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The Mara were a species of serpentine chaos gods who tempted and bullied other beings into allowing themselves to be possessed. They principally dwelt on another plane of existence and used people's dream states to enter their minds. People affected by Mara typically developed a snake-shaped mark on the arm. When pulled fully into the physical world, they revealed what the Doctor called their "true form", that of very large snakes.
The word "Mara" describes both the species and the individual members of that species.
Profile
The Mara was a being which fed on the suffering and madness of others. It tempted individuals into letting it control them and would create havoc and chaos to pleasure itself. Something the Kinda were able to understand is that life and death are a turning wheel, and it was the Mara who turned the wheel. In this thinking, wars would help the Mara as they created death and the true way to be free of the Mara was to find peace.
History
Early History
The Mara was an entity created from the evil in the minds of the people of the planet Manussa in the Scrampus system. It was given independent life via the Great Crystal, which the Manussans created in a zero gravity environment. The Mara then founded the Sumaran Empire. (DW: Snakedance) It existed in the minds of its victims and can transfer itself in the form of a tattoo-like mark, to those who yielded to it. It was so evil that it cannot bear the sight of its own reflection. (DW: Kinda)
On Manussa, the Mara was defeated and driven out by an ancestor of the future Federator and cast into the "dark places of the inside". (DW: Snakedance)
Later History
It was on the planet Deva Loka that the the Doctor, Tegan and Adric encountered the Mara. (Nyssa, meanwhile, rested in the TARDIS.) Tegan fell asleep listening to wind chimes and mentally entered the Dark Places of the Inside. The Mara manifested to her as the elderly game-playing couple Anatta and Anicca, who insisted she could not possibly exist, and then as Dukkha, who tempted and tormented her until she agreed to let the Mara take over her body. The Mara used her body to find and possess Aris, one of the peaceful Kinda tribe, leaving Tegan. Kinda tradition did not allow men (other than "idiots") to speak. Aris called himself "Aris, He Who Has Voice" and began to rally them against Human colonists led by Hindle. The Doctor was able to prevent the humans detonating a bomb and managed to trap the Mara in a circle of mirrors and face itself, therefore, driving it back into the Dark Places of the Inside. (DW: Kinda) Tegan remained very shaken by the experience, as she confided to Nyssa afterward. (DW: The Visitation) Unknown to all, the Mara still had influence over Tegan. (DW: Snakedance)
Late, the Mara guided Tegan to take the Doctor's TARDIS to Manussa, the birthplace of the Mara, where a ceremony was to be held to mark the 500th anniversary of its banishment. The Mara used Tegan, the showman Dugdale, and the son of the Federator, Lon, to obtain the Great Crystal to restore itself to physical itself. The Doctor was guided by an old mystic named Dojjen who showed him how to find the "still point". When the Mara tried to make its return at the ceremony, the Doctor concentrated his thoughts with a small replica of the Great Crystal, and by finding the still point was able to repel the Mara. Then by grabbing the Great Crystal, the Doctor broke the Mara's hold over its controlled Manussans, and destroyed its new snake body. This time, the Mara had apparently been completely destroyed for good. (DW: Snakedance)
Minor References
- Jack Harkness said that he sometimes thought the fairies were part Mara. (TW: Small Worlds)
- Whether this indicates a connection remains unknown, because the reference could have been to the real world mythological concept.
- The tenth incarnation of the Doctor mentions the Mara to his fifth incarnation when they met. (DW: Time Crash)
Behind the scenes
Origins
Mythology & Fiction
- Writer Christopher Bailey derived the Mara from a demon of the same name in Buddhist mythology which, as in Doctor Who, symbolizes temptation rather then evil(at least, in the sense of "sinfulness"). In Kinda, Dukkha, Panna, Karuna, Anatta and Anicca's names and functions all derive from Buddhism as well. Dukkha is suffering, and in Snakedance, Tanha is restlessness. The Mara is also apparently aware of its grotesque hideous features, which may account for the circle of mirrors.
- In addition, it seems to have parallels to the Book of Genesis in Kinda, namely a serpent representing temptation in a forested paradise, complete with apples.
- The "Mara" mentioned in the Torchwood episode Small Worlds (quite possibly a deliberate reference to the Doctor Who Mara) come from Northern European mythology. The word "nightmare" comes from folklore about these Mara.
- The creation of the Mara as described in Snakedance has similarities to the origins of the Monster from the Id from the 1956 film Forbidden Planet. (Forbidden Planet also influenced the Doctor Who story Planet of Evil.)
Production
- According to interviews with Bailey in Doctor Who: The Unfolding Text, the Mara in Kinda used temptation to behave in culturally disapproved-of ways. In Tegan's case, sensuality (or even sexuality), in Aris's case, aggression, which the Kinda regarded as abhorrent, especially when enacted by a male. Bailey did not welcome the addition of not-so-subtle indications of possession by the Mara, indicated by special effects, feeling instead that the acting of Janet Fielding, who played Tegan, and others, put the point across more than adequately. He particularly disliked the imagery of glowing red eyes which, he said, seemed to hark back to the Christian notion of the Devil.
- Though the Mara stories have a great deal of respect among fans, some consider Mara's appearance as a giant snake (especially in Kinda) unrealistic and it has been cited as an example of Doctor Who's budget letting it down.
- In the new trilogy of Fifth Doctor audio dramas featuring Tegan, Turlough, and Nyssa, the Mara will be returning in a story entitled The Cradle of the Snake, due to be released in September.
