31: The Highlanders

Before Watching

Here we are at the last Historical. (Alright, “Black Orchid” has a Historical setting without Science Fiction elements, so if you want to call it a Historical, then feel free. It isn’t linked to either a specific real figure, or a specific real life Historical event – but then you could say the same about “The Smugglers” as well. But for all intents and purposes, The Highlanders does represent the end of an era)

Bearing in mind what we saw with “The Smugglers” and the post-Culloden setting, I expect this will also draw on fictional sources, in this case things like ‘Kidnapped’ and ‘Rob Roy . It’s a 4 parter, so at least there should be a minimum of padding. I’ll be interested to see just how much Fraser Hines’ Jamie McCrimmon features. He’s going to go on to do a mammoth stint of no fewer than 21 stories, including this one and 1985’s “The Two Doctors”, and not including a brief cameo in “The Five Doctors”, where he is, after all, only a phantom.

No episodes are known to exist of this story, and to be honest the first two seasons of Patrick Troughton are going to be very much a case of death by recon, since of 75 episodes, 45 are missing. Compare this with Hartnell’s first two seasons, where only 11 episodes are missing, 7 of which all belong to the lost classic “Marco Polo”. All in all just over 30 Hartnell episodes are missing, compared with a total of 28 missing from Troughton’s first season alone.

Oh, one more thing. I have to say that I do hope that we’re not going into shortbread tin Scotland territory with this. I’m not Scottish myself, but I’m certainly of Scottish descent, and still have a sizeable number of Scottish relatives. In my experience real Scots can get quite annoyed with this rather stereotypical all bagpipes, kilts and haggis representation of Scotland. Case in point. My Mastermind final was filmed a few months after the death of Magnus Magnusson in 2007, and so as a tribute the final was filmed in Glasgow Caledonian University, which had been very dear to his heart, and of which University he had been the Rector. The final was due to be filmed later in the afternoon, so I had arranged to meet my cousin Margaret from Gourock for lunch, and then she’d be my guest for the final. I met her at the bus station, and as we were walking along Buchanan St. we saw a chap in full tartan get up, kilt and all, busking on the bagpipes. Margaret, it’s fair to say, was scathing – I think her exact words were, “Honestly! Making a spectacle of himself!” Joking, I replied that she ought to be proud, as he was presenting the passers by with a chance to enjoy real Scottish heritage. She sniffed, and replied that there was no way he’d be Scottish if he was doing something like that. Intrigued, I went up to him and asked. She was right – he was from Prague! And on that note, let’s go and watch the show.

After Watching

Having watched “The Highlanders” now I think I’m not unhappy that the Historicals have come to an end. This one just didn’t work for me, and I have to say that I wasn’t unhappy that it was only 4 parts long.

In synopsis then, the TARDIS lands on Culloden Moor shortly after the battle has wound to its bloody conclusion. The Doctor, Ben and Polly are captured by Alexander and Jamie – watch out for him – and taken to a cottage where their wounded laird, Colin Maclaren, and his daughter Kirsty, played by Hannah Gordon, are in hiding. Hannah Gordon was a well known actress of the 70s and 80s. I remember her appearing on a Morecambe and Wise show once . (Ernie – Hallo Miss Gordon, I watch all your shows. Eric – Hallo Miss Gordon, I drink all your gin.)I wonder how many actors and actresses who appeared in Doctor Who were also guests on Morecambe and Wise? Answers on a postcard, please. Back to “The Highlanders”, Alexander is killed when they are captured by a party of redcoats and the men are taken away to be hanged. Yes, the obligatory splitting up of the crew happens here as well.

The plot then revolves around the plan of a corrupt solicitor, Gray, to capture all the Jacobite prisoners, and ship them off as slaves to the North American colonies. The Doctor, Kirsty and Polly conspire to arm the rebels on the ship, who then set sail for France, allowing the Doctor and companions to make their way back to the TARDIS, after another encounter with slimy Solicitor Gray. Jamie decides to escort them back to the TARDIS, and since he has missed his ferry to France, the Doctor invites him to join the crew.

What’s so bad about this Historical, then? Well, nothing actually bad as such. For me, I think that the problem is that it comes just a week or so after I watched “The Power of the Daleks” and there really is no comparison between these two stories. Alright, maybe I shouldn’t be comparing a Historical with that great story, but even if I just compare it with the Hartnell Historicals for me it comes up a little short. Let’s look at just a couple of aspects of comparison.

The story itself. In some of the best Historicals, those which are not primarily played for laughs like “The Romans”  there is an underlying moral dimension to the story. In fact, in “The Aztecs” the moral issue of human sacrifice is foregrounded. Now, “The Highlanders” isn’t primarily played for laughs. However it is difficult to see a real moral dimension to the story. Now, I wouldn’t mind if the story was deliberately going out of its way to present the Jacobites as brave, doomed tragic freedom fighters, giving their all in a just cause, and I wouldn’t have minded if the story had presented them as evil traitors to the rightful king. This story does neither. Now, if it was presenting some overview of the Jacobite conflict and saying – well, that’s some of what happened, make your own mind up about it, then that’s actually not a bad way of presenting Historical drama. But it doesn’t do that. I said before watching it that I hoped that we weren’t going to be presented with the traditional ‘shortbread tin’ view of Scotland, and to be fair, we haven’t. But then we haven’t been presented with much of a view of Scotland immediately after Culloden at all. This story could have been set in another time, and another place, maybe after another conflict, and minimal changes would have needed to have been made.

The Hartnell Historical this most closely resembles for me, is “The Smugglers”. That’s hardly surprising since it features the same two companions, Ben and Polly, and was made by the same team of Innes Lloyd and Gerry Davis. “The Smugglers”, though, is not pinned to any specific historical event, which maybe gave more freedom to include the Boys’ Own Adventure serial elements, which worked so much better in that serial. Some of these elements are there in “The Highlanders”, but it all feels a little more uneasy. Trask, the commander of the ship in which the Jacobites are to be shipped to the Colonies is obviously a pirate, but whereas that added colour and texture to “The Smugglers”, with the understated performances of the rest of the cast here, Dallas Cavell’s performance, seemingly modelled on Robert Newton’s Long John Silver, was so far over the top that it just felt out of place here. David Garth’s Solicitor Gray is appropriately cold and amoral, but had he been leavened with just a little touch of humour he would have been all the better and more convincing.

The script for me is the problem. It’s not that it’s bad, it’s that it is not good. Not in any way good. What lighter moments there are seem to come from nothing more than Patrick Troughton putting on an accent as Doktor Von Wer (I’m sure you already know but that’s a sort of German translation of Doctor Who), or dressing up as an old crone, and as a cockney redcoat (why do the words Shane Ritchie come into my head as I type that?). The scenes with Lieutenant Algernon Ffinch in the pub and in the last episode have at least a tiny bit of charm – what a minx that Polly is, eh! – and it is quite sweet the way that he comes to the aid of a damsel in distress at the end to enable the Doctor and companions to escape from Gray. But these are just small moments of light in amongst a lot of fairly grey scripting and acting.

