Dene October, Marco Polo, The Black Archive 18. Edinburgh:
Obverse Books, 2018.
Reviewed by Minjie Su (minjie.su@linacre.ox.ac.uk)
Among all the missing Doctor Who episodes, Marco Polo – the
fourth serial of the first season – is no doubt one of the most lamented
losses. Initially aired between 22 February and 4 April 1964, the seven-episode
serial is not only critically acclaimed for its beautiful costume design,
careful staging and elegant (albeit slow) story-telling, but is also quite
unique, in the sense that it marks Doctor Who’s first attempt at history drama,
in which a historical figure takes the lead, while the alien and the sci-fi
step back.
However, in a digital era as is ours, the loss of the
original does not mean the story’s total disappearance. At any rate, these
episodes are by no means forgotten. The past decades have seen a Marco Polo
novelisation (1985) created by John Lucarotti (who was responsible for the
original screenplay), fan theories and discussions, reconstruction with
photographs and pictures, and the Loose Cannon reconstruction with a new
introduction voiced by Mark Eden, the actor who played the title role in 1964.
Indeed, the missing Marco Polo episodes have become a
component of the collective memory and a cultural phenomenon, and their ever-changing
role itself a worthy subject for a cultural study. Therefore, it felt almost
overdue when Dene October’s Marco Polo was published by Obverse Books, as part
of its The Black Archive series. In this multifaceted book, October traces not
only the history of the serial, but also that of The Travels of Marco Polo. In
doing so, he establishes several parallels: between the show’s development and
The Travels’ transmission and remediation history, between the Doctor and Marco
Polo, and between TV and a more traditional type of literature. Binaries are
challenged, boundaries are crossed, and the readers are invited to reconsider
TV’s role as a medium and, most importantly, to reflect upon key issues such as
identity, continuity, and cultural difference.
Intriguingly, such issues are just as relevant and
applicable to studies of the Middle Ages and medievalism. Although October does
not approach his subject from a medieval/medievalism perspective, or explicitly
mention the subject, he presents a thought-provoking case study of the long and
changing life of a medieval text – how it is created (noticeably originated
from an oral tradition), transmitted, translated, redacted, appropriated, and
given a new life in the centuries to come. He then ponders the comparability of
this process and the development of Marco Polo and, from there, TV and film
production in general, foregrounding the sense of continuity. Last but not
least, since the story of Marco Polo takes place in the Yuan Dynasty in China
(1271-1368) and involves characters of different backgrounds (the Gallifreyans,
two ‘modern’ earthlings from 1960s England, Marco Polo, the Mongols, and the
Chinese), its stark diversity allows October an opportunity to draw attention
to the cultural and social construct of the ‘other’ in the attempt to define
‘us’. Overall, October’s book shows us that, however fanciful their facades may
seem, stories speak to the worlds and minds of those who create and enjoy them.
Instead of dismissing them out of pride and prejudice, one must learn to
penetrate the appearance to grasp the essence and find common grounds in
seemingly different things. This way of thinking is also one of the keys to
unlock the medieval mind.
In terms of structure and content, Marco Polo the book runs
in parallel to Marco Polo the serial, as each chapter is named after a
corresponding episode and shares with it the same theme. Headed by an
introduction that provides the readers with a few basic facts and a synopsis,
the first chapter – ‘The Roof of the World’ – begins with the opening scene of
the serial: Susan and Ian’s discovery of a mysterious footprint in the snow in
the Himalayas, and their debate as regards to what kind of creature it may
belong. The fanciful/supernatural and the rational/scientific are posited in
clash with each other, but the matter remains unresolved, for each explanation
holds in its own reasoning. As the book unfolds, a similar white-or-black way
of thinking is presented at every turn but is problematised and challenged by
the author’s refusal to voice any confirmation.
‘The Roof of the World’ turns out a rather apt name for
Chapter One. For roofs define a space and set a limit as to how far we can
reach, but at the same time provide a platform on which we may look into and
dream about the distant horizon; Chapter One does precisely that. On the one
hand, it contextualises the serial’s creation in the debate over popular
history (television) v. elitist, academic history (book). On the other, it
heralds some recurrent themes of the book and allows the readers a glimpse of
what to expect. In particular, Chapter One breaks down the popular-academic
binary by detailing for the readers The Travels’ historical background, its
composition and co-authorship with Rustichello da Pisa, an Italian romance
writer, and the manuscripts’ transmission and redaction, drawing attention to
its similarity to the writing and making of a TV programme. By doing so,
October shows the ambiguity of historical sources, reminds us not to let our
judgement be clouded by prejudice, and points out the contemporary relevance of
the medieval material.
