The Myth Makers

The TARDIS arrives on a plain somewhere on Earth, and outside two men are fighting a pitched battle with swords and shields. The Doctor emerges from the TARDIS to find out where they are, and one man emerges victorious at the distraction he causes. The victor is Achilles, and he mistakes the Doctor for Zeus. Yes, back in history we go, to that era where myth and history blur and overlap: the TARDIS has landed the travellers just over the ridge from the city of Troy, where a massive army of Greeks has been assembled to conquer the city all over a woman. Steven ends up captured with the Doctor and kept in the Greek camp, whereas Vicki is taken into Troy when the TARDIS is captured, and she is renamed Cressida by king Priam, for he finds the name Vicki to be too hard to remember. Both the Doctor and Vicki are held as captives working under duress; the Doctor must help the Greeks breach the walls of Troy, and Vicki is to help the Trojans repel their enemies. And then there's a big wooden horse.

We all know this story. Like so many adventures, The Myth Makers exists only as an audio soundtrack which I listened to on the way to Windsor, Ontario on Thursday morning. I saw the Brad Pitt version of Troy earlier on DVD and try as I might I could not fully convince myself to mentally mesh the two and have William Hartnell speaking with Mr Pitt, and Maureen O'Brien (Vicki) hanging about a palace with Orlando Bloom skulking about with some other man's wife. Nope. Just didn't work. After a while when you get Doctor Who in your blood, you can see the wobbly sets of the classic era, and the painted backdrop walls, and envision a wooden horse made the size of a chair but shot from afar to look huge. But in this case that is not a bad thing; this is another of those comedy episodes. King Priam is bored with being under seige for 10 years and takes his frustrations out by mocking his idiot children (one who was stupid enough to steal a Greek noble's woman and have a whole fleet come looking for her). The Greeks are tired and want to go home; even Helen's husband says he doesn't miss her and she's pulled this kind of stunt before so he may as well just leave her to it. Add the usual conventions of the TARDIS and its crew being mistaken for things and people they are not, and it actually is pretty damn funny.

Anyone who knows their Shakespeare also knows the story Troilus and Cressida, which takes place within Troy during the Greek seige. Vicki falls in love with Troilus after some dubious flirting and decides that she wants to stay here with him in the distant past with the Greeks hunting them down after the fall of Troy. The Doctor is too rushed to fully comprehend her leaving; Steven is wounded in the sacking of Troy and he enlists the aid of a handmaiden named Katarina to help him get Steven on board the TARDIS. The TARDIS makes good its escape with a new companion, and Vicki is left to become part of history. Or mythology. Or maybe just to die eventually. Steven does not even get to say goodbye to her.

The TARDIS flies on. Vicki must have had some kind of ESP to know to get out now, because when next it lands, the ship will put its crew into the middle of a conspiracy and plans to ransack the galaxy...

NEXT EPISODE : THE DALEK MASTER PLAN