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The Cradle of the Snake is living proof that somewhere in the Big Finish offices, someone looked at a whiteboard covered in potential returning villains and said, with a straight face, “You know what the fans are crying out for? More Mara.”
The Mara.
The whispery snake demon from Kinda and Snakedance. The villain whose defining character trait is hissing vague platitudes about fear while occasionally manifesting as a carnival prop. When modern Who came back and everyone was clamouring for the Rani or Omega or literally anyone with an ounce of cultural cachet, I do not recall a groundswell of “Bring back the big psychic snake!”
And yet here we are.
This time, the Mara decides to possess the Fifth Doctor, because apparently Tegan’s therapy bills were not high enough. To his credit, Peter Davison absolutely throws himself into it. His Doctor becomes snide, cruel, gleefully unpleasant. He wanders around picking emotional scabs and, at one point, wrecks a man’s fairground tent for no reason other than pure demonic spite. It is like watching your kindly cricket teacher suddenly decide arson sounds fun.
Is it bold? Sure. Is it fun to listen to for two full episodes? Debatable.
Meanwhile Tegan Jovanka and Nyssa are left doing the emotional heavy lifting, because the Mara and Tegan have history. There is a genuine thematic seam here about trauma, about old wounds reopening, about how fear never quite leaves you. The Mara feeds on insecurity, on ego, on spectacle. It thrives in crowds whipped into fervour.
Which is presumably why the plot swerves into televangelism.
Yes. Possessed Doctor decides his next career move is becoming a television preacher. There is a mad scientist with a machine that turns thoughts into reality, because why not. The machine externalises the Mara into a gigantic snake that slithers around eating people. The possessed Doctor grins. The crowd gasps. Somewhere, subtlety files for divorce.
Poor Vislor Turlough exists largely to be told to shut up. Repeatedly. It becomes almost a running joke. Almost. If the script seemed aware of how little it is doing with him, it might even count as satire.
Instead, everything just escalates. More shouting. More hissing. More grand speeches about fear and belief and the darkness within. The Mara is meant to be a manifestation of inner demons, of colonial guilt, of the seductive lure of power. On paper, that is rich thematic soil.
On audio, it mostly sounds like an overcaffeinated snake yelling into a megaphone.
And then the resolution hinges on a conveniently discovered yin and yang counterpart to the Mara who just happens to be hanging around. Because nothing says “ancient cosmic embodiment of evil” like being thwarted by a last minute metaphysical plus one.
By the end, I was not gripped. I was not chilled. I was contemplating whether voluntarily cuddling a moderately venomous reptile might provide a quicker, cleaner conclusion to proceedings.
Final Thoughts
A bombastic, sermonising comeback for a villain who did not need one, packed with noise, spectacle and very little genuine bite. Davison is game. Janet Fielding tries valiantly. The Mara remains a hissy fit in search of a point.
1.5 out of 5 overexcited psychic snake sermons.