There’s little concession made to the immediate post-Culloden setting – there’s no hint of atrocities being carried out by the remarkably restrained redcoats for example. In fact it only really comes into play at all in the revelation that Kirsty’s father gave her a ring which Bonnie Prince Charlie (who incidentally was named after three sheepdogs) gave him, and only because this is used at one stage to further the plot. There’s a lot of rather lumpen dialogue between Gray and Trask, Gray and his clerk Perkins, Gray and anybody else who’ll listen, and this was a bore, I’m afraid. On the other hand in episode 4, the fight between the newly armed Jacobites and Trask’s men on the ship seems to go on forever. I’ll be honest, I find that sort of thing rather tedious even when it’s live action. In a recon it’s awful.

I am willing to accept that the lacklustre script and story were a consequence of Gerry Davis having to write the scripts himself, and maybe they were done at fairly short notice. I’ve checked in the Television Companion, but all it says is that the writer who was commissioned to script the story, Elwyn Jones, carried out no work on it, which is how script editor Davis was able to receive a credit for the story along with Jones. Well, whatever the case, “The Highlanders” introduced Jamie McCrimmon, and we can forgive it a lot for that at least.

What Have We Learned?

Jamie McCrimmon is a piper, but he only has his chanter with him

Polly is perfectly adept at using her womanly wiles when needs be 

28: The Smugglers

Before Watching

I could say much the same as I said before The Savages. Except then, at least , I did know that Steven was leaving. Now, well, no. It’s the last Hartnell Historical, in fact the penultimate Hartnell of all. There will be one more pure historical in the Troughton era – The Highlanders which will be notable for the introduction of Jamie if for nothing else, and then the rather strange Black Orchid when we get to Peter Davison.  It’s got Ben and Polly, who impressed me in The War Games. The wind of change is blowing across the face of Doctor Who . . .

After Watching

The first thing I noticed was that this one was scripted by Brian ‘Ice Warriors/ Celestial Toymaker’ Hayles. There’s no reason why he shouldn’t have been scripting a historical, I suppose, but it just wasn’t what I was expecting. I suppose that I was influenced by my disappointment over The Celestial Toymaker, which is silly really considering that what was seen on the screen was at least a couple of drafts removed from Hayles’ vision of the story.

Speaking of the story, Ben and Polly weren’t actually invited on board the TARDIS, but the Doctor dropped his key and they nipped in to give it back to him just as he was setting off. I loved the way that he admitted openly that he couldn’t control the TARDIS and had no idea where it was going to land. How often have we seen other Doctors in a state of denial over this?

I noticed that they didn’t go overboard on the disbelief from the companions angle, which was probably wise – it had already been done in The Time Meddler, and they weren’t going to top that. There’s some nice location shots in Cornwall in this story. It was mildly amusing to see the church warden Longfoot deciding that Polly was a boy. Was he blind? He gets his anyway. There’s not a lot of film of this one left, but one of the sequences clearly shows Cherub, played by George A Cooper – Billy Fisher’s Dad in Billy Liar – throwing a knife into his back, surprisingly graphic, that. Actually reading about this story after watching it, I think that the film that survives are all bits cut out by the censors in Australia, which kind of makes sense with the knife throwing bit anyway. Cherub is great. I always think that with a pirate, you have to lay it on with a trowel, and Cooper gives Cherub full throttle. All in all it becomes quite an eventful first episode. Cherub has been watching the Doctor talking to Longfoot, and is convinced he tells the Doctor a secret he wants. He accosts the Doctor in the inn, kidnapping him and taking him aboard the pirate ship of Captain Pike, and wounds Ben in the process. To add insult to injury the Squire turns up and imprisons Ben and Polly under suspicion of murdering Longfoot.

Pike seems to have a very nifty swiss army hook on the end of his arm. Alright, it’s not a hook, in fact, it’s like the end of a pikestaff, no doubt hence his name. He also does a nice line in pirate dialogue, saying to Cherub as he does, - one more word from you and I’ll slit yer gizzard, right? – Is David Blake Kelly, who plays Kuper the innkeeper the same David Kelly who played O’Reilly the Builder in Fawlty Towers? Absolutely not – hence the helpful middle name. Having convinced dim witted yokel Tom to let them out of their cell by pretending they are going to do some voodoo on him (honest to gosh)  Ben and Polly return to the church to investigate, knocking out Blake the Revenue man whom they mistake for the real murdered. And who is Blake? Why, it’s our old mate, Tlotoxl from the Aztecs – or John Ringham as he was otherwise known. Fine actor, and he gives just as convincing a turn as in his earlier appearance, albeit in a totally different, and at the end of the day, rather heroic role.

In the third episode the whole thing became for me just a little tedious. The pirates and the Squire make an alliance. At least we could see how the Doctor’s moral compass has developed. Ben and Polly work out at one point that it looks like an ideal time to return to the TARDIS, and the Doctor tells them that he can’t, that he feels moral responsibility for the fact that the whole village may be destroyed if he doesn’t act. That’s the Doctor! Basically the whole denouement of this shaggy dog story revolves around looking for the gold of the pirate Captain Avery. The Doctor was passed the secret by Longfoot. Which brings me to another observation. Looking at it I can’t help feeling that we’ve seen in “The Smugglers” is a real departure from everything we’ve seen in the Historicals so far. Up to now, ever when the Historicals haven’t featured real historical figures – like The Aztecs – or have only featured them briefly in the background, like “The Reign of Terror” – they have been based on real historical events, even when they’ve taken a few liberties with them. “The Smugglers” is different. It isn’t pegged to a specific and documented historical event, rather it has its roots in literature. The smuggler linked with a church is taken directly from Thorndyke’s Doctor Syn books. OK – they’re set in Kent, and Syn is a vicar rather than a church warden, but it’s a clear parallel. It also has echoes of Treasure Island as well. The more I think about it the more this seems to be a conscious choice on the part of Innes Lloyd and script editor Gerry Davis. Perhaps this sounded the death knell for the Historicals, since it’s a clear abandonment of the educational intention that the series set out with.

Coming back to “The Smugglers” it all ends up with a bit of a free for all up in the crypt of the church, and I couldn’t help thinking that I didn’t really care what happened, and who ended up with the treasure, if anyone. Nice to see John Ringham getting the chance to do a stint as a goody, mind, and it’s he who saves the day in the end.

Overall I enjoyed the first couple of episodes, but it lost my interest after that. 

What Have We Learned?

It looks as if the production team have run out of steam with the Historicals

25: The Gunfighters

Before Watching

Before it became possible to watch old episodes of “Doctor Who” the wisdom we received from our olders and betters was that “The Gunfighters” was one of the worst Doctor Who stories ever made, and a good reason why nobody should mourn the passing of the historicals as a genre. As good as the reputation of The Celestial Toymaker used to be – the reputation of the Gunfighters has been the complete opposite. I have a clear memory of reading that this story, together with (surprisingly) Planet of Giants, was one of the worst that classic Doctor Who has to offer. It’s a funny thing – while “The Romans” has been approvingly compared with “Carry on Cleo”, “The Gunfighters” has been unfavourably compared with “Carry on Cowboy”.

