Doctor Who: The Masque of Mandragora

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The Masque of Mandragora is the opening serial of Season 14 of Doctor Who, first broadcast in four weekly parts on BBC1 from 4 to 25 September 1976. It was written by Louis Marks and directed by Rodney Bennett. It stars Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor, Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith, Gareth Armstrong as Giuliano, Jon Laurimore as Count Federico, Norman Jones as Hieronymous, and Tim Pigott-Smith as Marco.

Drawn through the Mandragora Helix, the TARDIS arrives in a small Italian principality during the Renaissance, where a living energy force rides to Earth to turn curiosity back into fear. As Count Federico schemes to seize power from the young Duke Giuliano, the Helix uses the secret Brotherhood and the astrologer Hieronymous to stage a deadly ritual. The Doctor and Sarah race from palace halls to torch-lit catacombs to expose the plot, protect Giuliano, and outwit the Helix at a grand masque. It is a rich, atmospheric tale where reason and science battle superstition, and the Fourth Doctor’s wit shines against shadow and intrigue.

Episode 1

The TARDIS is dragged into a whirling storm of light, the Mandragora Helix, and a spark of living energy slips aboard before the ship flings itself out again. The Doctor and Sarah step into moonlit Italy, late fifteenth century, and stumble on a hooded ceremony to the old god Demnos in the ruins near the duchy of San Martino.

Sarah is seized by the brethren and carried below to a stone altar. At the palace, Duke Giuliano, a young humanist, prepares for his investiture while his uncle, Count Federico, schemes to seize power with the help of his court astrologer, Hieronymus. The Doctor tracks Sarah into the catacombs just as the Helix spark slithers from the TARDIS and dives into the brazier’s flame, turning the shrine’s fire a hungry, unnatural red.

Hieronymus, sensing new power, swears the brethren to secrecy and tightens their grip on the countryside. Federico orders the Doctor arrested as a spy and spreads whispers of ill omens. In the temple, the flames flare and a voice announces a plan to halt the rise of reason on Earth. Sarah fights her bonds; the Doctor crashes the ritual and gets them both away (barely) while the flame coils like a serpent and chooses a vessel.

Episode 2

Hieronymus returns to his observatory changed. When he lowers his mask, his face is a starfield: Mandragora wears him like a robe. It commands the Brotherhood of Demnos to bring the duchy under terror and to prepare a great working during Giuliano’s masque. Federico moves fast: he arrests the Doctor, mocks “sorcery,” and schedules a public beheading to cow the court.

Giuliano, rational and brave, shelters Sarah and a few loyal scholars, arguing for lenses, engines, and the new learning while assassins lurk in tapestries. At dawn the axe rises; the Doctor wriggles and bluffs with a volley of words long enough for Sarah to trigger a commotion. They bolt through market alleys as soldiers thunder past. The Doctor lays out the true threat: Mandragora is living astral energy, and it has chosen this moment to strangle the Renaissance before it can transform the world.

In the catacombs, the brethren rehearse a rite; the flame answers in pulses that scorch the air. Federico bullies Hieronymus for better omens and is warned to let fear do the work. That night the Doctor infiltrates the temple in a stolen cowl, sees the star-faced astrologer vow to extinguish reason, and realises the Helix will strike during the revels: when every great house will be gathered.

Episode 3

Giuliano arms his few loyal guards and opens dusty workshops, trusting the Doctor’s talk of magnets, wires, and “bottled lightning.” The plan is audacious: lace the banqueting hall with a hidden circuit to trap Mandragora’s discharge and turn it back on itself.

Sarah shadows servants through secret passages, mapping routes the brethren might use to reach the palace. Federico, scenting victory, orders Giuliano poisoned and the Doctor recaptured. In the ruins, the Helix swells with each sacrifice; Mandragora declares that superstition will reign and men of learning will be burned or silenced. The Doctor raids the armoury for copper and iron and rigs a crude conductor behind tapestries and cornices, threading wire beneath the dais. Sarah is seized by hooded figures and dragged toward the altar.

The Doctor bluffs as a Demnos adept, scatters the rite with smoke and sparks, and escapes with her through a tomb door that collapses behind them. Federico storms the observatory to force a favourable prophecy; Hieronymus lifts a hand and blasts him from his feet, the count’s ambition ending in a curl of smoke. The masque approaches. Courtiers pour into the candlelit hall in feathered masks and bright silks, unaware that star-fire is gathering in the cellars below and the ceiling itself is wired for a duel with a god.

Episode 4

Music swells, dancers wheel, and the Brotherhood slips among guests as drummers pound. Above, the Doctor gives Giuliano his one instruction: when the torches gutter blue, keep everyone inside the circle of pillars. Hieronymus enters, robes blazing, and the candles bow toward him.

Mandragora speaks through a chorus of star-lit faces and pours energy into the room to kill the prince and choke the newborn age of science. The hidden circuit hums. Arcs snare the discharge and drag it along the iron spine the Doctor has threaded through the hall. Hieronymus senses the trap too late. The current whips back into the brethren; light floods the masks; one by one they burst like meteors, the link overloading and snapping. The starfield shudders, scattered through the wires, and gutters out.

Silence falls, then the human noises return: breath, weeping, astonished laughter. Giuliano survives to rule; the court sees “sorcery” beaten by craft and courage. The Doctor warns that Mandragora is not destroyed forever, merely driven off. He then helps Sarah clear the last of the apparatus before the curious crowd descends. In the observatory, the telescope waits for a kinder age. Dawn slides over tiled roofs. The TARDIS hums; the travellers step inside and vanish, leaving a world ready to think for itself.

Themes

As a velvet-curtained pivot into Season 14, The Masque of Mandragora trades the savage rush of The Seeds of Doom for candlelit intrigue and “science in ritual robes,” and it wears the shift superbly. The Renaissance setting, the Brethren’s pageantry, and Tom Baker’s cool severity create a production that feels both stately and lethal.

It doesn’t quite reach the mythic voltage of Pyramids of Mars or the feral certainty of The Brain of Morbius, nor does it swagger with the operatic command later found in The Talons of Weng-Chiang, but it outclasses breezier Earthbound romps and lands comfortably in the upper mid-tier. Measured against its neighbours, it’s a poised, elegant statement: less roar, more razor.

Continuity-wise, the serial stitches threads with quiet precision. The debut of the wood-panelled TARDIS control room signals a new aesthetic confidence, while the “occult dressed as astrophysics” idiom carries forward the gothic science of Pyramids of Mars and The Brain of Morbius. Sarah Jane’s presence anchors the lingering warmth of the UNIT years even as the show tilts toward baroque politics and darker self-scrutiny, pointing directly to her farewell in The Hand of Fear and the Gallifreyan reckonings of The Deadly Assassin.

From here, the season will march into the cool precision of The Robots of Death and the grand guignol of The Talons of Weng-Chiang; by its final unmasking, The Masque of Mandragora has reset the stage: refined, assured, and ready for the shadows to deepen.

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This is a chapter from Craig Hill’s book “Doctor Who – The Fourth Doctor”, chronicling every episode featuring the Fourth Doctor. It is available on Amazon.

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To view the list of other Doctor Who serials, please click this link

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