintain the tomb, a process last undertaken by artisans of these later dynasties.
In addition to the costumes and properties obtained from storage – a couple of the background coffins in Scarman’s collection had made at least one earlier appearance in The Curse of the Mummy[41] in 1970 – Paddy Russell recalled Costume Designer, Barbara Kidd, visiting the British Museum to undertake research in their Egyptian Department.
Sutekh
The character of the serial’s primary villain, Sutekh, portrayed by Gabriel Woolf, provides an ideal example of the degrees of ancient textual and iconographic reception being addressed by the production team.
Seth (or Sutekh) is one of the earliest known deities in the Egyptian pantheon; typical representations of his high, alert ears, downturned snout and erect tail, dating from as early as c. 4000 BC are to be found at Gebel Tjauti.[42] He is a complex figure, frequent bearer of the epithet, ‘great of strength’; he is, nonetheless, the murderer of his brother, Osiris, and attempts to seize the hereditary throne of Egypt from his nephew, Horus, engaging in a ferocious and bloody battle, comprising deceit, magical transformations, and a homosexual assault. He is the god of chaos and the patron deity of inclement and dangerous weather conditions, the deserts, and of all the lands beyond the Nile valley – a substantial estate – but he also has the nightly task of averting the terrible serpent-demon, Apep, who threatens the sun god’s barque on his nocturnal travels through the heavens. No other deity has the strength to succeed in this onerous task and, as Apep cannot be definitively destroyed, Seth must bind him to the divine barque. Interestingly, in Doctor Who, it is Sutekh himself who is bound by the combined might of the 740 members of his own species. Holmes’ script specifically references this number of deities as being, uniquely, depicted in the tomb of Tuthmosis III.[43] In fact, the 740 deities portrayed within the tomb include a representation of Seth, himself. Whilst this precise but trivial detail suggests substantial research on Holmes’ part, it is, to be found within Viaud’s Egyptological entries, included in the New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology,[44] which was Holmes’ primary and, apparently, solitary research material for the project.
Gabriel Woolf, the actor chosen to portray Sutekh, masked and largely confined, unmoving, to a throne, was chosen by Director, Paddy Russell primarily for his considerable skill as a narrator and radio performer, stating, ‘I chose Gabriel Woolf because of his voice. You need it because you never saw Sutekh’s face. I heard him on radio and his is a superb voice. His stature was a plus.’[45]
The character’s power is conveyed almost entirely by Woolf’s icily velvet tones as he engages in a battle of wills with the series’ hero. The scene is not only a stunning tour de force of acting prowess but contains, for its transmission time of 17:45, dialogue of a surprisingly sexual and sadistic nature as Sutekh describes his adversary as the ‘plaything of Sutekh,’ and threatens to keep the Doctor ‘alive for centuries, racked by the most excruciating pain.’ These lines are far more than merely the ranting of a science fiction megalomaniac and are delivered by Woolf with a lascivious relish, which appears to connect directly with what is known of the mythological Seth’s savage passion for his divine nephew.[46] In 2015, this writer had the opportunity of speaking at some length with Gabriel Woolf about his portrayal and research for the role. Woolf was surprised to learn of Seth’s ancient backstory and stated that he had simply delivered the lines, to the best of his ability, as they were written, which, suggests that Paddy Russell’s knowledge of ancient Egypt may well have influenced this important confrontational scene.
Sutekh appears in two forms during the episodes – masked and unmasked – the mask, evidently, being related to his eternal imprisonment; it vanishes when he is freed. Both headpieces were sculpted by the freelancer, John Friedlander, a craftsman who had created many memorable latex character masks for Doctor Who during the 1970s. Sadly his work on Sutekh was to be his last for the series. The unmasked form takes its cues from the ancient representations of Seth: an unknown mammalian creature, somewhat canid in appearance with high squared-off ears and a long, downward curving muzzle,[47] somewhat similar to that of an anteater. However, once gain, we see a degree of research above and beyond the call of duty – the ears and eyebrows of the mask are tufted with very evidently red hair – one of the mythological Seth’s most striking attributes, and one which certain red-haired Egyptian monarchs, notably Seti I[48] and his son, Ramesses II[49] were keen to exploit in their personal iconography. However, a further, rather different, version of the unmasked Sutekh was used for the start of episode one, when Sarah sees a ‘terrible face, just for a second,’[50] within the TARDIS. Apparently, Paddy Russell took actress Elisabeth Sladen after rehearsals, one afternoon, to Ealing Studios in order to view a series of model faces. The face to which Sladen instinctively reacted to with the greatest revulsion was used in the final serial. The precise origin of this particular model is unknown.