Television didn’t become a popular mass medium in the UK until the 1950s, when the Coronation was the real catalyst for many households buying or renting their first television. In those first couple of decades of popular television, the 50s and 60s, imported American western ‘cowboy’ shows were a staple of both channels, as they were in the cinema throughout the 50s. When “The Gunfighters” was first broadcast, shows like “The Virginian” and “Gunsmoke” for example were still going strong. If I’m honest, the western genre never really appealed to me in the slightest. To me all that stuff was my Dad’s generation’s thing – he did actually love Westerns, especially those starring John Wayne – and they were not for me. Also, the fact is that Brits just don’t do Westerns very well. Which means I don’t look forward to this show with a great deal of anticipation.

On the other hand, and this may just be perversity on my part, but of the stories with a very poor reputation that I’ve already watched – I found that only “The Web Planet” and “Galaxy 4” really deserved a lot of what was said about it, and even with the Web Planet so much can be forgiven because they were trying something so different to everything that had been done before. “The Keys of Marinus”, and even “The Sensorites” had something to offer. Also, this is scripted by Donald Cotton, who gave us the consistently enjoyable “The Myth Makers” So what the hell. Bring it on.

After Watching

No, this isn’t bad Doctor Who. By whichever standards you might want to judge it, you cannot claim that this is bad Doctor Who. Let’s examine some of the criteria: -

The story and the script: - Like other historicals, this story is based on a real event. The Gunfight at the OK Corral saw a 30 second or so shoot out between Marshal Wyatt Earp, Earp’s brothers and his friend ‘Doc’ Holliday, and the Clantons and Claibornes, in which three of the Clanton side were killed, and men on both sides were injured. It actually only became the most famous shoot out of the Wild West about 50 years later in the 1930s, when a highly romanticised biography of Wyatt Earp was published. It has been the subject of several Hollywood movies.

Donald Cotton, the writer of this story, also wrote “The Myth Makers” and as you would expect, this is not short on comedy. Much of it revolves around a combination of coincidences that see the Doctor being mistaken by the Clantons for Doc Holliday. I wouldn’t claim that it’s laugh a minute, but there are certainly a few laughs, and more importantly the story never really flags. I mean, I don’t even particularly like Westerns, but I found myself hoping that the Doctor, Steven and Dodo would disappear for a while so we could get on with the story. That’s a common failing of Historicals – the fact is that the Travellers can never be that much more than observers to the main story, and as such can come to seem surplus to requirements.

One odd thing about the script was the decision, presumably the director’s, to continually punctuate the action with Lynda Baron’s rendition of The Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon. Lynda Baron is best known as Nurse Gladys Emmanuel in the joyous “Open All Hours”, but she began as a singer as well as an actress, and it has to be said that she does have a terrific singing voice. As an idea it’s neat and original, but the effect is lost because my God, that song is repetitive. We get the same lines over and over again to punctuate the action, and so even when it is actually commenting on what we’ve just seen it’s just annoying.

Sets and Locations: - I have seen it said that this is the first ever television Western filmed in Britain, and this may well be the case, but all of the sets are recognisably ‘wild west’. After all, what do you need? A main street exterior, a saloon bar interior, and a jail lockup. I don’t say for one minute that the sets in “The Gunfighters” looked any cheaper than those in the US made western series which were being aired at the same time.

Performances: It’s easy to be distracted by some of the accents, because the Clantons, for example, are spectacularly bad. God alone knows where Billy’s accent came from, but it certainly wasn’t much further west than Weston Super Mare. In fact everything on the baddies’ side for the first two episodes is purest cardboard, until the arrival of the eponymous Johnny Ringo after whom episode 3 is named. The offhand way in which he shoots the barman at least underlines that there is some threat and menace there.

On the positive side though, Wyatt Earp is acted by John Alderson, who did spend part of his career acting in the USA, and he brings a world weary credibility to the show, especially after his youngest brother Warren is killed by the Clantons. Above all else, though, there is Anthony Jacobs’ Doc Holliday. Jacobs even looks a little like Kirk Douglas’ Doc Holliday from the 1957 film “Gunfight at the OK Corral”, and he’s probably the main character in the story. It’s important that he comes across as a rogue and a cheat, but still one with a little charm and humour, and Anthony Jacobs for me plays this to perfection. As compared to the Clantons, his attitude towards an American accent is to throw the kitchen sink at it, ah doo dee-clare, but it kind of works, and just emphasises his credentials as a genuinely larger than life character.

Given at least a respectable amount of air time in this story, William Hartnell seems to be having great fun. He was an actor who could handle comedy with ease. In the previous story poor, game Peter Purves was expected to dance, and in this one the cringe factor was ramped up to a whole new level by having him sing a different arrangement of the ubiquitous Ballad of the Last chance Saloon. Being Peter Purves he gives it his all. Fair play to him, others might have just gone through the motions.

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Wobbly accents aren’t a good enough reason for panning a story. Neither is the use of a little comedy either. In fact this story does turn from broad farce to the darkest of black humour about halfway through when Ringo enters, and there’s real pathos in Wyatt Earp’s reaction to the murder of his brother Warren. There is also an understated examination of the concept of vigilantism, and whether a lawman such as Wyatt Earp is ever justified in taking the law into his own hands. So “The Gunfighters” may not be to everybody’s taste, but it’s just not fair to call it a bad story, because whichever way you look at it, it isn’t.

What Have We Learned?

Both Steven and Dodo are professional-level piano players

Steven is not a professional level singer

For all that the Doctor says that you can’t change History he still can’t resist trying to now and again

22: The Massacre of St. Bartholemew's Eve

Before Watching

Throughout my formative Who-watching years , from the Jon Pertwee era right up until the end of the Tom Baker era, it was pretty much a given that the Doctor only had one companion. Yes, he had the backup of the UNIT lot in Jon’s time, and for a few stories he had Harry Sullivan at the start of Tom’s tenure – but the most part he was with just Liz Shaw – just Jo Grant – just Sarah Jane Smith – just Leela – just Romana (don’t let’s get into how much of a companion K9 was just right now). So it’s with some surprise that I come to realize that as far as I can tell, this is the first story where the Doctor has just the one companion – Steven. Katarina, who only came aboard in The Myth Makers, bit the dust last time out, leaving just Steven. Thinking about it – I’m pretty sure that this will be the only Hartnell story where he has only one companion for its whole duration. I know that Dodo Chaplet rears her homely head right at the end, but that’s after the ‘story’ part of the story is over. Steven leaves at the end of the Savages, but Ben and Polly (we’ll get to them afterwards) are there right throughout The War Machines, and stay right through into Patrick Troughton’s tenure.

As for this story – well, I’ll be honest and say that I’m not looking forward to it. Our last venture into historical France, The Reign of Terror failed to interest me much, and so I’m pretty sure that my candle will remain unlit through this one.