The same subjects are continued throughout Chapters Two and
Three but approached from two specific aspects of filmmaking: Chapter Two, ‘The
Singing Sands’, focuses on voice while Chapter Three, ‘Five Hundred Eyes’,
focuses on image and gaze. October begins both chapters with a detailed
discussion of technical issues such as special sound effect and camera
direction, which may prove hard and somewhat tedious for lay readers. But he
then turns to character development and remediation. Two points are
particularly noteworthy. First, in Chapter Two, October reads the sandstorm as
a metaphor for media, where he ponders television’s capacity to convey, mask,
and transform voice. He then turns to adaption and remediation, treating each
version of Marco Polo’s story – be it a medieval text or a Netflix series – as giving 'voice to a culturally specific version of The Travels and equally mak[ing] Marco a spokesperson for that cultural point of reference’ (p. 56). Second, in
Chapter Three, October highlights the role of the camera in presenting and
communicating the story to the audience in the way that pure words cannot. In
particular, he introduces the concept of ‘reflector relationship’ – pairing of
characters that can ‘grant audiences insight beyond what is possible through
the external focaliser’ (p. 77). In other words, the way a scene is staged and
shot helps to reveal a character’s unvoiced mind through his/her pair’s
behaviour and the movement of the camera, which may in turn better our
understanding of the character in the original text.
The following two chapters – ‘The Walls of Lies’ and ‘Rider
from Shang-Tu’ – turn to more abstract topics and focus on the trope of travel.
In the former, October explores memory as media and reads its retrieval as a
form of ‘mental’ travel. Here, he reverts to the footprint and the debate
raised in Chapter One, and problematises memory (and television)’s reliability.
After all, it is a social and cultural construct; its retrieval is not linear
but ‘hops around’ in time and space just as the Tardis, and like the Tardis
(that which does not always land where it is expected to), memory too is
subject to human error. The same can be said for the writing of The Travels,
which occupies a central place in Chapter Five. Unlike what the serial would
want us to believe, the historical Marco Polo did not write his travelogue en
route but revisited his memory years later. The process itself is ‘very
Tardis-like in hopping between one time-place and another’ (p. 105). In other
words, it is a product of virtual travel as much as of physical travel. From
there, October extends the discussion to cinematic experience and underlines
the similarity between watching a TV programme or a film and reading travel
writings in the Middle Ages.
If there is a journey, there must be a destination and a
home, which October reads as metaphors for ‘other’ and ‘us’, respectively. In
the last two chapters – ‘Mighty Kublai Khan’ and ‘Assassin at Peking’, as the
characters are finally brought face to face with the Great Khan, the supposed
‘other’, we as readers are invited to consider how remediation mirrors our own
time and culture – after all, when we look at the television screen, we are also
looking at our own reflections. October details Marco Polo’s description of
Kublai Khan in The Travels, compares it to other contemporary accounts, and
concludes that his travelogue too is a (re)mediated text: ‘when Marco speaks of
the other it is through an agent of mediation that is hidden, that understands
difference through an imagination of sameness (one mediated by the memory of
home Marco carries with him and that is familiar to his audience)’ (p. 133).
Likewise, Doctor Who presents a world of the other ‘promoted by an assurance of
European superiority that post-war era had only just begun to question’ (p.
134).
However, where there is clash, there is conversation.
Quoting Syed Manzurul Islam’s The Ethics of Travel, October identifies two
types of travellers (and TV audience): the sedentary and the nomadic. The
sedentary traveller refuses to be changed, their encounter with the ‘other’
only serves to confirm their own identity and superiority. The nomadic
traveller, however, is not afraid to cross the boundary and embrace the
‘other’; as they journey on, they constantly review and revise their own
identity, gradually becoming ‘othered’. Marco Polo is such a traveller, and so
is the Doctor, who through the decades transforms from a higher intelligence
who sees the Earth as a barbarian place to the inspiring hero that (s)he has
become in later seasons.
Finally, in Chapter
Seven (which also serves as a conclusion), October revisits the public v.
academic binary and invites us to recognise the transformative power of
stories, no matter through what media they are conveyed, and to reflect through
these stories. The message is as relevant to medievalists as to those in film
or cultural studies, especially when we take into consideration the rise of
white supremacy in recent years and xenophobia emboldened by the current
political climate. Although it seems a pity that Marco Polo the book does not
touch upon these topics, it nevertheless calls these issues to mind and urges
us to compare the Middle Ages and our era, and to consider what we may learn
from our representation of the past and the ‘other’. All of this, I think,
boils down to a simple question: which type of travel do we want to be, the
sedentary or the nomadic?
Minjie Su
Linacre College, University of Oxford
