Doctor Who: "The Aztecs"

But you can't rewrite history. Not one line!--the Doctor

Tlotoxl and Barbara intrigue against each other

"The Temple of Evil", 23 May 1964
"The Warriors of Death", 30 May 1964
"The Bride of Sacrifice", 6 June 1964
"The Day of Darkness", 13 June 1964

Written by John Lucarotti
Directed by John Crockett
Script editor: David Whitaker
Produced by Verity Lambert
Associate producer: Mervyn Pinfield

William Hartnell as the Doctor
William Russell as Ian Chesterton
Jacqueline Hill as Barbara Wright
Carole Ann Ford as Susan Foreman

And so we come, in Doctor Who's earliest surviving historical,* to the programme's first serious examination of the existential issues that time travel raises.

The TARDIS materialises inside the tomb of a great Aztec leader. Barbara is instantly able to identify the tomb as Aztec--she specialised in the Aztecs at university. She greatly admires their civilisation, and bitterly resents its destruction at the hands of the Spanish. She blames that destruction on the Aztec practice of human sacrifice, which, she feels, blinded the conquistadors to all that was good about Aztec society.

When she emerges from the tomb, Barbara finds herself mistaken for the reincarnation of Yetaxa, the deceased high priest buried within it. The Aztecs living in the city outside enthrone her in the temple's central precinct, and the Doctor, Ian and Susan find themselves treated as her divine servants. Barbara is delighted at the mixup, as she immediately determines to use the Aztecs' perception of her as a god to put an end to human sacrifice, thus setting up Aztec civilisation to survive the coming of the Spanish in a hundred years.

There's a lot of different sides to the debates that get raised by "The Aztecs", and they all get their own advocate in the story. First, there's the argument amongst the TARDIS crew, with the Doctor and Ian both horrified and outraged at Barbara's plan. Barbara takes the idealist viewpoint, seeing the possibility of making the world better. The Doctor objects on principle--he's seeing himself as the custodian of history, and changing that history is just wrong. Ian's objection is more pragmatic: he thinks Barbara is being foolishly irresponsible, placing all four of them in great jeopardy by attacking one of the Aztecs' fundamental religious beliefs.

Meanwhile, the dilemma facing the Aztecs is played out in the dialogue between the two high priests: Autloc, high priest of Wisdom, and Tlotoxl, high priest of Sacrifice. Gentle, rational Autloc already doubted the efficacy of human sacrifice even before the TARDIS arrived, and he undergoes a profound crisis of conscience as he struggles with whether or not Barbara really is the reincarnation of one of his gods. Eventually, he gives up all his possessions and walks off into the wilderness, presumably to die, seeking spiritual enlightenment. Tlotoxl, on the other hand, is bloodthirsty, crafty and conniving. He probably doesn't really believe sacrifice is a divinely necessary act--the Doctor points out that he's carefully "timing their miracle" to make sure the sacrifice is conducted just a few moments before the first rains fall--but he's determined to preserve it, since it's how he maintains power. Time and again, he manoeuvres others so that his own aims get furthered.

My favourite speech in the whole story belongs to Ian, as the situation is rapidly deteriorating in part three. He chastises Barbara because of how tenaciously she clings to the fact that Autloc agrees with her about the evilness of human sacrifice. She tells herself that there are many more like Autloc, if only she can remove Tlotoxl's misguiding influence. But Ian points out to her that she's got it the wrong way round--it's Autloc who's the exceptional, unusual one, and it's Tlotoxl whose views reflect the feelings of the Aztec population.

In the end, of course, Barbara fails, and Tlotoxl triumphantly carves the heart out of a sacrificial victim to "restore" the sun in the midst of a solar eclipse, while the time travellers escape back into the TARDIS and depart. The Doctor is grimly satisfied that history has been preserved; Barbara regrets the failure of her attempt, but defiant in believing the attempt was still worth waiting. Really, we've not had any answers--neither the Doctor and Ian, nor Barbara, has managed to convince the other side of the correctness of their viewpoint. We don't even know if Barbara's attempt to change history failed because she just didn't manage to succeed this time, or because time in Doctor Who has some mechanism to prevent history from being changed.

That's my favourite way to treat questions like this, to be honest--we've had the questions, we've had the debates, but if we want any conclusions, we'll have to reach them on our own.

What Lisa thought: I'm pretty sure Lisa's favourite part of the story was the romance between the Doctor and Cameca, which she described as "super sweet". It's a charming little love story between a pair who've both been widowed and each find a kindred spirit, and you can see the Doctor's gruff defences drop whenever he's with Cameca. The close of episode four features a beautiful moment, as the Doctor leaves the seal Cameca gave him on the real Yetaxa's sarcophagus just before he enters the TARDIS. Then, rather testily, he turns back, picks up the seal, and goes back into the TARDIS.

The next episode is "The Sensorites".