The image of Sutekh, masked, robed and imprisoned upon his throne since the dawn of Egyptian culture has evidently been borrowed from the small, simple, but extremely fine schist figure, usually referred to today as the ‘Barbu de Lyon,[51] excavated at Naqada – a very ancient centre of Seth worship – in 1809 by Louis Lortet and now on permanent display in the Natural History Museum of Lyon, hence its name.[52] Although the figure cannot be precisely identified, it is almost certainly a deity, however, the antiquity of the piece cannot be denied, dating from c. 3800 – 3500 BC. Both Sutekh and the Barbu wear a version of the White Crown of Upper Egypt but here it seems all-encompassing like Sutekh’s restricting mask and the lack of additional features below the sharply pointed beard certainly seem to have provided inspiration for Sutekh’s impotent state. In the serial, Sutekh’s mask appears to incorporate the plumed Atef crown, most frequently worn by the Osiris but also by Anat, an imported warrior goddess, who is said to have attracted Seth’s unwanted and unsavoury attentions whilst bathing, while the eyes of Sutekh’s mask are outlined in red with the typical falcon-marked eyes of Horus. Consequently, Sutekh’s mask contains elements relating to no less than three of his mythological victims. The whole is completed with a uraeus, rearing upon the forehead, although, unlike the headdresses known from ancient representations, the body of the snake, tapers down towards the chin, rather than up and over the skull. It is a stunningly effective piece of work, which elegantly combines both ancient and science fiction design concepts in order to create an image of considerable power.
The Mummies
The design of the mummies – in fact alien service robots – and the helmet worn by Sutekh’s black-garbed servant have a strange bulbous quality with two central vertical ellipses, which appears oddly un-Egyptian, given the otherwise surrounding Pharaonic verisimilitude. They would, however, appear to take their inspiration from the paintings, discovered by Henri Lhote on the Tassili Plateau, located within the Sahara, on the border of Algeria and Libya. Appropriately predating dynastic Egypt, these paintings have been dated to c. 6000 BC. In a somewhat unfortunate turn of phrase, which, doubtless, influenced costume designer, Barbara Kidd, Lhote jocularly described one of the figures, depicted in a mask, as ‘the great Martian god.’[53] While, undoubtedly useful to Kidd’s researches, it is a phrase upon which adherents of the ancient aliens theory have gleefully seized ever since. It is evident, therefore, that Kidd’s research into the prehistory of North Africa, extended far beyond the Nile valley – Tassili Plateau is some 1,900 miles across the Sahara from Saqqara. The question remains as to whether this appropriation was simply an orientalising concatenation of cultures or a deliberate attempt to depict the scale of the Osirian influence upon Earth’s prehistory over a protracted time and wide geographical area before culminating in the Nile valley.[54]
The serial’s mummies, however, arguably, present the least identifiable aspect of Egyptomania evident in Pyramids of Mars. They are unnaturally tall and bulky with peculiarly - and sharply - protuberant pectoral areas. Save for their dusty and discoloured wrappings, these lumbering figures bear little resemblance to the ‘embalmed, eviscerated cadaver(s)’[55]recognisable from museum displays. They are, within the context of the serial, Osirian service robots, mechanical constructs of metal, computer circuits, and wiring, wrapped in bindings which have been, ‘chemically impregnated to protect the robots against damage and corrosion’.[56] Once again, the concept of the influence of Osirian technology upon Egyptian culture is evident: the wrappings, themselves, have a purpose and potency, which would have been recognisable to the ancient Egyptians, taking steps to proprietorially bind the remains of the deceased with linens and unguents.