After Watching

One of the first nice surprises about the first episode was the presence of Eric Thompson as Gaston. Nowadays probably best known as the father of double Oscar winner Emma Thompson, Eric Thompson was asked by the BBC to take the tapes of a French programme for young children, called Le Ménage Enchanté – and translate it into English and record the voices for it. The thing was, Eric Thompson didn’t actually speak French. So what he did was to rewrite each episode based on what he saw on screen, and what he created was a thing of great wit and charm, which appealed to adults to an extent as well as the kids it was written for. He also created one of the great characters of kids TV in Dougal. He wrote several books of stories based on the characters, and these were witty and funny and just beautifully written.

To this story, then. The TARDIS has indeed landed in France again, several centuries earlier than in the Reign of Terror. The real life Massacre of St. Bartholemew’s Eve happened in 1572. This is not a period of French history that most viewers would have known a great deal about. Basically, it was a time of great religious upheaval. It was a rather complicated period to try to explain in a few lines, but we’ll try. At the time of the story, the Huguenots – French Calvinist Protestants – were fighting for greater power and acceptance of their religion. They had already been subjected to one terrible massacre at Vassy ten years earlier. Their great hope lay in the fact that the heir to the French throne, Henri de Navarre, was protestant himself. In 1572 the reactionary Catholic, the Duc de Guise, had his supporters murdered the Admiral de Coligny, who had the ear of the King, Charles IX. This began 5 days of Catholic violence against Huguenots, in which perhaps as many as 10,000 were killed. This was known as the St. Bartholemew’s Day Massacre.

When the TARDIS lands, and the Doctor works out where and when they are, he decides to go off on a jolly to visit the scientist Preslin – Elvis Preslin?  - and so he tells Steven all of this as they are sitting in a tavern, and warns him to stay out of trouble. Hello pot – this is the kettle, ringing to tell you that you’re black. Of course, the tavern does happen to be a hot bed of Huguenot intrigue, as Steven falls in with the patently good and earnest David Weston as Nicholas Muss, and the hotheaded Eric Thompson as Gaston de Lerans. They accept Steven into their company and as they are toddling off home, they rescue a frightened servant girl, Anne Chaplet, who tells them she worked for the Abbot of Amboise, and overheard plotting for another massacre like that of Vassy.

There’s an interesting directorial choice here. The decision was made to have Anne say her lines in a ‘peasant’ accent. The trouble is, the more she speaks, especially in the second episode, the more her delivery reminds me of Pam Ayres.

The second pleasant surprise of the first episode was seeing that Preslin was played by Eric Chitty. People of my vintage will remember Eric Chitty as Smithy in the sitcom Please Sir, but for classic era Doctor Who fans he will always be Co ordinator Engin in my all time favourite story “The Deadly Assassin”.

The Doctor fades out of this story about halfway through episode one , but William Hartnell has to play two roles in the story as it turns out. The big cliffhanger at the end of the first episode is that the evil Abbot of Amboise, the architect of the massacre to come, is in fact a dead ringer for the Doctor, and played by Hartnell as well.

Episode two focused largely on the baddies’ attempts to get Anne back, even though half the time they are also saying that she isn’t important. Hmm. It’s a completely Doctorless episode, and so Steven has to take the centre stage a lot, and fair play to good old Peter Purves, he has a pretty good lash at it as well. He is with his Huguenot mates when he sees the Abbot of Amboise, whom he immediately identifies as the Doctor. Made aware of his mistake he gets Nicholas to take him to Preslin’s, where a dotty old bag tells him that Preslin has been in prison for the last two years. Huh? Steven gives an angry Nicholas the slip, then later overhears the Catholic baddies discussing plans to murder the Sea Beggar. He tries to tell the Huguenots, but Gaston is having none of it, and even draws on Steven, who saves himself by not fighting. Hmm. Gaston won’t listen to him, and sends him away. Again, we got a nicely different type of cliffhanger in this episode, which ends with the Admiral Coligny revealing that his championing of a treaty with the Dutch against Spain has earned him the nickname of the Sea Beggar. Oooh!

I was really enjoying this story, and hoping that episode three would be as good as the first two, and . . . it was! What I think happened is that the production team made a tense, well written political drama, and I found that I was being drawn into the goings on in and outside the royal court. In fact, Steven’s actions came to be something of a diversion, and I almost wished he’d just let the story get on with it. I don’t know if it does help to already know something about the background leading up to the massacre, for example,  I was a little confused when Coligny survived the assassination attempt, since Coligny’s assassination was actually the catalyst for the atrocities that followed. Here might be the time to mention the number of other good actors who turn in fine performances – Leonard Sachs and Andre Morell to name but two. As the episode worked its way to a conclusion though, I did wonder where it was going to go. After all the massacre did actually happen, and nothing Steven or the Doctor could do would prevent it. You can see the swerve the story is taking, though, with the killing of the abbot, and Steven’s fear that he is going to be stranded .

Episode 4 was rather strange – not bad, and not unenjoyable, but strange. In fact it was very enjoyable, but it was remarkable how quickly the story leaves behind the political drama. The Doctor suddenly reappears, and refuses to explain his absence other than the fact he has been held up. I can’t help thinking that William Hartnell has been rather shabbily treated in this story – all in all he must have been absent for over 2 episodes’ length. Yes, he got to do the cameo as the Abbot, but it’s not the same as having a sizable amount to do as the Doctor. He always rose to the occasion when he was given a script as good as this one as well. He hasn’t been back 5 minutes when he’s reaffirming the Aztecs doctrine – namely that you can’t change History, not one line of it. Oh yeah? Why did you spend so much energy thwarting the Monk, then? Why not just sit back and wait for it all to go pear shaped? It’s not the only throwback to an earlier series in this episode either. The Doctor’s haste to get to the TARDIS and get out is very familiar, and some of his former harshness seems rather evident in the way that he insists that Anne Chaplet should go to her auntie, rather than accompanying them. Mind you, considering what happened to his last two female assistants I suppose you can’t blame him. To lose one companion may be looked on as misfortune, but to lose two . . .

Whether you liked or disliked this episode  (I loved it ) there’s no way that you could call it boring. Following their departure we’re treated to a montage of woodcuts showing the horrors of the massacre. That’s something different. Then Steven, disgusted with the Doctor’s attitude to Anne, insists on jumping ship at the next stop. This happens to be Wimbledon Common. Steven hops out, and the Doctor leaves the door open, and then embarks upon a short but mesmerizing monologue about his former companions. Hartnell at his absolute best, showing everyone what they’d been missing during the story. A young dark haired woman with a (vague) resemblance to Susan runs in. The suspicion that she may not be the sharpest knife in the cutlery drawer is raised by the fact that she doesn’t seem to notice that the inside is bigger than the outside. Hmm. She is none other than Dodo Chaplet, possibly a descendant of Anne Chaplet, who may have survived the massacre after all. She hasn’t got Anne’s French/mummerset accent though. Dodo is determinedly Mancunian. Well, we’ll see how long she keeps that up.

