2entertain have released the final cover art for Fifth Doctor DVD boxset Mara Tales, which stars Peter Davison, Janet Fielding, Sarah Sutton and Matthew Waterhouse, with a handful of interesting guest appearances.
The boxset features the stories Kinda and Snakedance, and basically the adventures see Tegan (Janet Fielding) terrorised by a psychic entity, The Mara. Guest stars include Martin Clunes (Men Behaving Badly, Doc Martin), British movie star Richard Todd, Nerys Hughes (The Liver Birds), Adrian Mills (That’s Life, no really), Anna Wing (EastEnders), Simon Rouse (The Bill), Jonathan Morris (Bread), Brian Miller (Mr Lis Sladen) and others.
Here’s how Andrew Reynold’s described the episodes late last year:
In Kinda, Tegan falls under the spell of the Mara, tormenting a team of scientists studying the naive but telepathically gifted inhabitants the Kinda, who eventually free a scientist from the Mara after it jumps from Tegan, and with the Doctor banish the mara, now in the form of a giant snake, by using a circle of mirrors.
Snakedance sees Tegan hijacking and landing the TARDIS on the planet Manussa after become possessed by the Mara, where the Federator’s son Lon and his mother are preparing celebrations marking the five hundreth anniversary of the its banishment, seeking to manipulate the inhabitants minds in order to find the blue crystal- the device that first brought it into existence.
These are classics from the Peter Davison era, with superb scripts by Christopher Bailey.
Set for release on March 7th 2011 and with an RRP of £29.99, Mara Tales can be preordered from Amazon for just £17.93
Great stories and added comedy value with Lon’s cloudy costume hehe
Time for more Kasterborous editor guilt – I haven’t seen Snakedance all the way through since first broadcast :O
Although thoroughly enjoyed Kinda last time I watched it
I haven’t seen the originals since since first broadcast either. Never wanted to as I thought they were about as bad as “Four to Doomsday” but I’ll be eager to see if I can look at them differently now after some 28 years.
‘Course, now that I think about it, “Timeflight” and “Warriors of the deep” were just as bad as I remember them too…although some folks do speak well of Kinda.
Kinda and Snakedance are far, far better than Time-flight and Warriors of the Deep although I will admit to even enjoying even those ones too despite their lower quality which is something I can’t say about The Twin Dilemma, Battlefield and Sound of Drums/Last of the Timelords.