The Egyptologically inauthentic appearance of the mummies draws upon a number of different aspects, directly related to the series; production concerns. Firstly, the depiction of a more realistic looking mummy would have been largely unthinkable in 1975: the ambulant mummy depicted in Mummy on the Orient Express (BBC, Paul Wilmhurst, 2014) is a far more genuinely horrific creation, influenced not only by the desiccated depiction of Imhotep from Stephen Sommers’ mummy films[57] but also by the changes in audience expectations and comparative maturity across the intervening thirty-nine year period. Despite their imposing but relatively innocuous appearance, Daily Express columnist Jean Rook, singled the mummies out for particular paternal ire in her 1977 interview with Robert Holmes.[58]
There is also a clear connection between the depiction of the mummies and the similarly robotic Yeti in The Abominable Snowmen (BBC, Gerald Blake, 1967) and The Web of Fear (BBC, Douglas Camfield, 1968) where their idiosyncratic appearance bore little relation to the Yeti of legend, while presenting a memorable and, indeed, iconic image of terror for the audience.
Barbara Kidd’s mummy costumes, very slightly tweaked with gilt wrappings for those robots in the service of Horus, are memorable creations in their own right, which, in spite of their hulking blankness, do present something of the tomb. Kidd had been working on Doctor Who with some regularity since the serial Frontier in Space (BBC, Paul Bernard, 1973). Her effective conception of these ancient alien costumes, following hours of research in the British Museum,[59] would lead to her work on a major three-part adaptation, by Frederic Raphael and Kenneth McLeish, of Aeschylus’ Oresteia (5thCentury BC), The Serpent Son (BBC, Bill Hays, 1979), in which the mixture of ancient and futuristic costuming reached somewhat operatic heights as described by Clive James in his Observer review of the trilogy, ‘As Klytemnestra, Diana Rigg had a wardrobe of Pocahontas numbers for day wear. They came with a complete range of Inca, Aztec and Zulu accessories. But it was en grande tenue that she really knocked you out. The bodice of her evening gown featured a gold motif that circled each breast before climbing ceilingwards behind her shoulders like a huge menorah. It was a bra mitzvah.’[60]
Kidd’s imaginative reinterpretation of the ancient world, and Egypt in particular, was engaged once more for the eight-episode drama serial, The Cleopatras (BBC, John Frankau, 1983), which related, with darkly comic relish, the reigns of the later Ptolemaic rulers from Cleopatra II (Elizabeth Shepherd) to Cleopatra VII (Michelle Newell). Kidd’s detailed and sophisticated costumes – the glossy double crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt are particularly beautiful[61] – came in for a substantial degree of press attention during the series’ original, solitary, transmission. Herbert Kretzmer’s damning critique of Kidd’s work in his Daily Mail column of 20 January 1983, perfectly encapsulates the problems in portraying the ancient world with a degree of authenticity which is unfamiliar to modern audiences: ‘What undermines The Cleopatrasfrom the start is the style of dress affected by its male cast. Any man may look elegant in a full-length Roman toga but the chaps in Egyptian drag last night looked just plain foolish…The women fared much better in the fashion department. A dress is a dress is a dress.’[62] This peculiarly misogynistic attitude, largely directed towards the false beards, held in place by leather chin-straps, worn by many of the male Egyptian characters, betrays the difficulty in negotiating attempted authenticity with public expectations. Of course, the problem is further exacerbated by the overwhelming use of Pharaonic costuming during Egypt’s Hellenistic period.
