Other than sharing the
title of its first episode and portions of the setting, The Roof of the World has nothing to do with the First Doctor story
Marco Polo. Instead the story is a pretty standard
pseudo-historical in the same vein as The
Talons of Weng-Chiang, with the Doctor, Peri and Erimem arriving in Tibet
in 1917 so the Doctor can participate in a cricket match on the top of Mount
Everest. All is not well as there is an Old
One trapped in the mountain and it takes over the mind of Erimem and it’s up to
the Doctor to stop it. This story is a
blatant rip off of The Hand of Fear as
well as The Abominable Snowmen, and
knowing Rigelsford’s track record with original thought that really isn’t any
surprise as the man wanted to write The
Dark Dimension for the 30th anniversary. This being a preview of his writing really
shows that it wouldn’t have been very good to begin with. Rigelsford writes in a very clichéd manner
that takes directly from other Doctor Who stories, without any sort of intent
to homage, but to rip-off other stories.
It wants to take from the mythology of the Virgin New Adventures, but it
is unable to actually pull the style of these novels off with any sort of
style.
Peter Davison gives a
great performance as the Doctor as do Nicola Bryant as Peri and Caroline Morris
as Erimem, especially considering how out of character they are at different
points in the story. The Doctor and Peri
both come across as extremely bland which may be on par with some of the
television stories, but with the character development seen in these stories it
is completely unacceptable to have them acting like this. Erimem doesn’t fare much better as she gets a
chance to become the whiny companion who has had a life of royalty as a spoiled
brat even if in other stories she has shown that she wasn’t spoiled and is
actually a competent leader, unlike presented here. Again Caroline Morris is trying her best but
it is Rigelsford’s bad writing that causes a lot of the problems. The supporting cast is full of pretty big
British names from the sixties with Edward de Souza, who is most famous for
being in Mission to the Unknown for
Doctor Who fans, as Lord Davey who is basically Lord Cranleigh from Black Orchid which isn’t an interesting character. He is annoying and extremely arrogant. William Franklyn, most famous for playing the
Book in three seasons of the Radio version of Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,
plays the Old One as well as Erimem’s father Pharaoh Amenhotep II in a
performance not worthy of his vocal skill as everything in the story
surrounding the villain comes off as flat.
The biggest draw to this
story is Part Two which is the only part to do some genuine character
building. The Part takes the form of
Erimem’s hallucinations as she thinks she is dead and reflects on her life
while the villain in the form of her father.
As a single episode it almost works as its standalone story and seems
like it could have been an extra possibly titled “Erimem’s Story” as a second
story attached to the three part The Roof
of the World. You can literally
switch to Part Three after the end of Part One and not miss a single
thing. Rigelsford uses that episode as
extreme character development which really doesn’t work well.
To summarize, The Roof of the World is about half good
and half bad as it has some good ideas and a second episode that is absolutely
brilliant at looking into the mind of a character, but the acting,
characterization and main plot just isn’t good enough to keep my interest over
the running time. 50/100
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