Marco Polo The Massacre |
BBC The Aztecs |
|
| Episodes | 4 |  |
| Story No# | 6 | |
| Production Code | F | |
| Season | 1 | |
| Dates | Mar. 23, 1964 - Jun. 13, 1964 |
|
With William Hartnell, William Russell,
Jacqueline Hill, Carole Ann Ford. Written by John Lucarroti. Script-edited by David Whitaker. Directed by John Crockett. Associate Producer: Mervyn Pinfield. Produced by Verity Lambert. |
| Synopsis: Barbara is mistaken for the reincarnation of an Aztec priest, whose civilization she is determined to reform; but the Doctor knows only too well that it is impossible to alter established history. |
Teaching History by Negative Example by Shawn Fuller 1/7/04
Read through the praise offered The Aztecs here and you’ll see a key word sandwiched somewhere amongst the superlatives: “surviving”. In other words, like this story merely because it didn’t get wiped. Now, clearly, that’s not what seemingly everyone who writes about this serial actually intends to say, but The Aztecs largely escapes serious examination simply because it exists, not because it’s actually all that good.
Unlike most other Doctor Who stories, The Aztecs makes the changing of Earth’s known history its primary thematic and plot device. With a few notable exceptions, Doctor Who avoids discussion of the issue altogether. The Aztecs gives us hints as to why that is. Few stories, and certainly fewer still that actually survive, deal so simply and directly with the issue of the TARDIS crew changing a part of Earth’s known past. Here it is plot, theme, character motivation, denouement, and even back-jacket tagline: “You can’t change history, Barbara. Not one line!” The story, at its most basic level, is about Barbara’s defiance of this stern edict.
And it’s hard to imagine a worse mistake that a writer could make
with Once a writer makes the implications of time travel the central theme
of a Doctor Who story, he’s on very shaky ground —
especially if he chooses to make the Doctor the advocate for
non-intervention. Lucarotti makes his job even harder by choosing to set
this argument against the backdrop of known Earth history. Do what you
want to the history of Skaro, or even the events of the present day upon
the future of the Earth, but stories about Earth’s actual history
require much greater care than Lucarotti was apparently able to give.
There is, after all, very little established at the beginning of
episode one that isn’t contradicted by the end of it. The other
three episodes are just there to let Lucarotti get himself into deeper
trouble. When the TARDIS crew first arrives, the Doctor doesn’t care
at all about tampering with the timeline. Instead, he gleefully helps set
up Barbara as a god and all but encourages Ian to contest for the
leadership of the military. While Barbara is screwing with the timeline
to the benefit of the TARDIS crew, the Doctor chuckles a lot and finds it
all, to use his word, “charming”. Within a few short minutes,
though, this Doctor regenerates into a Time Lord more akin to Borusa than
himself. When Barbara tries to intervene with the local customs and stop
a ritual killing, the Doctor goes Gallifreyan on her, giving her a
standard “non-interventionist” line. Then, he ignores what
he’s just said, nipping off to the Garden of Peace for a little bit
of local strumpet. Meanwhile, Susan and Ian both make similar incursions
into local customs and the Doctor, apparently spent from his argument with
Barbara, shows no concern over their polluting the time stream.
Problematically, the only member of the TARDIS crew to whom the
non-interventionist theme of the story applies to is Barbara -- and, of
course, only after she’s set up as a god.
And there’s really no damn good reason for the inconsistencies.
What did the Doctor expect was going to happen when he encouraged his crew
to assume positions of high power in fifteenth-century Mexico? Surely he
had to anticipate that his crew might use their newfound positions of
power to affect change. If he did, then the Doctor’s just a selfish
bastard, more concerned with getting back to the TARDIS than the potential
damage to the timestream. If he didn’t, he’s just a damned
fool. For the love of God, Lucarotti: Ian and Barbara are high school
teachers from the 60s. Idealists like this are exactly the wrong humans
to install as leaders of Aztec Mexico if you’re trying to avoid
intervention. Regardless of his companions’ “fitness to
command”, the Doctor got Barbara into this mess. He’s got no
business yelling at her for, well, being herself.