Make no bones – that was great. Seriously, Doctor Who at its best

What have we learned?

Apparently you can’t change time again (but you can)

20: The Myth Makers

Before Watching

Can you call this one a historical? Well, we’ll see exactly what we can say about which genre, if any, it fits into after we’ve watched it. What I will say is that I’m not really looking forward to it. Let me explain that. When I was a kid I loved reading about Greek Mythology. So much so that I won my first ever ‘Mastermind’ competition at school, in the sixth form, when I took Greek Mythology as my specialist subject. If you’re going to do well in general knowledge quizzes, then a good knowledge of Greek Mythology will always be a boon to you. Well and good. However the negative side of this particular coin is that I used to – well , still do – get really annoyed when people get the myths wrong, or start calling Greek Gods and Heroes by their roman names – the Twelve Labours of Hercules, for example, being a bit of a red rag to a Cretan bull as far as I’m concerned.

My prior knowledge of this particular story includes the fact that this is Maureen O’Brien’s last. We’ll talk about that, and my overall feelings about Vicki, after we’ve watched the story.

After Watching

In terms of the script, and yes, the acting too, I felt that the first episode set an unbelievably high standard for the rest of this story to follow. Basically, the episode sets out quite convincingly to let you know that everything you thought you knew about the Trojan War was nonsense. Far from chasing Hector three times around the walls of Troy, Achilles does the fleeing, and when Hector is knackered, then he applies the coup de grace, just as the Doctor emerges from the TARDIS to be hailed by him as Zeus. There’s a delicious moment when Achilles explains that Zeus has to use a variety of guises to appear to humans, and on this occasion he has obviously chosen to appear as an old beggar.

A number of actors have reappeared in different prominent roles in Doctor Who, including Francis de Wolf, Agamemnon in this story, whom I recognized as being the actor who played Vasor the fur trapper in The Keys of Marinus. More importantly, seeing him in Greek costume I recognized him as the actor who plays Agrippa in my officially favourite Carry On film of all time, namely Carry on Cleo ( De Wolf: I am Agrippa – Kenneth Connor : Well I know a few holds myself.)There’s a terrific scene between him and his brother Menelaus, played by Jack Melford. If you remember, The Trojan War was all in aid of getting back Menelaus’ wife, Helen from the clutches of Paris, Prince of Troy. Far from wanting Helen back, Menelaus it turns out is quite happy for Paris to have her. This is not her first dalliance, apparently.

The tone is maintained throughout the second and third episodes too. Some of these characters are rather broadly drawn, and yet the whole thing is quite irresistible. I really enjoyed Max Adrian’s dotty old Priam, Ivor Salter’s Odysseus, and Barrie Ingham’s Paris. Just when you think you’ve got a handle on it, someone else comes along with a cynical one liner which knocks you back a bit. For example, in the third episode – Death of A Spy – Odysseus waits impatiently for the Doctor to unveil his master plan for beating the Trojans. The doctor reveals a paper airplane, and asks if Odysseus has any idea what it is. Ivor Salter wrinkles his unlovely nose and replies, “It looks like one of the parchment darts that my kids make” or words to that effect. When Odysseus announces that the Doctor will be in the front of the plane they will build, he rapidly suggests the wooden horse in its place. The irony of this is that Vicki has already told Steven that the Doctor said that the idea of the wooden horse was actually invented by Homer, and didn’t really happen.

This playing with your expectations and consistent undermining of the original myth has made this a tremendously enjoyable story for me. The 2004 Wolfgang Petersen film, “Troy” also removed the mythical elements of the original story, and what resulted was a little bit of a macho bore – this is so, so much better than that, notwithstanding the fact that it’s all recon. Writer Donald Cotton plays around with our expectations so much that he even uses this groan inducing pun as the cliff hanger to the penultimate element. The wooden horse appears outside Troy, and Priam decides that Vicki has done his bidding and used her powers to bring them victory. Cassandra the priestess tells them they must not bring in the horse as it will lead to their doom. A leading Trojan – it was difficult to tell each one – tells her words to the effect of – shut your mush. This is what follows -

“Cassandra : Then woe to the house of Priam, woe to the Trojans!

Trojan : You’re a bit too late to say woah to the horse – I’ve just given instructions to have it brought into the city.”

Cue end titles. Absolute classic work.

The last episode was the first time that I actually noticed Katarina – played by Adrienne Hill. You wouldn’t know her importance from the start of this episode, but I already knew that she was going to join the TARDIS crew – albeit briefly. At the start although the Horse is in the city, and we think we know what is going to happen, the tone remains the same as the other three. The Doctor grumbles about the horse, saying that he wishes Odysseus had given him another day so he could have fitted the horse with shock absorbers.  Of course the tone darkens, for this essentially is the story of a massacre, the massacre of the decent Trojans.

When I read versions of the original myth, I always felt that the true heroes were to a lesser extent Achilles, and to a greater extent Odysseus. Well, as for Achilles in this, he’s far from invulnerable. In fact he turns out to be extremely vulnerable, especially when Troilus dispatches him in their fight. As for Odysseus – well, without wanting to mince my words – he’s a git. A pragmatic, determined, cunning git, but still a git. In a similar way I always felt sorry for Cassandra – cursed with the gift to be able to foretell the future and never have anyone believe her – but here Frances White manages to make her thoroughly unsympathetic. When Odysseus announces at the end that she has been earmarked for Agamemnon it’s him I feel sorry for, and Odysseus makes some comments to the same effect.

I knew that Vicki would be staying with Troilus, but I didn’t know that she wouldn’t get a proper farewell scene with the Doctor. That’s a shame. Vicki was a cut above the stereotypical screamer, and was probably allowed to do a lot more than her predecessor Susan was. Curiously there seemed to me to be far more of a grandfatherly bond between the Doctor and Vicki than there was between him and Susan. Still, for all that she didn’t get a leaving scene with the Doctor, at least he was allowed to express his hope that she will be alright, and how much he is going to miss her. As for Vicki, she has a touching scene with Troilus as she reassures him that they can build a new Troy together. Mind you, am I the only person to detect a note of doubt in the fact that the original (medieval) story of Troilus and Cressida is one of betrayal in love? Bearing in mind the way that this whole story has played around with our expectations, it’s probably deliberate.

Overall, it’s a good example of just how Doctor Who has always been able to appeal to different audiences of different ages and levels of maturity. There’s a lot in this that you probably just wouldn’t notice as a kid – not least Odysseus’ use of the simile  - ‘as nervous as a bacchante before her first orgy’. Even in 4 parter stories I’ve often found that there’s a dip in one of the episodes, but I didn’t really find there was any slack at all. In brief, it’s a remarkably good piece of work that I thoroughly enjoyed.

What Have We Learned?

Hard to tell really

It’s probably best never to meet a hero – in real life he’ll often turn out to be a git.

