Not marching now in fields of Trasimene,
Where Mars did mate the Carthaginians;
Nor sporting in the dalliance of love,
In courts of kings where state is overturned’d;
Nor in the pomp of proud audacious deeds,
Intends our Muse to vaunt his heavenly verse:
Only this, gentlemen, we must perform
The form of Faustus’ fortunes, good or bad.
So starts Point of Entry by Barbara Clegg and Marc Platt, the words provided by Elizabethan playwright Kit Marlowe who is struggling in the small hours for the inspiration to finish the speech and his latest play. This is the story Doctor Faustus – a tale of magic, dark arts, pacts with the devil and damnation – Point of Entry to some degree follows the same dark path. The story opens in London 1590 – Marlowe meets Don Lorenzo Velez, an emaciated, almost skeletal Spaniard with a reputation for black magic, who is looking for a stone blade from the new world, which has been stolen from a Spanish treasure ship by English buccaneers. In return for help he promises to show Marlowe the worlds of darkness he needs to finish the play:
“Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.
Think’st thou that I, who saw the face of God,
And tasted the eternal joys of heaven,
Am not tormented with ten thousand hells
In being deprived of everlasting bliss?”
Point of Entry is a ‘lost story’ from the 80’s by Barbara Clegg, adapted from her original story outline by Marc Platt for Big Finish. I think is was pitched for season 23, but I can’t see how it would have fitted into either the original proposed run or it’s replacement (Trial of a Time Lord) – especially since it is considerably better than anything in either. This story of alien science as dark magic is divided roughly into three main strands – Marlowe and Velez (the villain of the piece), Peri and Tom (a friend of Kit’s) and the Doctor and Walsingham – coming together at the end with the confrontation with the alien protagonists the Omnim on the pirate ship “The Cormorant’ on the Thames.
Marlowe is an endlessly fascinating character – played beautifully here by Matt Addis. I’ve been interested in him for years, since I read Anthony Burgess’s ‘A Dead man in Deptford’. I’ve seen most of his plays at one time or another – Tamburlaine, Doctor Faustus, The Jew of Malta – one that I have never seen is ‘The Massacre in Paris or Tragedy of the Guise’ his contemporaneous tale of the events of the Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve (covered earlier in this thread). He is a magnificent, if rather bloodthirsty writer – a man who lived on the edge – some aspects of his life and death would not naturally be at home in a Doctor Who story for a family audience (maybe more so a New Adventure novel). Here we have his fascination with darkness and magic, his role as a spy in Sir Francis Walsingham’s service (he was Elizabeth’s spymaster), but the more salacious aspects of his life and death life are only touched upon here. He is feverish, obsessional, running towards the darkness offered by Velez, which most people would be repulsed by.
Velez is a fantastic villain, I think up there with the best (I’ve been saying that a lot lately) – emaciated, skeletal, falling apart – a walking, talking cadaver, accompanied by the sound of flies buzzing about his rotting form – almost a personification of death. He is sustained by human sacrifices that renew and restore his decaying form in a similar fashion to Magnus Greel and his distillation chamber – the flesh creeping back along his skeletal hand as Jack (who the Doctor and Peri earlier rescued from the stocks) is sacrificed.
Marlowe is consumed by the madness of trying to finish his play, desperate to experience what Faustus does – Velez drags him deeper and deeper in darkness and magic. Velez even allows him to fly across the world and back in time via the astral plain to the ‘plains of antique Asia’ to see Tamburlaine (the central Asian king from his play ‘Tamburlaine the Great’) and to see the towers of Troy burning and the fire in Helen’s eyes – – mirroring Faustus’s encounter with ‘the face that launched a thousand ships, And burnt the topless towers of Ilium’ . Marlowe has sold his soul to him in return for knowledge of other worlds, history and the dark arts – mirroring the journey of his Faustus. Velez persuades him to look for the missing Aztec blade, which is about to travel up the Thames aboard an English Buccaneer ship fresh from pillaging Spanish gold, to be reunited with the hilt. During a lunar eclipse (the Point of Entry of the title) this will allow his masters – The Omnim who are trapped on an asteroid which is all that remains of their home planet to travel to this world.
