January 21st, 2011 49 comments

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Doctor Who – Mara Tales DVD Kinda / Snakedance

Doctor Who – Mara Tales DVD Kinda / Snakedance

Doctor Who Mara Tales is a 2-disc boxed set featuring the following classic stories & special features:

Kinda – The TARDIS visits the planet Deva Loka, where Nyssa remains behind in the ship to recover from a mild mental disorientation while the Doctor, Tegan and Adric explore.

Tegan falls asleep under some wind chimes and becomes possessed by an evil force, a Mara.

Snakedance – Tegan falls once more under the influence of the Mara and directs the TARDIS to the planet Manussa.

There the Federator‘s son Lon and his mother Tanha are preparing for a ceremony to celebrate the banishment of the Mara five hundred years earlier. It’s up to the Doctor to defeat the evil Mara, in these two classic stories from Peter Davison’s era…

Special Features

* Commentary with cast and crew
* Documentaries and behind the scenes footage
* Photo Gallery
* Digitally re-mastered picture and sound quality

Kinda original VHS cover and information

“It is the Mara who now turns the wheel. The Mara who dances to the music of our despair. Our suffering is the Mara’s delight. Our madness the Mara’s meat and drink. And now he has returned…”

A beautiful, paradise planet, Deva Loka. Its inhabitants, the Kinda, are a gentle and seemingly primitive people. On the surface, a perfect place to colonise. But if it is so perfect, why are the colonisation team disappearing one by one?

Unaware of this, the Doctor and his companions choose to rest on Deva Loka. Enchanted by the beautiful Chimes,” the place of dreams “, Tegan sleeps and falls prey to the Mara, a malevolent force out to steal her mind. But just what are its ultimate evil intentions?

Meanwhile, the Doctor and Adric are captured by the surviving colonisation team’s officers, Sanders and unstable Hindle. When Sanders disappears, Hindle collapses into a world of paranoid delusions and suddenly the security of the entire base is at risk.

Can the Doctor rescue Tegan from the Mara and defeat it – before it pushes Hindle over the edge? And who is the mysterious blind woman who appears in visions? Will she help the Doctor or ultimately impede him?

Snakedance original VHS cover and information

‘We’re not supposed to be here…’

Surely Tegan must have made a mistake when she set the TARDIS’ co-ordinates, because the Doctor certainly hadn’t intended landing on Manussa? But upon learning that Manussa was once home of the Sumaran Empire, the Doctor knows that their arrival has been no accident but has been orchestrated by a hostile force – a force which is rapidly gaining control of Tegan’s will.

By first infiltrating Tegan’s subconscious mind, through strange and disturbing dreams dominated by the image of a huge snake’s skull, this force – The Mara’ – is planning on using Tegan as a vehicle for its return to power on the planet Manussa.

So just as Manussa prepares festivities to commemorate the destruction of the Sumaran Empire by the ruling Federation, it seems that the Legend of the Mara could be about to come true.According to this Legend, the Mara was never destroyed by the Federation but merely banished. Furthermore, the Legend claims that Mara will return in a dream – a precursor to its gaining control of all their minds…

It is clear to the Doctor that the first steps in the Mara’s return have already been taken…

Categorised under: Doctor Who DVDs, DVD