In Snakedance, the Doctor spends much of his time running about and trying to figure out how to stop the Mara. He learns from discussion with some of the historians that there is a legend on the planet that speaks of the Mara's return (for it had already been a strong presence on the planet centuries before this story took place). However, their minds are closed to the prospect of the Mara returning, caught up in the idea that it is just a legend, and failing to take in new evidence to suggest that their current theories are false.
This is epitomised in a scene towards the end of this episode, where the Doctor bursts into a dinner gathering and attempts to tell everyone that the Mara is going to return, only to be dragged away by the guards. It's an important scene, because not only does it tell of the blindness to the truth that everyone besides the Doctor has, with respect to the return of the Mara, but also of the fact that the Doctor is completely failing in his quest to be taken seriously. The Doctor has been, at least for his past couple of incarnations, a strong presence, the sort of person who walks into a room and is immediately able to take command. In his fifth incarnation, however, he's lost that commanding presence, and this means that he's even more alone as he tries to fight off the threat of the Mara. It's an interesting direction to take the character of the Doctor in, and one that we'll see again, albeit rarely (the most prominent example that personally comes to mind is Midnight, from 2008), and shows that the series isn't afraid to take the Doctor in some new directions, if only to liven up the general story structure for a little while.
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