14: The Crusade

Before Watching

Well, after the relative madness of “The Web Planet” it’s something of a relief to be back on the relatively safe ground of a Historical. This was written by David Whitaker, the show’s first story/script editor, who had moved on and been replaced by Dennis Spooner. This one promises to be more of a return to the style of Historical that John Lucarotti gave us with “Marco Polo” , with real life Historical figures being foregrounded.

This was actually the third Doctor Who story to be novelised after Doctor Who in an exciting adventure with the Daleks – and – Doctor Who and the Zarbi (The Web Planet). It was originally published in 1963 – David Whitaker wrote the novelisation of his own script, and I read it beck in the early 70s, not long before Target began their successful series. I enjoyed this one a lot more than the Doctor Who and the Zarbi, but I’ll be honest, I can’t remember much about it, apart from the Doctor’s explanation of why Richard decided to turn back before he got as far as Jerusalem.

After Watching

Once again, as historical scores more highly than I might have expected. Right, cards on table. I can only realistically judge a stry by how I feel about it now. It’s probably futile for me to attempt to judge just how the ten year old me, for the sake of argument, would have reacted to watching it, but somehow I don’t think that I would have rated it as highly then, as I rate it now.

I’ll try to explain. For one thing, as well as the regulars, this has three terrific actors in the three main roles – Jean Marsh (due to be short lived companion Sara Kingdom in the next series) as King Richard’s sister Joanna, Bernard Kay (who we saw a few weeks ago as Carl Tyler in The Dalek Invasion of Earth) as Saladin, and Julian Glover as Richard the Lionheart (later to be Scaroth in the wonderful City of Death). Any one of those has the ability, like Philip Madoc, to lift any production. Put all three of them into it, and you’ve got every good chance of something special. One of the main plot points is Richard’s desire to find an honourable way out of the situation he is in, which leads him to consider giving his sister Joanna in marriage to Saladin’s brother, Saphadin. This makes for some great scenes between Marsh and Glover. Which actually highlights one of the strengths, as well as one of the weaknesses of this story. One of the strengths, as I have said on more than one occasion, is that the BBC were so good at doing historical drama serials. On the other hand it’s a bit of a weakness in this particular story as I find myself far more interested in Richard, Joanna and Saladin than I am in anything involving the regulars. In fact, they are rather incongruous in this story, an element that doesn’t quite gel with everything that is going on around them,.

As for the script, well, this is a very literate piece of work from David Whitaker, and the actors obviously relish this. To a younger audience I wonder whether some of it might not have come across as a little heavy, but to me it worked just fine. What interested me was that the story takes a very modern tack, which I think might well have been quite surprising for 1965. To me, it was Saladin who came across as the civilised, reasonable, pragmatic leader, while Richard came across as petulant, mercurial, and hot headed – which in truth is probably pretty close to the real, historical Richard.

Which is not to say that the script abjures all clichés. The ever popular ‘the crew gets split up and Barbara gets captured’ is, frankly, wearing a bit thin, now, and that’s one thing I won’t be sorry to see the back of when Ian and Barbara leave at the end of “The Chase”. I expect Barbara would have been quite happy about it as well. Once again she ‘s found herself as the object of desire of some ne’er do well who has no intention of being a gentleman about it. The poor girl should seriously consider hanging her perfume. Another cliché – although not specifically a Doctor Who cliché, and one that I rather enjoyed, was the way that Ian was staked out and smeared with honey after caught by bandits.

Of course, this suffers in the same way that any Historical featuring real and well known Historical figures is going to suffer. In “Marco Polo” we know that Tegana can not kill Kublai Khan – because he didn’t, and that Kublai Khan will eventually sallow Marco to go home – because he did. In the same way we know that Joanna will not be forced to marry Saphadin, because she wasn’t, and Richard will conclude his treaty with Saladin and return home – because he did. And that’s the problem. There just isn’t enough uncertainty, and in a story involving King Richard the Lionheart, the Doctor and the companions are only ever going to be the bit part players, and never the heroes.

Overall, then, it was a perfectly good Historical although it did just sort of , well, end, and even for all that I certainly enjoyed it more than the Dennis Spooner Historicals, if not as much as the John Lucarotti ones.

What Have We Learned?

 Saladin was rather a decent chap, while Richard was a bit of a rotter. I’d always sort of suspected that.

12: The Romans

Before Watching

This is another Dennis Spooner historical. Well, you may recall that while I could appreciate the Reign of Terror, I couldn’t say that I really enjoyed it that much. I thought that it was somehow less than the sum of its parts – just my opinion, and of course, feel free to disagree.

I’ve heard or read sometime in the past that The Romans is supposed to be just this side of Carry On Cleo. Which wouldn’t actually worry me too much if it’s true, since Carry On Cleo is my favourite of that particular series of films. It’s only 4 parts too, so if it isn’t that good, well, at least it isn’t going to last that long.

After Watching

I don’t know what I was expecting, but I wasn’t quite expecting that. Just when you think you’ve got to grips with what the First Doctor stories have to offer . . . If we take the first episode – The Slave Traders – it opens after the travellers have been staying in an empty villa in the roman countryside for several weeks already. Now, like me, it’s possible that you might well have thought from time to time – why doesn’t the Doctor and the crew find somewhere nice, and chill out for a while? Well, in this story it’s clear that they have done so. In the first episode we see Vicki and Barbara taking a walk down to the local market – and they’re just like any modern day tourists. It’s such a familiar scene – and yet it really isn’t familiar in the context of Doctor Who. The Doctor decides that he’s off to Rome, and doesn’t want Ian and Barbara along, leaving them potentially for several days. At this stage I have to say that I’m pretty sure that the scene before the two of them are captured in the villa is deliberately designed to leave adult viewers to draw the conclusion that they have done the deed, as it were, without actually saying anything that a parent would be embarrassed to have to explain to a seven year old.

When Ian and Barbara are taken prisoner in the villa, and sold by the slavers, I couldn’t help but think of a similar scene in Carry on Cleo – alright, the slavers in this weren’t actually called Marcus et Spencius like in the film, but it still made me think of them.

One of the things I like about watching the Hartnells story by story is that you can actually see the Doctor’s character develop. Yes, he looks old, but actually he is the youngest he will ever be. The mean, grumpy and inconsiderate edges have all been practically worn off by this time, and here Hartnell is at his most impish, and virtually twinkles through every scene. He and Vicki chance upon the body of the murdered lyre player Petulian on the way to Rome, and when he is mistaken by a centurion for the lyre player he is quite happy to play along. The centurion escorts him to Rome, where the Emperor Nero awaits a command performance.

I was interested to see how the story would deal with Nero. It’s very easy to see him as a buffoon – he acted like a buffoon at times, but he was also an amoral killer. Derek Francis goes for the buffoon here, although this does mean that when we are allowed just a glimpse of the monster – when he intentionally poisons a slave who is getting on his nerves – it is much more effective. I guessed that Nero would be the latest to join the massed ranks of men who’d like to force their attentions on the divine Barbara, and his pursuit of her charms has all the subtlety of a Feydeau farce.

