020 - The Myth Makers

Broadcast:

16^th October - 6^th November 1965

Doctor:

William Hartnell

Companions:

Vicki, Steven

Adversary:

Greeks, Trojans

Written by:

Donald Cotton

Director:

Michael Leeston-Smith

Music:

Humphrey Searle

Script Editor:

Donald Tosh

Producer:

John Wiles

Average Viewers:

8.35m (8.3, 8.1, 8.7, 8.3)

Summary: The TARDIS lands outside Troy near the end of the Greek siege. The travellers become separated and captured by different sides of the war as spies. Their freedoms are only assured if they can bring down the opposition, effectively pitting them against each other!

If Mission To The Unknown had shocked viewers by not featuring the regular cast, then The Myth Makers would shock them by leaving that story unresolved. Instead of seeing Daleks turning their attention to 3000 AD Earth, the episode opens with a sword fight around 300 BC (both dates are approximations) until the TARDIS interior is finally seen after two and a half minutes. The Doctor and Vicki are still looking at the scanner screen as they had been two weeks earlier and we are reminded that Vicki has a sore ankle... exactly as if no time has past since we last saw them. So have the Daleks built a new time machine and we will see them bringing their allies to ancient times for an easy victory?

Also shocking audiences at the time was news that a girl's body had been found on Saddleworth Moor, identified as 10 year old Lesley Ann Downey who hadn't been seen for nearly ten months. Myra Hindley and Ian Brady are suspected having already been charged with the murder of Edward Evans the previous week. Within another week they were remanded in custody and the body of 12 year old John Kilbride was also found, having gone missing the afternoon of Doctor Who's first episode nearly tree years earlier.

In international news, political unrest was rapidly growing in Rhodesia with both UN and African nations requesting British action to avoid rebellion and unilateral declaration of independence, followed by a Soviet offer of support for African countries should such an outcome occur. By the end of The Myth Makers, martial law had been declared but would prove ineffective within a further week. Meanwhile, Pope Paul VI made an announcement that Jews are not collectively responsible for the killing of Christ, and Corgi released a James Bond model of the Aston Martin DB5 as featured in Goldfinger the year before (it would gone on to be their most successful model ever). "The Magic Roundabout" and "Call My Bluff" had their TV débuts to entertain kids and adults while Ken Dodd continued to dominate the music charts with "Tears" before finally giving way to The Rolling Stones as "Get Off of My Cloud" began its own domination before the final episode of The Myth Makers aired. Finally, cinemas were showing films such as The Great Race, Marriage on the Rocks and Crack in the World which featured a hint at a later Doctor Who classic theme - drilling too far into the Earth and threatening the whole of humanity!

So how would the Greeks and Trojans react to the arrival of the TARDIS...? And how would new producer John Wiles's first story fair?

Well, due to a coincidence of timing he is mistaken for the great god Zeus! Two warriors fighting isolated on the planes are exchanging words more than blows, with an almost Shakespearian feel and frankly not very believable, then a rumble of thunder is heard and their talk turns to Zeus who is clearly angered and before long the Doctor steps out of the TARDIS taking the moral high ground and thereafter is assumed to be Zeus himself. To maintain the pretence he refers to the TARDIS as a travelling temple, "being small it's convenient". The wordy script continues and sees the Doctor visiting Agamemnon while Steven arrives a little later and is suspected of being a spy. However, when it is reported that the TARDIS has disappeared and the Doctor is unable to use it to help 'prove' he is Zeus he decides to come clean and lets Steven explain the truth... though the Doctor disputes that their arrival were an accident and is instead jolly pleased with himself to have made his way back to Earth at all.

Meanwhile, it is revealed that the TARDIS has been taken by Paris into the city of Troy as a trophy but his sister, High Priestess Cassandra describes it in terms of what we would know as the 'Trojan Horse' having had a vision in the night... consequently when Vicki emerges she also finds herself accused of being a spy or a sauceror since she claims to be from the Future. From this point on the Doctor and Vicki are unwittingly expected to help their respective captors defeat each other!