Servants of Sutekh
The concept of the malevolent Egyptologist can be, essentially, laid at the door of two actors during the course of Pyramids of Mars. Bernard Archard’s splendidly ‘other’ Marcus Scarman is, evidently, an homage to Boris Karloff’s Ardath Bey in Freund’s The Mummy, down to the actor’s sepulchral, lisping voice, which mimics Karloff’s tones. However, it is also worth noting that Karloff revisited the world of ‘undead’ of the Egyptologist in 1933 during a return visit to the UK. In The Ghoul (T Hayes Hunter), Karloff portrays Professor Henry Morlant, who believes immortality will be granted to him by Anubis, if he offers the god a priceless jewel, ‘the Eternal Light’ in his purpose-built Egyptianising tomb, after death. Despite considerable atmosphere and an unsettling performance from Karloff, the film is, in fact, a fairly standard old dark house thriller, involving catalepsy and jewel thieves. However, as a reputedly lost film during the 1960s and 1970s, the film gained a degree of critical attention.
Although Peter Mayock’s immaculate and be-fezzed Egyptian devotee of Sutekh doesn't survive beyond the first of the four episodes, his portrayal of Ibrahim Namin continues a tradition largely developed during the Universal mummy cycle of the 1940s. Karloff’s Imhotep in The Mummy appears as both walking cadaver and menacing, apparently contemporary, Egyptian scholar Ardath Bey. However for the four sequels (1940-4) these characters are separated, reducing the far more interesting character of the living mummy to little more than a lumbering killer, precisely as portrayed in Doctor Who. The villainous modern Egyptian, invariably a ‘high priest,’ and, undoubtedly, something of an oriental cipher is perhaps, most effectively realised, cinematically, by George Pastell’s[63] urbanely intelligent Mehmet Bey in Fisher’s The Mummy. Holmes’ script, however, succeeds in supplanting this ubiquitous and rather mundane trope with a far more interesting acolyte character: the animated corpse of an Egyptologist, struggling, at points, to recall his life.
The involvement of Marcus Scarman as the puppet of Sutekh is particularly effective, as throughout the serial Sutekh is referred to as the brother of Horus, leader of the Osirians. While, typically, the two are described in ancient texts as uncle and nephew respectively, there are occasions, usually relating to the unification of the two lands following the closure of their contendings, that the two are described as brothers,[64] as explained by Velde, ‘Horus has grown up and Seth has lost his ascendancy.’[65] As Horus the Elder, the deity is born alongside Seth, Osiris, Isis and Nephthys on the mystical epagomenal days of the Egyptian 365 day calendar.[66] In the Pyramid Texts of the Old Kingdom, the two are viewed as brothers, while, fascinatingly, on the walls of the Fifth Dynasty tomb of Niankhnumn and Khnumnhotep, a scene depicts the musical director at a banquet, instructing his two harpists and three singers to play the piece relating to ‘the two divine brothers’;[67] it is evident that it is Horus and Seth who are being discussed at this point. Of course, within the serial, Osiris, the father of Horus and victim of Seth’s regicide has been entirely removed, allowing for some effective dramatic parallels between the aliens of Phaester Osiris and the Scarman siblings.
Design
In Pyramids of Mars, elements of Egyptian material culture, known to viewers from their almost ubiquitous presence in museum collections throughout the world, lose their recognised religious and funerary functions, attaining, instead, extra terrestrial scientific significance. Canopic jars, elegantly designed by Christine Ruscoe, which would have held the mummified viscera of the deceased as part of the mummification process, become ‘generator loops’ when placed at the cardinal compass points, operating a powerful force field. Each of the four canopic jars, for the ancient Egyptians, had a corresponding compass point; consequently, one can assume that the jackal-headed Duamutef jar, deactivated by the Doctor, must, surely, be placed to the east of the Priory, serving as Sutekh’s English centre of operations.
The elegantly crafted, centrally-placed coffin[68] in the Priory, certainly borrows its full-lipped and youthful visage from the funerary paraphernalia of Tutanakhmun. However, within the serial, it contains not a mummy but a time-space corridor, connecting with Sutekh’s prison in Saqqara.
