User Reviews

Review for all 7 episodes:

Marco Polo is a story which covers The Roof of the World and the following six episodes. The adventures take place in the late 1200s in Cathay (ancient China) with Venetian explorer Marco Polo journeying to meet Kublai Khan the Mongol ruler. Polo confiscates the TARDIS and our heroes have an ongoing battle to convince Polo to return it whilst villains try to secure its powers for their own ambitions. The whole story was sadly lost when the BBC wiped the tapes. However the audio survives and along with numerous still photographs from the production a reconstruction is available. There is a full reconstruction with all the audio and stills for all 7 episodes so this is what you need to see, not the 30 minute massively reduced version!

It is a real measure of the quality of this story that even this reconstruction is incredibly interesting and enjoyable. I was totally engrossed despite the lack of moving pictures! The audio preserves the excellent performances of the actors and the brilliant script and story by John Lucarotti.

Marco Polo is an exciting, clever, sometimes amusing and always interesting adventure. The still photographs also leave proof of the superb sets and costumes which make this a top notch production all round.

My Ratings: Episodes 1-4, 6 and 7 - 10/10, Episode 5 - 9.5/10

Susan and Ping Cho decide to venture out for a walk, but a huge sandstorm is on the way, a traitor is also at work, ready to sabotage the long journey.

I have to be totally honest, I had only briefly listened to this several years ago. This afternoon I decided to take the cellophane off the vinyls, and listen properly. I am so glad I did.

I thought this was a fantastic episode, I had a real assumption that it was a long drawn out historical story, which lacked excitement, I was totally wrong, yes, it's very different to the usual sci fi story, the TARDIS crew have the purpose of just being onlookers, people from another time caught up in historical events.

At times, Part one felt a little like a history lesson, this one has a lot going on.

It's notable how absent Hartnell is from the episode, not to the degree of The Celestial Toymaker, but he's still absent for most of it, apparently he had been ill, so was written out, you can hear his voice is very weak.

Brilliant, 9/10.