Worse, Lucarotti takes the Doctor’s hypocrisy inexplicably
further. What, after all, does the Doctor do almost immediately after his
blow-out with Barbara? He goes to sample the local cuisine, falling in
love with Cameca. Now, had this been used as part of the motivation
behind the Doctor’s generally romance-less TARDIS, it would’ve
been cool. Very cool. The Doctor falls in love with a human from the
fifteenth century, realizes the error of his ways, then takes a memento of
her with him, foreswearing love with humans forever more. Instead,
it’s just a rather stock “ships that pass in the night”
kinda thing that exposes the Doctor’s anger in episode one as a lie.
Taken with the other logical inconsistencies, the story’s theme is
reduced to a legalistic punch line: “You can’t change
history, Barbara. Not one line. Unless helping set you up as a God will
get us back to the TARDIS. Or if I get a little action in the Garden of
Peace. Or if my granddaughter is forced to marry someone she
doesn’t want to. Or if Ian’s sense of macho isn’t
offended. Or if you only affect the destiny of one or two locals (and you
can assure me that those one or two locals don’t go on to lead a
revolutionary movement). Oh, the hell with it, woman. You fly in my
TARDIS. Just obey me and bring me tea when I ask for it.”
Still, having said all this, Lucarotti could’ve gotten away with
it all. He could have, indeed, written one of the very best stories
Doctor Who had ever televised. If he had merely taken his
situation, and his thesis, and written the parts appropriate to character.
The thought that struck me on my very first viewing of this story was that
Barbara and the Doctor were playing the wrong parts. Strictly from a
character standpoint, the Doctor should have been Yetaxa. Then he would
have been the one to make the timestream-altering decisions—a far
more palatable position for the Doctor to be in. Imagine The
Aztecs if the Doctor were himself, crusading against injustice, while
Barbara, the history teacher, works out the implications to her time line
if the Doctor carries on. The tension in the story thus becomes the alien
of Unearthly Child doing what he thinks is best
versus the human who cares about saving her own timeline. The tension
would have been infinitely more effective if the history teacher had been
using one of her character traits to fight for something that directly
affected her, rather than the more esoteric position she finds herself
defending. And imagine the fun of her upbraiding the Doctor for falling in
love with the local! Instead of a quickly-mumbled line giving playful
assent to the Doctor’s romance with Cameca (one that, incidentally,
never has Barbara even vaguely taking the Doctor to task for being such an
obvious hypocrite) we could have had a wonderful subplot with Barbara
upbraiding the Doctor for messing not only with Earth’s timestream
but the affections of a woman he knew full well there could be no future
with. Were Barbara herself and the Doctor actually a renegade Time Lord,
the line that might have been extracted for the back cover wouldn’t
have been the mundane, “You can’t change history,” but
the infinitely more intriguing, “You can’t fall in love,
Doctor. Ian and I might never be born!”
As televised, though, its many scripted flaws make The Aztecs
more an “important” work than a good one. Should you watch
it? Of course. But then, you’re a Doctor Who fan trying to
understand the history of the series. Most casual viewers today, to the
extent that they would watch a black-and-white program at all, would
probably switch it off after episode one. And that’s really the
source of most of the enjoyment this serial offers. The Aztecs is
important for the Doctor Who fan to watch because it shows
perfectly why this type of Doctor Who faded. Careful observers
might even see, by virtue of the story’s negative example, how the
form might be revived to better effect in future. I suppose, too, The
Aztecs provides a useful jumping-off point for broader discussions
about the Doctor’s use of time travel throughout his several
regenerations and format changes. It’s just a shame that the one
thing The Aztecs fails to do is provide a consistent approach to
the subject within its own four episodes. Had it at least done this
— regardless of what other producers did with the subject later on
— it might be entirely a classic today.
A Review by Finn Clark
5/6/07
I had trouble working out how to sum up The Aztecs. I'll
probably get lynched for this, but the name that kept coming to mind
wasn't Shakespeare, but P.G. Wodehouse. No, give me a moment.
