Doctor Who has dabbled many times with the twin themes of literary pastiche and science passing itself off as magic. Both are concepts which are hard to precisely define. Stories are invariably based on other stories and elements from other story and the combining of elements to make new stories. In precisely the same way that magic isn’t allowed to merely be the combining of old elements to produce magical new ones. "Science not sorcery" is Doctor Who’s message but what exactly is science and what is magic?

Stones of Venice doesn’t really answer the question. We’re presented with a curse – the Duke is cursed to live a hundred years without aging and in doing so he will watch his beloved Venice crumble and die. The Doctor doesn’t believe in curses – curses are magic and magic is silly. It’s all neatly explained when a magic necklace is at the bottom of all the trouble. The Doctor, happy that there is no actual magic involved, explains that it’s alien technology. So that’s that then. As long as something is scientific, albeit not the science of the native population, then the absurd notion of magic can go out of the window.

Doctor Who does this all the time but there is a difference between the Tardis – which is unscientific to us but which we can accept is a machine – and this amulet which has, to all intents and purposes, put a curse on the Duke. No less a man than Arthur C Clarke said "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". Paul Magrs decided to get out of his curse problem by adding one line about technology and then carrying on with curses and spells. Whether this is more or less acceptable than two minutes of bafflegab is up to the listener.

The idea of the Duke not aging while Venice grew old and eventually crumbled away is reminiscent of Oscar Wilde’s "The Picture of Dorian Gray". Though it is a whole city of art works that will perish in the Duke’s place rather than a single enchanted portrait. The ending of the play – with the Duke sacrificing his artificially extended life to restore Venice to its glory – is also reminiscent of the book, though just as the Duke’s near-immortality wasn’t by choice, so Dorian didn’t know that his actions would destroy him.

So we have a literary classic, the closest we’re going to get to magic in an "enlightened" series, a romantic setting, an old fashioned ball and a future which sounds more like the past. The Stones of Venice works much more sweetly if you think of it almost as a fairy tale rather than a proper adventure. Then the funny little errors (such as things from outer space being thought ridiculous despite Earth having been invaded by aliens at least once and the existence of a strange human/amphibian evolutionary offshoot living openly in Venice) make a sort of weird sense. Even the idea that dozens (hundreds?) of people would stay in Venice and die just so they could attend a rather drab sounding party doesn’t seem quite so ridiculous.

There are many off shoots in the world of Doctor Who and this is one of them. It would’ve been better had they not tried any rational explanations for those that were offered were feeble. This isn’t science fiction – it’s fantasy. It’s a fable set in a future which is still the past, where romance and decadence rule and where science never really happened. It’s even got a magic potion which even the Doctor doesn’t try and explain. I expect we would’ve got some nonsense about hallucinogens or nanobots or some such. It’s much better just to accept it and enjoy the party.

CD Facts

Part 1 - Tracks 1-6

Part 2 - Tracks 7-11

Part 3 - Tracks 1-3

Part 4 - Tracks 4-7