Day 19: Mighty Kublai Khan

There have been recent rumours about how this serial may have been returned to the BBC archives, after being lost/junked for several years. This is something that I hope is true for several reasons, reason number one simply being the ability to tick the box saying "fully returned to the archive". Reason number two is to appreciate the subtleties of the performances that you can infer, but you cannot actually witness from just listening to the audio. Mark Eden, who plays the eponymous Marco Polo, has a voice which infers hat he struggles with every single decision that he makes. Being able to see what his facial expressions are, and what Waris Hussein, the director, wishes to show as he makes these decisions would be fascinating. Likewise, Tegana's performance would also be interesting to witness, and Waris Hussein's direction in general would be lovely to see, given that he proved himself well with An Unearthly Child. My third reason for why Marco Polo should be returned is that this story is actually incredibly funny. The problem is, most of this humour is physical, such as Ian pretending to be drunk to fight off a guard, the Doctor doing his back in whilst attempting to Kowtow for the mighty Khan, and indeed the curiosity of seeing the Doctor engage in a sword fight with some Mongols. These are all things that you want to see, but you can't thanks to the BBC's infinite wisdom when it comes to preserving these stories for the ages. But then again, we still have hope...