Now, I know that this one was played for laughs, but I think even now you can see how Dennis Spooner was trying to change the show’s attitude to the Doctor altering/influencing Earth history. It’s made fairly clear that it is the way that the Doctor accidentally burns Nero’s architectural plans that gives Nero the idea of burning down Rome. (OK – short historical digression. Almost certainly Nero was not responsible for the burning of Rome. He wasn’t even in Rome at the time.) Only last season the Doctor was telling us that you can’t change History, not one line of it. Now, apparently, it seems that either the Doctor has steered Earth History in one direction – or that he was predestined to do it. Alright, let’s not go down that line of argument again.

All in all I don’t have a great deal to say about this story. It was pleasant enough – and probably the fact that everyone involved was clearly having a blast with the story made it more enjoyable too. Given the choice between having to watch this, or the Reign of Terror again, I’d watch this one every time. Still, it does make you think , when you see that the team wanted to experiment with not just doing another Historical, but specifically doing a ‘funny’ historical. Did that suggest that they were losing patience with or interest in the genre? Well, there’s another one along in two stories time, and that should help us answer that. 

What Have We Learned?

Good question. 

The TARDIS crew do actually stay in the same place for relatively long periods of time.

Ian and Barbara are definitely 'at it'. 

8: The Reign of Terror

Before Watching

Another historical, the last of the first series. In fact the last story of any kind of the first series. If you include “An Unearthly Child”– which admittedly is more of a Pre-Historical – then it’s 4 –all between the sci-fi serials and the Historicals. This one was not scripted by John Lucarotti, I knew, but by Dennis Spooner. This is a bit of a surprise since I mostly associate Dennis Spooner with some of the classic episodes of The Avengers, which would have led me to expect a more sci-fi sort of thing.

The French revolution is a fascinating if rather confusing period of History. I somehow don’t expect we’ll be seeing anything similar to “The Aztecs” with this one, although as much as Barbara wasn’t able to change history back then, it should stand even more so for this serial – we all know that the Doctor didn’t save Marie Antoinette, or discredit Robespierre, or see to it that Napoleon never took over.

My personal feeling before we start is that they might have trouble spinning 6 episodes out of this, but I’ve been wrong before. Only one way to find out.

After Watching

I’ll come clean from the start here. Although this one had some great moments, as a whole I liked it less than either “Marco Polo” or “The Aztecs”.  Dennis Spooner has a different approach to the Historical story from John Lucarotti. There’s more comedy, and less obvious educational content. That’s okay, but it’s different, and if it comes down to personal preference, I like the John Lucarotti approach more.

Any fictional account which uses the French Revolution as its background is going to invite comparisons with “The Scarlet Pimpernel”, or “A Tale of Two Cities” or both, and “The Reign of Terror” certainly does that. Which is not necessarily a negative, for the series has often drawn on a wide range of sources for inspiration for individual stories.

The French Revolution is a complicated period of History, and this sense of not really understanding what’s happening certainly comes across in the first couple of episodes of this story. “Marco Polo” and “The Aztecs” both took different approaches to the problems of a Historical story. In the former, the Travellers were attached to a real historical figure, and this figure, Polo, was cleverly used to share the viewers’ sympathies, and the duties of exposition and taking the plot forward. In “The Aztecs” the Travellers, well, Barbara, actually initiate action through trying to change history, and her attempts and their failure are the real engine that drives the plot forward. In “The Reign of Terror” the plot is neither nailed to the actions of one real historical person, nor does it revolve around the attempts of the regulars to alter History. In fact all the regulars can do is to try to find each other when they are separated, avoid the guillotine, and get back to the TARDIS. That’s perfectly consistent with much of what we’ve seen this series, I grant you.

This doesn’t mean that there are no historical figures portrayed in the story. Robespierre features quite prominently in the later episodes, and the Doctor even gets to speak to him. For me this scene isn’t all that effective. It’s a bit stilted, not least because Robespierre can’t really act out of character, and whatever the Doctor says to him we know that it can’t change history. Then towards the end, when Napoleon Bonaparte appears, Ian and Barbara see him as spectators do, they cannot get to interact with him. “The Reign of Terror” is at its best with the Doctor’s interactions with some of the more obviously comic characters – the overseer of a road gang he meets on his way to Paris, who calls him skinny, and soon after gets brained on the back of his head with the Doctor’s spade is one, and the jailor is another good example.

It’s important for the plot that the travellers are split up early in the second episode. Caught in a burning ‘safe’ house at the end of episode 1, Susan, Barbara and Ian are carried off to Paris and imprisonment, while the Doctor is left behind, and then woken by a young lad. The scene between him and Hartnell is rather charming, and another sign of just how much the grumpy gittishness of the first couple of stories has receded into the background.

Ian is imprisoned away from Barbara and Susan who are in the same cell as each other. Ian is in the same cell as a dying man, who gives him information for the British ‘scarlet pimpernel’ figure – James Sterling. The plot of many of the remaining episodes plays some interesting tricks before we find out just who this mysterious figure is. The Doctor, meanwhile, sets off to walk to Paris to free the rest of the crew. His plan involves stealing the uniform of a revolutionary official, and at first this seems to work rather well, although it does eventually lead to him having to meet Robespierre for the rather lifeless scene that I mentioned earlier.

I did like the final scene, though there is a real irony in it which I doubt was intended. After the travellers depart in the TARDIS we see the background of a star field, and hear the Doctor saying, “Our destiny is in the stars – so let’s go and search for it!” Was this a cryptic sign to the audience that in future season we’d see more and more stories like ‘The Daleks’ and fewer and fewer like ‘The Aztecs’? If it wasn’t, then its hugely ironic.

What Have We Learned?

The Doctor's favourite period of history is the French Revolution

COmedy can work well within Doctor Who if its not overdone. 

6. The Aztecs

Phew - my school's inspection is over, and so that source of stress, and distraction from the serious job in hand of watching every classic Doctor Who episode is out of the way. Good job too. 

Before Watching

“Doctor Who” was originally conceived by Sydney Newman as a show where stories involving the Doctor travelling back to witness and to an extent participate in some of the great events of Earth History would be just as important as those featuring Science fiction elements. It’s a matter of public record that he hated “The Daleks”, even though the success of this second story dictated the eventual path that the series would take. Still, the so-called Historicals were very much a part of the William Hartnell era of the show, and even if they have proven to be an evolutionary cul de sac in the show’s development.

As we’ve already seen, the first, and possibly greatest , of the Historicals, John Lucarotti’s “Marco Polo” doesn’t exist in the archives. This four parter, then , is my first chance to accurately assess what I’ve been missing with my previously dismissive attitude towards them. I really enjoyed “Marco Polo”, so this story has a lot to live up to.

After Watching

I’m glad that this isn’t the first Hartnell era story that I’ve watched. If it had been I might have spent so much time concentrating on what wasn’t in it, that I would have missed out on what is so good about what is in it.

