"There are other humans within these walls..."

Arguably one of THE best Doctor Who serials ever, takes the Doctor and Sarah to 1911 at the home of Professor Marcus Scarman, recently possesed by Sutekh the Destoryer. It looks and sounds fantastic! All extras, including the hilarious "Oh, Mummy", are top notch. Interviews with the cast and crew have never been more entertaining. An absolute must for all Doctor Who fans.

One of the most chilling Doc Who's comes to DVD!

At last, one of the best Tom Baker era stories has been given the proper release on DVD that it deserves. That is, the transfer is very clear and the DVD is chock full of extras. Not to get too much into the story, as you who are reading this are probably already an avid Doctor Who fan like myself, but the main gist is that the Doctor has to go against one of his most powerful enemies, Sutekh-this guy makes the Master seem like the Good Humor man. A special note of consideration: the importance of Gabriel Woolf's vocal portrayal of Sutekh's cold evilness cannot be overstated. I don't think this episode would have come off half as scary without Woolf's participation. As for the extras, bon' appetit! The best of the little spoof about Sutekh and his career post-Pyramids of Mars. There are two very informative interviews/documentaries. The first is specifically about the episode of the Pyramids and how it came to be. The second is an overview of the Hinchcliffe/Baker era of Doctor Who, often considered by many fans to be the golden era of Doctor Who. Other extras include a compare/contrast feature of the Stargrove location (then owned by Rolling Stone Mick Jagger) where parts of the episode were filmed. The easter egg is of some BBC announcements of the Pyramids episode and the Alien Invasion episode that followed. The other feature that is very worth a while to check out is the production note option. This is an informative, and relatively non-obtrusive, behind-the-scenes factoid of the production of the Pyramids of Mars episode.

Top Of The Pyramid

The Pyramids Of Mars is my third favourite Doctor who story. It features one of the most powerful villans ever in Doctor Who, no less than the Egyptian god Sutekh (Set). Fortunately he is trapped in ancient pyramid after his god brothers (Horus, Osiris and others), stopped him from destroying the Universe. But thousands of years later, a British archaeologist stumbles into the wrong tomb and is taken over by Sutekh who's mind is free but his body is totally imobilized. The Doctor and Sarah land in the wrong time zone and become embroiled in the situation. At one stage Sarah raises a point that has significance for all Doctor Who. What if they leave in the TARDIS and go back to the present (or say, five years in the future, for those who think 1980 is a canonistic glitch), won't the Universe be ok? After all, they just came from there and everything was fine (aside from rampent zygons and the Loch Ness Monster, but that's another story...). The Doctor does just that and they find Earth an empty wasteland, just a ball of space dust. Why is that? If the TARDIS hadn't landed where she had the Doctor would have never fought Sutekh and the Earth would not have been destroyed in 1980. But the fact is, the TARDIS had, and so everything was set in motion. Time was waiting for the Doctor to arrive, and when he did switches were activated and the time track was changed. But what if the Doctor had died in the previous adventure. Who would have stopped Sutekh? Would the Universe be wiped out. Perhaps it would. Or maybe Time would have found someone else to fix the problem. If some belive in Gaia, a living, perhaps sentient Earth who will fight back if her survival is threatened, perhaps our Universe is a kind of Mega Gaia who can manipulate Time and Space to guarantee her survival.
All this is very deep, but I think relevant to this particular story. Doctor Who is not mindless entertainment for the kiddies. But for those who like entertainment with their philosophy:

Watch robot mummies crush a poacher, watch Sutekh and his Gift Of Death, see the Doctor bow down to a mighty Egyptian god, and gasp at the Eye Of Horus within the Pyramids of Mars.