Pyramids of Mars - Plot

Plot

In Egypt in 1911, Marcus Scarman excavates a pyramid and finds that the door to the burial chamber is inscribed with the Eye of Horus. Scarman's Egyptian assistants panic and flee at the sight of the glowing hieroglyph, leaving the Professor to enter the chamber alone. As he holds a light up to see the undisturbed tomb, he is blasted by a ray that emanates from a seated and cowled figure.

The TARDIS is forced out of its flight path and Sarah sees an apparition of a jackal-like face in the console room. The Doctor follows its energy source back to its point of origin and lands the TARDIS in the Scarman family home in England, which is filled with Egyptian artefacts. Discovered by the butler, they are told that the house has been taken over by a mysterious Egyptian gentleman by the name of Ibrahim Namin. In another part of the priory, Namin is confronted by Dr. Warlock, an old friend of Professor Scarman. The Doctor, Sarah and Warlock make their escape into the grounds of the estate. Instead of following, Namin removes the lid of another sarcophagus to reveal a mummy. Holding up his ring, he commands the mummy to activate and orders it to pursue them. The Doctor, Sarah and Warlock hide in the woods until the pursuing mummies are called off by Namin. The three make their way to a hunting lodge used by Laurence Scarman, Professor Scarman's brother. Laurence is an amateur scientist whose marconiscope has intercepted a signal from Mars. The Doctor uses a more portable device to decode the signal as "Beware Sutekh". He explains that Sutekh is the last of a powerful alien race called the Osirians, a megalomaniac who came to believe that all life was his enemy. He was pursued across the galaxy by his brother Horus and was finally defeated on Earth by the combined might of 740 Osirians. The Doctor returns to the house to stop Sutekh, followed by Sarah and Laurence Scarman.

Namin and the mummies — really service robots — greet the arrival of Sutekh's servant who travels to the priory via a spacetime tunnel, the portal of which is disguised as an upright sarcophagus. The Servant ignores Namin's pleas for his life and kills him, declaring that Sutekh needs no other servant. He is revealed to be Marcus Scarman, although he appears to be an animated corpse. Scarman uses the spacetime tunnel to communicate with Sutekh, who orders Scarman to secure the perimeter of the estate and to construct an Osirian war missile. After Scarman and the robots leave to execute their orders, the Doctor, Sarah and Laurence Scarman enter the main room. The Doctor disrupts the tunnel using the TARDIS key. Laurence hides the three of them in a priest hole for fear of being discovered by his brother.

In another part of the estate, a poacher, Clements, finds a mummy trapped in one of his snares. He retreats but is prevented from escaping the estate by a deflection barrier. Meanwhile, Marcus Scarman finds Warlock and questions him about the other people within the barrier and kills him. Clements fires his shotgun at Marcus Scarman and is pursued by the mummies by the robots. The Doctor realises that he can stop Sutekh controlling his Servant and the mummies by using Namin's ring and Laurence Scarman's scientific apparatus. He retrieves the ring from Namin's corpse and hide in the TARDIS to avoid detection; Sarah suggests they should just leave in the TARDIS, because they know that the world did not end in 1911. The Doctor demonstrates otherwise by moving the TARDIS forward to 1980, where it is a blasted wilderness. They have no choice but to return to 1911 and stop Sutekh or the future will be lost.

Back in 1911 the Doctor makes a jamming unit to prevent Sutekh from controlling his servants. Laurence finds it too hard to deal with the Doctor's assertion that Marcus Scarman is dead and that the being with his appearance is just a puppet. He overhears the Doctor telling Sarah that when the jamming device is activated, all of Sutekh's servants will stop, Marcus included. At the crucial moment when the device is activated, Laurence attempts to stop it from happening. The robots overrun the hunting lodge after finding and killing Clements. Sarah, using the ring they took from Namin, orders the robots to return to Control.

Surveying the equipment ruined by the mummies, the Doctor decides to blow up the partially assembled rocket in the stable courtyard of the priory. Laurence suggests using blasting gelignite, which Clements kept in his hut. The Doctor and Sarah leave to obtain the gelignite, ordering Laurence to strip the bindings from a deactivated robot. The Doctor deactivates the energy barrier; his doing so is detected by Sutekh, who orders Marcus Scarman to investigate. Marcus finds Laurence, who tries to make his brother remember their childhood in order to revive his humanity. The conditioning proves too strong, and Marcus kills Laurence. Sutekh interrogates the Doctor and discovers he is a Time Lord from Gallifrey. He locates the TARDIS and decides to use it to transport Scarman to the Pyramids of Mars in order to deactivate the Eye of Horus, the force that is trapping him. Sutekh subjects the Doctor to mind control and returns him to the priory as another of his servants. He orders Scarman to bring a robot and Sarah into the TARDIS to travel to Mars.

Sutekh orders Scarman to dispose of the Doctor and the robot strangles him. Scarman and the robot then find the way out of the first chamber beneath the pyramid and leave Sarah weeping over the Doctor, though he regains consciousness, revealing that his respiratory bypass system allowed him to avoid death. They set off in search of Scarman through a series of chambers which are dependent upon solving logical and philosophical problems.

Reaching the chamber first, Scarman destroys the Eye before falling to the floor and decaying to dust. Arriving too late, the Doctor realises that the loss of the imprisoning force will not be felt on Earth for two minutes, that being the time that radio signals take to travel from the pyramid on Mars to the prison chamber in Egypt, and they return to Earth. Sutekh begins his journey through the time tunnel; at the same time the Doctor removes a module from the TARDIS and attaches it to the other end of the tunnel springing a "temporal trap," immobilizing Sutekh in the timestream, and instead forcing him to a point 10,000 years in the future, ageing him to death. The Doctor and Sarah leave in the TARDIS as the priory is consumed in flames.