There is a very comedic feel to both the script and certain actors performances. Paris in particular is full of playful boasting and almost childish innocence, and perhaps this is a deliberate character trait but it undermines the integrity of nearly all his scenes and the story as a whole. There is a fight scene between him and Steven that feels very Pythonesque (though I realise this was three years before the Pythons formed!) as they both seem to step out of their assumed warrior role to avoid the dangers of actually fighting but talk it through instead - with Steven deliberately trying to get caught! The actual humour in The Myth Makers is quite limited compared to other stories, particularly The Romans but it is largely played as if it is a light comedy rather than a fantasy drama and it feels wrong. Unfortunately, the Loose Canon reconstruction is made in such a way that it is clear that many of the images presented are composites and I spent a lot of time wondering how much was genuine source material and how much was specially shot or sourced from elsewhere. Similarly, while the audio is mostly OK with just some minor fuzziness in places, the music often has an undulating wobble due to inconsistent tape speeds which can be quite distracting too.

Ultimately, as you might expect the Doctor reluctantly suggests the famous wooden horse idea (having previously dismissed it as a dramatic creation of Homer) and thus finds himself responsible for a second historic event (though the history of the Trojan War is large known through stories and legends rather than scientifically reliable records) but had he stuck to his original idea then he would have introduced flying machines before even Leonardo Da Vinci theorised them. There is little else that can be said without retelling the whole story, it is fairly limited and reminiscent of The Romans and also rather wordy. Vicki gets a bit of a raw deal being left behind in the TARDIS and then spending most of the rest of the story in a prison cell but she does give us our first look at the TARDIS wardrobe room and gets to fall in love, a point that is signposted for knowledgeable viewers shortly after she meets the Trojans and they decide that 'Vicki' is too outlandish a name and decide to call her Cressida instead... and unsurprisingly it is this part of the story that gives Vicki her means of departure from the show as she chooses to stay with Troilus and help rebuild a new Troy. Although she had shown signs of not fitting in or feeling comfortable, Vicki's departure comes as a bit of a shock. He bustles the Doctor into the TARDIS to talk to him and emerges in a solemn mood then while she goes to find Troilus the Doctor helps a wounded Steven into the TARDIS with the aid of Cassandra's hand maid (who had not long been introduced) and the TARDIS dematerialises! As Steven comes around delirious he is as shocked as the viewers to find Vicki has left and been replaced by Katarina, who in turn believes she must have died and is on her way "through the beyond" and the Doctor must be a great god... of course he sets her straight and in one of a handful of snippets existing as a telerecording, says "Remember Katarina, you must call me Doctor. I am not a doc... I am not a god" - one of Hartnell's most infamous fluffs, though it is most often quoted that he said "I am not a dog" it is quite clear that he was about to say 'doctor' having just said it himself and had Adrienne Hill (Katarina) repeat it, perhaps unexpectedly, and cut himself short. And from there his focus is back on Steven and the necessity to stop somewhere and find him some drugs, though the "Next Episode" caption doesn't leave viewers with much hope as it states "The Nightmare Begins"...

All in all, The Myth Makers isn't a bad story but it suffers from almost irreverent writing and not taking itself seriously. Too much is played for laughs and unlike The Romans it is out of context. The music is mediocre but perhaps fitting for a period epic of the time and although I have to give the costumes and sets the benefit of the doubt since all period pieces from the BBC look great, everything else is just about average. The concept and plot are OK but nothing special but the enemy and fear factor are pretty bland. Peter Purves has said that The Myth Makers is one of his favourites but I assume that is from his experience recording it rather than viewing it and I'm not convinced. My over all rating came out as 65% which is by no means the lowest but it's not great. According to a number of sources, Dennis Spooner had wanted to use clever puns for each episode title but three of the four were vetoed... this suggests that it was commissioned before Donald Tosh became Story Editor and that Spooner may have influenced Donald Cotton's writing style. This would certainly explain both the similarities to The Romans and the more comedic style, and maybe he intended Vicki to become Cressida all along since he created her...