Sadly, the exterior of the Pyramid of Mars, itself, is never shown onscreen and its sparse décor is decidedly un-Egyptian in appearance: this is clear evidence that the serial had stretched its budget to breaking-point and, consequently, the final episode suffers visually to a considerable degree in attempting to present an entirely new setting. The Eye of Horus, which holds Sutekh in its power is a gloriously 1970s informed science fiction prop and yet, in considering the lotiform stand and the glowing red crystalline stone lying within, its points of origin are apparent. Firstly, the famous wood and painted gesso portrait head of the infant Tutankhamun as the deity Nefertem, rising from a lotus flower as the primordial waters recede at the beginning of all things.[69] Secondly, the central red crystal strongly resembles the crimson glass ring from the hand of Tera in Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb, described in Stoker’s novel as coming from ‘the heart of an aerolite’,[70] essentially, a meteorite, which had landed in in the sand of Egypt, transmuting the silica. In fact, subsequent research[71] has shown that meteoritic glass was used in the manufacture of the carapace of a winged scarab pectoral discovered in Tutankhamun’s tomb.[72]
One final design element requires attention: the ornate scarab ring worn by Namin, actually a slave relay, through which the mummiform service robots are controlled. The ring was designed and manufactured by visual effects designer Ian Scoones, a veteran of numerous Hammer films, including the Egyptologically-themed She (UK, Robert Day, 1965) and The Mummy’s Shroud (UK, John Gilling, 1967). The ring sits along the finger, with the beetle head facing toward the tip in a manner consistent with Ardath Bey’s ring in The Mummy (1932) and contrary to the horizontally orientated scarab rings known from ancient Egyptian. The ring was operated by a tiny battery pack, allowing an internal light to glow within. Scoones, many years later, gifted the ring to a private collector.
Conclusions
As a television drama Pyramids of Mars is an important piece of Egyptomania; it comes just on the heels of Hammer’s mummy cycle 1959-1971, effectively using elements from those films, whilst adding substantially to the mythology of speculative fiction relating to mummies. Having endured a plethora of films where the mummy is little more than a robotic killer, carrying out the orders of a controlling force, Holmes addresses this squarely by making his mummies robots rather than the dead and yet he does not shy away from presenting a reanimated corpse in the form of Marcus Scarman, who after his second demise, resembles, himself, little more than a charred and smoking mummy, arms loosely crossed over his ribcage.
Throughout the serial the skilful melding of authentic Egyptological detail evident in the attention applied to props and sets with fantastical suggests that the production fully understands the games of authenticity it plays with its audience.
Early in the second episode, an unconscious Doctor is dragged into a small hidden chamber by Sarah and Laurence Scarman. Upon waking some minutes later, the Doctor is told that they are hiding in a priest-hole to which he, indignantly, responds, ‘In a Victorian Gothic folly? Nonsense!’ Sarah accuses the Doctor of pedantry and the audience laughs indulgently but there is more to this scene. Robert Holmes is gently removing the fourth wall by drawing attention to the somewhat preposterous mélange of Egyptological concepts alongside Victorian Gothic aspects but in a fun, accessible, modern fashion. Ordinarily, Tom Baker’s Doctor punctures pomposity and deflates danger with a witty aside but in this serial his Doctor is far too concerned to be capable of this. He is disconcerted and, unusually, genuinely frightened by Sutekh’s power. The antagonists’ battle of wills is unlike almost any other confrontation in the series’ history and Tom Baker’s troubled portrayal exponentially raises the threat presented by Sutekh. As such it falls, unusually, to the serial’s writer to offer a little comfort to the viewers at home. It is grim; the entire guest cast is dispatched, horribly, by the time the final credits roll but Holmes is urging his viewers, young and old, to hang on for the ride, because no mater how terrifying this atavistic and omnipotent monstrosity appears to be, Victorian Gothic is frequently nonsense and that is frequently its great appeal.
[1] Throughout the serial Sutekh’s species is pronounced onscreen as ‘Osiran,’ however, within the script, itself, and related publicity materials, the more usual Egyptological spelling ‘Osirian’ is frequently utilised. The latter spelling is preferred in this paper.
[2] Johnston, J J (2013) Going Forth By Night in J Shurin and J J Johnston (Eds) ‘Unearthed.’ Jurassic London, London. 1.
[3] Ibid. 9.
[4] The Romans (BBC, Christopher Barry, 1965).
[5] The Myth Makers (BBC, Michael Leeston-Smith, 1965).
