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WATCH ALONG | CLASSIC DOCTOR WHO | 14x4 | The Masque of Mandragora: Part 4
🕑 Added 2025-06-03 06:03:05 +0000 UTCNOTE: I've been informed that I need to watch The Mark of Rani from season 22 before watching episode six of the current season on modern Doctor Who; which I plan to record this week. I've also been informed that story is only two parts, but that both parts are about 45 minutes long. So, we'll be jumping ahead to part one this week, will do part 2 next week, and then we'll resume our regular schedule of two episodes per week on June 19th.
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A Few Notes:
Please no spoilers beyond this episode unless you see that later episodes have already been released. In that case, no spoilers beyond those episodes.
This reaction is in a watch-along format. This means you'll need your own copy of the episode to watch alongside my reaction. This is in an effort to avoid copyright infringement.
If you're based in the UK (or using a UK streaming site), here are instructions for how to get your copy to sync with mine.
The show footage will play for the first 30 seconds with both video and audio. After that, the show footage will be silenced, and the video will be blurred for the remainder of the episode. There is also a count-up timer that begins once the episode has started. These things will hopefully make it easier for you to keep your copy of the episode synced with mine.
This episode was viewed on BritBox via Amazon Prime.
If you want to know what’s coming up, check out the schedule here.
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Comments
Steven Cooper
Yes, Sarah's suddenly appearing coat in the final scene is amusing. It was obviously very cold when that scene was shot (the actors' breath can be seen several times), and having her shivering would give away the very un-Mediterranean climate of Portmeirion in Wales where the story was actually filmed... :-)
Azmat Mahmood
I like The Masque of Mandragora quite a bit, I enjoy the renaissance setting and how the story explored the superstitious beliefs of someone like Hieronymous vs the enlightened views of people like Giuliano. At this point in history the world was at a tipping point and the discoveries and innovations of people like Galileo and Leonardo Da Vinci (both of whom were mentioned in this story) would change the world and lead to enormous progress and bring the world out of the dark ages. This makes it the perfect time for the Mandragora helix to come to Earth and try to keep it plunged in the dark ages by exploiting the superstitious ways of Hieronymous. It could see the outcome of all that progress and it knew earthmen would eventually leave to explore the stars. It didn't want that and wanted superstition to win out over progressive ideals because it didn't want a rival power within its domain. That's honestly a really inventive motive for a villain and a great way to show how damaging the beliefs of people like Hieronymous were and how the world needed to move beyond all of that. This is a very good story, but no one ever talks about it and that's a shame. I guess you could say The Masque of Mandragora is this seasons Planet of Evil because like that story, it's simply overshadowed by other stories in this season which are much better. There aren't many people, if any that would count this story among the many classics of the Hinchcliffe/Holmes era, but it's definitely still a very good story Just goes to show how incredibly consistent this era is overall.