Theoretically this is one of the bleakest Doctor Who stories, up
there with Genesis of the Daleks. The TARDIS crew
arrive in an advanced civilisation that's due to be annihilated by Cortez
and the Spanish, but there's nothing they can do to prevent this. The one
good and gentle man who trusts Barbara ends up abandoning everything to
wander forever in the desert. In the end, the High Priest of Sacrifice
has re-established his power and is merrily cutting out hearts again.
But is it depressing? Is it, my arse. It's practically an Oscar Wilde
drawing-room comedy. Lucarotti isn't going for laughs like Donald Cotton
or Dennis Spooner, but it's hard to imagine a less horrifying treatment of
this material. Like Gallifreyan Bertie Woosters, the greatest shocks
facing specifically the Doctor and Susan are threats of marriage.
Barbara's playing with fire by impersonating a goddess, but her
confrontations with Tlotoxl are bristling with intelligent dialogue and
impeccable manners. Meanwhile Ian finds himself in a struggle to the
death with a mortal enemy... but this foe happens to be a good-natured,
likeable fellow who isn't even a match for Ian in a fair fight.
Even the plotting is Wodehousian, in places reminiscent of a sitcom.
The Doctor helps Ixta because he thinks he'll thus learn about the tomb,
not realising that Ixta's opponent is Ian. (He's even mistaken in this,
incidentally.) The only person with complete knowledge about what's going
on is Tlotoxl, with everyone else stumbling through misunderstandings and
misapprehensions. Barbara overestimates her own power and doesn't realise
that she's approved the scourging of Susan. Autloc's usefulness to our
heroes is dependent on him believing a lie. You'd hardly need to change a
thing to turn this into outright farce.
Barbara is, of course, the heart of the story. All four regulars get
their own plot thread, although Susan's is hardly anything to write home
about, but there's only one Yetaxa. She's in complete control and almost
terrifying in her role as a living goddess. Damn, she's quick! Look at
all those sharp comebacks when being questioned by the high priests. Here
for once we have a companion being allowed to have intelligence, knowledge
and a point of view that's not merely shadowing the Doctor's. Her
confrontation with him in episode one is a highlight of the entire
Hartnell era, not just of this story.
However almost as enjoyable are the Barbara-Tlotoxl scenes. John
Ringham's Tlotoxl is a wonderful villain and never better than when
locking horns with his arch-nemesis. They have a sinister kind of
rapport, actually. It's interesting to note that the Barbara-Autloc
relationship is warm, full of admiration and based on a lie, while that
between Barbara and Tlotoxl is openly hostile and yet, after a certain
point, completely honest. Even when scheming to bring about Barbara's
death or downfall, he never lies. He merely avoids mentioning that his
peace draught is poisonous or that Susan is the one who'll be scourged.
Ian gets a good role too, but it would take a lot to pull fandom's
attention away from the Doctor and Cameca. Just look at the dreadful old
reprobate. Note that the straightforward thing to do after his little
misunderstanding would be to own up and say you goofed. Come clean! But
not Hartnell. Oh no. He's genuinely fond of Cameca and they seem to
reach some kind of understanding between episodes three and four, but he's
still exploiting her with no intention of either staying in Mexico or
taking her with him in the TARDIS. Well, that's the First Doctor for you.
Despite the talkiness, it's a fast-moving story. Historicals often
start slowly but this one's off with a bang, Barbara hell-bent on her
suicidal plan almost as soon as she dons the headdress. Only being a
four-parter helps of course. It's theatrical, but I don't see that as a
bad thing. Note the painted backdrops. The Hartnell years had so much
ambition partly because they could realise their ideas so simply. I love
black and white.
Of course it's disturbing if you think about it. What did Barbara do
to Autloc? Was he wrong to trust her? He's gone into the wilderness and
he'll no longer be High Priest of Knowledge, but he'll no longer have
anything to do with the sacrifices. However, is this a good thing? It
obviously doesn't help Autloc materially, while the Aztec society is
hardly improved by losing its humanitarian high priest. The Doctor claims
that Barbara helped one man, but did she really? And of course episode
four is darker than the rest of the story because it has killing.
