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Doctor Who: The Myth Makers [1965] Vicki: "You shouldn't be killing people at your age." The sort of Who serial that shows how flexible the show was in its early days. Like The Romans, this isn't quite a historical/educational effort, but a mostly light-hearted rerun of familiar history [here, myth] with surprisingly emotional touches as it mingles hijinx [''Pon my soul, you're making me as nervous as a Bacchante at her first orgy'] with essentially depressing, tragic subject matter. In later years, a trip to besieged Troy would have discovered aliens behind it all, but here we have Homeric characters as unglamorised, absurd buffoons and versions of famous business which suggest the small-scale origins of what later became embroidered as legend. The cyclops, for instance, is a one-eyed mute killed by a bullying Odysseus, and the Doctor is taken for Zeus - which prompts debate on the part of people who don't really believe in Gods and assume he's a canny trickster. It was one of those shows designed to help ease out a cast member,
with Vicki [Maureen O'Brien] taking on the role of Cressida and left
behind to join with Troilus [who survives this war] and Aeneas to play
out a destiny and the a handy handmaid shoved into the TARDIS as a replacement
only to get killed off in the Dalek epic that followed [the only case
of a 'companion' with a belief system so inflexible that she is utterly
bewildered by the time/space travel thing and unable to get her head
round it]. While the first three episodes play as farce, with Trojans
and Greeks alike cynical about the war and/or barely committed to it,
the fourth turns surprisingly serious as the Greeks sack the city and
Steven [Peter Purves] is badly wounded in the escape from a nasty Odysseus.
Only audio survives; again, a shame since this seems to be one of the
better-paced, livelier William Hartnell serials. First published in this form here. Visit Kim's Official Website at www.johnnyalucard.com
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