[6] The Dalek Masterplan (BBC, Douglas Camfield, 1965).
[7] Bentham, J (1985) Philip Hinchcliffe Interview in S J Walker, (2006) ‘Talkback, The Unofficial and Unauthorised Doctor WhoInterview Book: Volume Two – The Seventies.’ Telos Publishing, Tolworth 2006. 153
[8] Chariots of the Gods and such like xxxxxxx
[9] Holmes, R. (1975) Pyramids of Mars Episode XXXXX
[10] Sloman, R (1971) The Daemons, Episode Three.
[11] Serviss, G P (1898) in New York Evening Journal, Pub. date 12 January – 10 February 1898, serialized in 26 parts, with illustrations by P. Gray
[12] Anderson, S S (2018) ‘How TV shows use serious archaeology to promote bogus history’ in The Washington Post, 27 December 2018.
[13] Edwards, I E S (1972) Treasures of Tutankhamun. Trusttes of the British Museum, London.
[14]https://www.britishmuseum.org/system_pages/holding_area/archive_tutankhamun/tutankhamun_exhibition.aspx
[15] A documentary series, comprising thirteen, twenty minute episodes, directed by Paul Jordan, narrated by actor Eric Porter, and introduced by then Keeper of Art and Archaeology at the Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh, Cyril Aldred. The series was transmitted by BBC2 on Sunday evenings between 2 April and 25 June 1972. Although these episodes were each rescreened by BBC2, six days after their initial broadcast, they have not, subsequently been repeated. A slight, accompanying volume, Tutankhamun’s Egypt, written by Aldred was published by the BBC.
[18] Stoddert Gilbert, K (Ed.) (1976). Treasures of Tutankamun. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York.
[19] Clark, A C (1973) "'Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination'" in Profiles of the Future: An Enquiry into the Limits of the Possible (revised edition, 1973) Macmillan, London.
[20] A term allegedly attributable to authors Max Toth or Patrick Flanagan, used to describe the phenomenon, allegedly witnessed by dowser Antoine Bovis, in the 1930s, whereby pyramid-shaped structures had the ability, through magnetic fields, to delay decomposition of foodstuffs and cadavers and to retain the keenness of razor blades.
[22] Interestingly, this view had altered by 2009 to accommodate the ITV television serial Primeval, in which a rampaging prehistoric Pristichampus is believed to be the soul-devouring deity Ammit. The short-lived (2007-2011) Saturday evening adventure series was devised as direct competitor to Doctor Who.
[23] Moshenska, G. (2010) Mummy Wheat: Notes on the History of a Myth available at: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/archaeology/research/directory/material_culture_wengrow/Gabriel_Moshenska.pdf
[24] A police procedural drama series, produced by Thames Television between 1969 and 1973.
[25] A police drama series, produced by Associated Television between 1969 and 1970.
[26] Rigelsford, A (1995). Classic Who: The Hinchcliffe Years. Boxtree, London. 50.
[27] Sagall, S. (2003) Lewis Greifer: Obituary available at: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2003/apr/09/broadcasting.guardianobituaries
[28] Production (1988) in In Vision Issue 9, October 1988. 2.
[29] Mummies Boys (1988) in In Vision Issue 9, October 1988. 6.
[30] Johnston, J J (2013). ‘Lost in Time and Space: Unrolling Egypt’s Ancient Dead’ in Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall 2013. 7–22.
[31] The series first foreign location shooting of any kind would not occur until 1979 when The City of Death (BBC, Michael Hayes) required substantial Parisian footage, achieved with a substantially pared down cast and crew.
[33] Bierbrier, M (2012). Who Was Who in Egyptology. Egypt Exploration Society, London. 176-8
[34] Holmes, R. (1975) Pyramids of Mars, Episode Two.
[35] The Mummy (US, Karl Freund, 1932). Of course, Balderston, alongside Arthur Weigall was a newspaper reporter on site in to report upon the protracted emptying of Tutankhamun’s tomb, following its discovery.
[36] Holmes, R. (1975) Pyramids of Mars, Episode Three.