There's a decent fight at the end between Ian and Ixta, although
episode one has a fight scene that's pretty lame. Nevertheless The
Aztecs is a whole-hearted story that takes itself seriously and
doesn't make its characters or world the butt of jokes. There's also
lovely sub-Shakespearian dialogue, which is as good a method as any I can
imagine of representing an alien language and culture. It's a landmark
twice over in Doctor Who history: (a) the Doctor's relationship
with Cameca, and (b) Barbara's attempt to change the future, bringing her
into conflict with the Doctor in that rightly famous scene in part one.
It's never cheap or silly, instead being a solid BBC historical drama and
full of quality. It's admirable.
A Review by John Greenhead
25/9/07
Having already excelled in writing Marco Polo,
John Lucarotti surpassed himself with The Aztecs. Not only do his
scripts provide an interesting, well-researched glimpse into Aztec
culture, but they also contain some fine dialogue and gripping conflicts
between the characters, marking this out as one of the finest historical
adventures.
At the centre of it all stands Barbara, mistaken for the reincarnation
of an Aztec priest and determined to use her new divine status to end the
practice of human sacrifice. This story is undoubtedly Jackie Hill's
finest hour in Doctor Who, and one of the main reasons why I regard
Barbara as one of the best companions the show has ever had. Hill conveys
Barbara's determination to change the course of history, and her ultimate
disillusionment, extremely well and her confrontations with Tlotoxl are
electrifying. John Ringham is also outstanding as Tlotoxl. His Richard
III impression initially seems to portend a hammy performance, but in fact
he delivers a subtle, nuanced portrayal which blends charisma with evil
cunning and makes Tlotoxl quite hard to really dislike. One of the story's
main themes is the contrast between the "good" and the "bad" elements of
Aztec culture (at least as seen from a modern Western perspective), and
Tlotoxl vividly represents the bad. Keith Pyott's Autloc stands at the
opposite end of the spectrum and Pyott convincingly shows Autloc's gradual
loss of faith in traditional Aztec beliefs, under Barbara's influence.
This emphasis on the good and the bad gives the story much of its
power, not least because it is evil that triumphs in the end. The Doctor
warns Barbara that she can't change history, and sure enough her attempts
to "save" Aztec culture by ending human sacrifice come to nothing. Tlotoxl
is triumphant and Autloc, her one convert, goes off into the wilderness.
It is an uncompromising ending which fits with the overall maturity of the
story, and once again illustrates how adult early Doctor Who could
be: the Aztecs are still doomed to destruction at the hands of the
Conquistadores and that sense of ultimate doom hangs over the story.
Given that it is only four episodes in length, The Aztecs also
successfully provides the other regulars with involving subplots. The
Doctor gets a touching and amusing little romance with the Aztec lady
Cameca, which is very well played by both William Hartnell and Margot van
der Burgh. Hartnell is at his best throughout this story, showing the
first Doctor at both his most tender, in his conversations with Cameca,
and also at his fiercest, when he argues with Barbara over her attempts to
reform Aztec culture ("you can't rewrite history, not one line!"). His
farewell to Cameca is quite emotional, showing he feels guilty about
breaking their engagement and indicating that, although he is alien and
had been using Cameca all along to help himself and his companions to
escape, he does feel some genuine fondness for her. It shows the soft
heart that beats beneath the gruff exterior of this Doctor and works far
better than many of the attempts in the new series to inject emotion into
the Doctor's relationships. Ian and Susan are also well served by the
scripts, Ian getting to play the hero again as he is forced into a rivalry
with the arrogant, petulant warrior Ixta, who is convincingly played by
Ian Cullen. Susan's appearances are limited by Carole Ann Ford's holiday
in the middle two episodes, but she shows more character and spirit than
she often does in asserting her right to marry whom she chooses, when
faced with the prospect of an arranged union with the "Perfect Victim".
Another major factor in the story's success is Barry Newbery's superb
set design, which really helps the viewer to believe that the TARDIS crew
are in Aztec Mexico. The costumes are also excellent, and John Crockett
provides some fine direction, apart perhaps from Tlotoxl's slightly cheesy
aside to the camera at the end of the first episode. This, however, is the
only criticism I would make of probably the best story of the first season
(just edging out The Daleks), and one of the
highlights of the Hartnell era.