I think that it’s a very good example of what Doctor Who could do well. I don’t think that you would ever see a story like this in the new series, or really in any other era. For one thing, the main motivation for all of the characters except Barbara is to find a way to open the tomb in which they left the TARDIS to enable them to leave. This is totally in keeping with what we’ve seen so far in this first season. It’s only Barbara who wants to do something else, to improve a situation, and right a wrong. She wants to persuade the Aztecs to abandon their custom of blood sacrifice. She is mistaken for the reincarnation of the Goddess Yetaxa since she is wearing Yetaxa’s bracelet that she picked up from inside the tomb. Barbara uses this mistake to try to impose her will upon them. Not only does she fail, she has to endure the Doctor telling her that she is doomed to fail, and that she is utterly powerless to change their doomed destiny. In case we didn’t get that point, the last we see of any of the Aztecs themselves is a close up of the manic face of Tlotoxl, the High Priest of the Blood Sacrifice, just as he is in the process of carrying out said sacrifice.

This sounds rather bleak, but it actually isn’t; rather it raises some interesting, almost philosophical questions. For example – what right do the Doctor and his companions actually have to go about changing the course of events? What right do they have to challenge the Aztecs sincerely held beliefs, however abhorrent those beliefs might actually be to us today? Answers on a postcard, please.

There’s a great deal to enjoy about this story. It’s all set in the studio, and although the painted backdrops are a little too obviously painted in some shots, the fact is that the designer has done a marvelous job with the sets. They get full value out of them too – I’m sure that every penny that was spent here is shown on the screen.

The regular and supporting cast are very good here too. Starting with the guests, John Ringham, a man best known probably for playing stuffy businessmen and civil servants, and Jan Francis’ character Penny’s well meaning father in “Just Good Friends”  puts in a wonderfully sly and oleaginous performance as Tlotoxl. Tlotoxl is the chief villain in the story, and yet such is the complexity of the plot that when you break down his actions and his motivations, you can’t help seeing another side to him. To whit, while Tlotoxl is a nasty bit of work, he does what he does because -

* He suspects that Barbara is not Yetaxa – he’s right! She isn’t!

* He fears that she means to try to get them to change their whole way of life and belief system – he’s right! She does!

In that light, his actions are totally understandable, and, if we judge his actions by the standards of his own society, then they are justifiable as well.

There’s a nicely observed portrayal of the High Priest of Knowledge, Autloc, by Keith Pyott as a counterpoint to Tlotoxl. Autloc is unswervingly loyal to Yetaxa, yet his doubt as she asks him to overturn his whole belief system is there in every word he utters and every expression on his face. In the end he accepts what Barbara tells him, and as a result he elects to leave behind his status, his family and all his worldly possessions and go out into the wilderness. Now, the Doctor at the end tells Barbara that if she didn’t save a civilization – which she didn’t – then at least she saved one man. Now surely the audience are expected to take this as irony, for its hard not to draw the conclusion that Autloc would have been far better off had she never appeared in the first place.

I’ve known a few meatheads like Ian Cullen’s Ixta in my time as well. I’ll be honest, I haven’t known many Science teachers who would have been able to defeat him in a fight to the death the way that Ian does, but William Russell has enough credit in the bank with me by this time that I’m perfectly willing to suspend my disbelief.

I absolutely loved the sub plot of the Doctor’s ‘romance’ with Cameca, played beautifully by Margot Van der Burgh. She would return to the series in one of my favourite Tom Baker stories , “The Keeper of Traken”. The Doctor, not understanding enough of Aztec customs, ends up proposing marriage to Cameca, and you get the idea that he is not totally dismayed when he finds out what he has done. The romance is of course doomed, for the Travellers have to leave, and more than that, they need Cameca’s help to do so. She knows that they must leave, and that she will not be marrying the Doctor, yet she helps them anyway, and shows true nobility of spirit. There’s a touching little Hartnell scene where he considers discarding the keepsake that she has given him before entering the TARDIS, but cannot quite bring himself to do so. He has never seemed more human at any earlier time in this series.

“The Aztecs” is certainly very much a Barbara show. How fortunate the team were to cast Jacqueline Hill in the role. In every story we’ve seen so far, and practically in every scene in which she is given something meaningful to do she is compelling, and a very good actress indeed. So a Barbaracentric show is usually going to be a winner. If they’d renamed the Aztecs something alien – like the Dorgs or something, and set this on a different planet, it would probably rightly be remembered as one of the classic ‘alien’ stories.

It’s a terrific story, and difficult to fault. For the first time we, the audience, are asked to seriously consider the effects that contact with the Travellers has on the people that they meet. It’s impossible to avoid the conclusion that two good people have had their lives made worse – Cameca through heartbreak, and Autloc through losing everything. This is not the same as the Thals who made the decision of their own free will to join the fight against the Daleks and were killed during the attack on the city – they at least had something to gain.

It also tries to deal with the question of changing History, and this is more problematical. You’ll have to give me time for a little digression with this one.

“You can’t change History – not one line!” thunders the Doctor. Now, as wonderful as this line is, and as well as it does fit this story, it doesn’t actually bear close analysis.  It doesn’t even work when you consider what has already happened in this first season. Work with me on this one. Let me give you an example: -

In “The Daleks”, it is crystal clear that the Thals would never have attacked the Dalek city had Ian not made the threat towards Alydon’s lady friend, and shaken them out of their pacifism. Therefore, Ian has changed the history of Skaro, QED.

So . . . either you CAN change History . . . or the Travellers’ actions are actually part of History, and are meant to happen. If that is the case, then this introduces the vexed question of predestination. This basically says that what is going to happen has already been decided, and whatever we might think about free will, we have none, and are acting according to a script from which we can never deviate, even if we have no awareness of it whatsoever. In which case nobody is good, nobody is evil, and nothing has any point. This is certainly not what Doctor Who has ever said.

It’s only really since the 2005 revival that this issue has been attacked head on. What we’ve ended up with is the only sensible model of History in which Doctor Who can work. The current attitude towards changing History in the show is that you can change SOME of History, but there are fixed points in Time which cannot be changed without the whole of reality falling part, as was articulated during the Tenth Doctor’s tenure in several stories. This gives the Doctor the leeway to change events on Skaro, for instance.

So, in terms of retrospective continuity, you can suggest that maybe the Doctor knows that this is a fixed point in Time, and so rather than having to go into long, involved and complicated explanations uses the simplified line of argument that you can’t change any of History, knowing full well that Barbara should not be able to change this point, and probably confident that he can counteract anything she achieves if he needs to.

Of course, the real reason why he said this is that we know that Barbara can’t make the Aztecs give up blood sacrifice, because they didn’t. Which is the real reason why changing or not changing history only really matters in the Historicals – for who knows what the history of Skaro was going to be anyway?

What have we learned ?

That you can’t change History, not one line of it (as long as it’s Earth History, and it happened  prior to the year in which the programme was made. As far as anything else is concerned, play  ball).

·         As I’d suspected for a while now, the Doctor DOES have a heart. (although it is a while before he will come clean about having two of them)