[37] Theban Tomb 69.
[38] Theban Tomb 52.
[39] Queens’ Valley 66.
[40] Dicks, T. (xxxxx) Doctor Who and the Pyramids of Mars. Xxxxxx pp.
[41] An episode of the XXXX series Mystery and XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
[42] Darnell, J (xxxx) OIC
[43] Kings’ Valley XXXXXX
[44] First published in 1959, this volume has been revised and reissued at various points. Holmes would appear to have been using the 1968 edition, translated from the French by Richard Aldington and Delano Ames. The entry for Seth clearly states the variant spellings of his name as ‘Set’ and ‘Sutekh.’
[45] Mummies Boys (1988) in In Vision Issue 9, October 1988. 6.
[46] Johnston, J J (2015) ‘Seth: Seductions and Stelae’ in Stevenson A (Ed.) The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology: Characters and Collections. UCL Press, London. 58-9.
[47] Although there is not the space to fully discuss the mysterious iconography of the Seth animal, a useful modern discussion may be obtained in McDonald A (xxxx) Tall Tails xxxxxxxxx.
[48] His name means ‘Man of Seth.’
[49] Although elderly and white-haired at the time of his death, Ramesses’ mummy shows that he continued to retain his red hair, through the use of henna, until the end of his life.
[50] Holmes, R. (1975) Pyramids of Mars Episode One
[51] Ziegler, C. (Ed.) 2004. Pharaon. Flammarion, Paris. 70-1
[52] Lyons, Museum d’histoire naturelle. Accesssion no. 90000172
[53] Lhote, H. 1973. The Search for the Tassili Frescoes: The Story of the Rock Paintings of the Sahara. (Second Edition). Hutchinson, London. 214.
[54] Kidd’s inclusion of the Tassili paintings may also represent a subtly deliberate attempt to explain, within the context of the series, the desertification of formerly inhabitable savanna grassland into one of the largest desolate areas on Earth as attributable to the ‘wars of the Gods.’
[55] Embalmed eviscerated cadvaers quotation citation required. XXXXXX
[56] Holmes, R. (1975) Pyramids of Mars, Episode Three.
[57] The Mummy and The Mummy Returns XXXXXX portrayed by Arnold Vosloo and through CGI effects.
[58] Rook, J (1977) ‘Who do you think you are, scaring my innocent child?’ in The Daily Express, Friday, 11 February 1977. 7.
[59] Mummies Boys (1988) in In Vision Issue 9, October 1988. 5.
[60] James , C (1979) ‘Belfast Dreamer’ in The Observer, 11 March 1979. 20.
[61] The production team’s rightly-founded belief in the effectiveness of these crowns is evident from their substantial utilisation in the serial’s title sequence.
[62] BBC Written Archive Centre (1983). The Cleopatras – collection of all published UK reviews and newspaper articles. 9
[63] Interestingly, Cypriot-born Pastell portrayed the villainous Kleig, in the 1967 Doctor Who serial Tomb of the Cybermen, which, despite its overtly science fiction trappings, was a mummy tale in all but name.
[64] Velde, T (Set, God of Confusion. 64
[65] Velde, T (Set, God of Confusion. 65
[66] Wilkinson, R H (2003) The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt. Thames & Hudson, London. 161
[67] Reeder, G. (2000) Same-Sex Desire, Conjugal Constructs, and the Tomb of Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep in World Archaeology, Vol. 32, No. 2, Queer Archaeologies (Oct., 2000). 196
[68] This prop, went on to become a museum exhibit displayed in the late, lamented BFI Museum of the Moving Image, prior to being sold as Lot 164 by Bonham’s auction house on 24 February 2010 for £4,800.
[69] Stoddert Gilbert, K (Ed.) (1976). Treasures of Tutankamun. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York. 99.
[70] Stoker, B (1903). The Jewel of Seven Stars, Annotated and edited by C Leatherdale. Desert Island Books, Westcliffe on Sea. 1996. 147.
[72] Stoddert Gilbert, K (Ed.) (1976). Treasures of Tutankamun. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York. 137.