The Aztecs are used here largely to provide colour to the story – representing the exotic, dark and barbarous – mass human sacrifice and mutilation of the tongue by cactus thorn. The unknown of the new world brought back to the old world – which as the Doctor and Peri witness can be just as barbaric and far from the ‘Hey nonny, nonny’ of Elizabethan myth. The Aztec connection is through the Obsidian sacrificial blade that calls to Velez, they have the hilt – carved with the feathered serpent of the god Quetzalcoatl. Likewise Velez possesses an obsidian mirror, which acts a portal to the astral plain. The blade is a fragment of the world of the Omnim world, which fell to earth in the jungles of Mexico, the sacrifices nourishing and strengthening the Omnim as they do Velez. It is another layer on top of the already finely drawn portrayal of Elizabethan England, suspicion of the Spanish connection in the aftermath of the Armada and the attacks on Cadiz and the on going plundering of Spanish ships by English privateers.
Nicola Bryant and Peri get some really good material in this one. Her compassion particularly shines though – for ‘Mad Jack’, who they rescue from the stocks and who is eventually sacrificed for Velez. She also gets some fun moments – impersonating Queen Elizabeth in the denouement. Her relationship with the Sixth Doctor far better drawn and played than it ever was on TV – it is a friendship – he clearly cares for her and they gently mock each other instead of the usual bickering – the Doctor slightly crestfallen at Peri choosing the hat he wanted to wear.
Colin Baker is also terrific in this – a much more amiable, softly spoken fellow here than ever on TV. He is also rather wonderfully a figure of fun – not the most nimble of Doctor’s he ends trapped climbing a portcullis trying to break into of the Tower of London (reminded me of Alan Partridge impaled on the railings on his way to a corporate event). The Sixth Doctor’s costume also comes in for some ridicule – Tom refers to the Doctor’s as ‘The Master of the revels’ or the ‘Lord of Misrule’, Sir Francis Walsingham as a prospective court jester. Their relationship is fascinating – Walsinghan (beautifully played by Ian Brooker) has him tortured on a wrack in the Tower, which he takes quite nonchalantly. In this part of the play, Walsingham gives a terrific speech about the cultural and scientific glories of Elizabethan England and how they are surrounded by enemies, which is true – this is not long after the armada (the Spanish king ‘Philip burnt beard’ is mentioned) and he indirectly references the French wars of God (he was in Paris as English Ambassador during the Massacre).
The conclusion where Peri plays Queen Elizabeth (more II than I) aboard The Cormorant and then later in the streets of London descends slightly into farce, much like a comic interlude in an Elizabethan tragedy. Then back to dark drama as Kit reunites the hilt and blade as the eclipse turns the moon blood red and Velez reappears from the dead, the blade causing the mob to riot. The Omnim (creatures that harness vibration and resonance) start to materialize in the shape of Quetzalcoatl, but are defeated by the ringing of bells all across London. The Doctor has a quiet authority here, he is wistful and regretful at the destruction of the Omnim and the fact that Kit is destined to die young in a pointless brawl. Kit in return writes the Doctor into his play in the line ‘where the philosopher ceases, the Doctor begins’
Overall, it is one of the strongest of the ‘The Lost Stories’ range – rich, lyrical, dark, funny, exactly the sort of story that I wish Colin Baker had on TV and the sort of performance that would have won me over to his Doctor. Whilst at times feeling very much like a contemporary ‘celebrity historical’ Point of Entry has the room to breathe and a depth of character and sense of period that has been slightly missing in TV historical stories for a while now. Overall, an extremely enjoyable, interesting play touched with darkness and the imagery of death.
A Journal of Impossible Things 