I

*"Marco Polo" has been lost in its entirety, and "An Unearthly Child" isn't a historical, since it takes place not during history, but prehistory.

Doctor Who: "The Keys of Marinus"

And all our knowledge culminated in the manufacture of this. At the time, it was called the Conscience of Marinus--Marinus, that is the name of our planet. At first this machine was simply a judge and jury that was never wrong and unfair, and then we added to it and improved on it, made it more and more sophisticated, so that finally it became possible to radiate its power and influence the minds of men throughout the planet. They no longer had to decide what was wrong or right. The machine decided for them.--Arbitan

The Voord leader, Yartek, interrogates Sabetha

"The Sea of Death", 11 April 1964
"The Velvet Web", 18 April 1964
"The Screaming Jungle", 25 April 1964
"The Snows of Terror", 2 May 1964
"Sentence of Death", 9 May 1964
"The Keys of Marinus", 16 May 1964

Written by Terry Nation
Directed by John Gorrie
Script editor: David Whitaker
Produced by Verity Lambert
Associate producer: Mervyn Pinfield

William Hartnell as the Doctor
William Russell as Ian Chesterton
Jacqueline Hill as Barbara Wright
Carole Ann Ford as Susan Foreman

The TARDIS lands on an island in the midst of a sea that's totally calm--not even a ripple disturbs its surface--bordered by a beach where the sand is actually glass. But just before Susan is about to go splashing into its waters, Ian makes a discovery: it's not a sea of water, but of vicious acid.

(Ian realises it's acid because, when Susan removes her shoes to go for a dip, she drops them in a tidal pool, and it instantly eats their leather away. Susan then has to return to the TARDIS so she can get a new pair of shoes. A moment later, the Doctor happens upon Ian, who explains about the acid. Seeing Ian's bare feet, the Doctor berates him, telling him that if he'd remembered to wear shoes, he could have given them to Susan when she went back to the TARDIS. Ian's face splits into a wide grin at this, but it's genuinely difficult to tell if it's Ian Chesterton who's smiling, or if it's William Russell unable to stop himself at breaking character.)

On the beach, the TARDIS team find four glass submarines, each large enough to carry a single occupant. Three have been abandoned after arrival, but one remains sealed. Opening it, they find a full-body black wetsuit with some sinister looking headgear. They realise that as the submarine passed through the sea, a tiny crack in its hull allowed it to fill with acid, dissolving its poor occupant, the wearer of the wetsuit.

The landscape is dominated by a massive pyramid with no discernible entrance; the group inadvisably split up to explore its base. One by one, they find themselves trapped inside the pyramid through hidden, boobytrapped entrances. Once inside, they wander through a warren of indistinguishable passages with no discernible exit. Also wandering around are the occupants of the other three glass submarines, in their black masks and wetsuits, and they're pretty sinister--one of them sneaks up behind Susan and attempts to abduct her, but he's stopped by the intervention of a mysterious, hooded figure. After disposing of the bad guy, the figure wanders off. A few minutes later, he himself is attacked by one of the masked intruders, but he's saved by Ian--at this point, the figure decides to trust the TARDIS team. He assembles them together and brings them to pyramid's central control room.

His name is Arbitan, and he is the last of the guardians of his island. From this pyramid, a vast computer called the Conscience of Marinus had for centuries guided the minds of the planet's inhabitants, swaying them away from any evil thoughts or impulses. But then a man named Yartek figured out a way to evade its control. Leading a people called the Voord--the black-suited figures invading the corrdiors are Voords--he set out to gain control of the Conscience of Marinus, so that he could use it to control the whole planet. Arbitan has taken the Conscience offline and upgraded it, so that it will now be able to control Yartek once again, but before he restarts it, he must gather the Conscience's five keys--the Keys of Marinus, distributed in secret hiding spaces all around the planet. One by one, he has sent his acolytes off to retrieve the keys--even, eventually, sending his own daughter--but none have returned, which is why he is now alone in the control tower.

(There are six episodes in "The Keys of Marinus", and there are five keys. If you can't figure out, just from that, how the whole rest of the story is going to go, I don't know if I can be of any help to you.)

Arbitan therefore enlists the aid of the TARDIS team to set out across the planet and retrieve the keys for him. They're enlisted unwillingly; after at first refusing, they discover Arbitan has placed a forcefield around the TARDIS to prevent them leaving. The forcefield is invisible, and provides William Russell and Carole Ann Ford in particular an opportunity to show off the mime acting skills they learnt at drama school as they make their way all around the TARDIS, establishing the force field's shape. Unable to leave without Arbitan's cooperation, they of course agree to gather the remaining four keys (Arbitan has one with him already at the pyramid) and depart.

And so for the episode's middle four episodes, we get one new locale and new plot per week. They're all fairly straightforward, SFish scenarios. There's a city of great opulence, where everyone's every wish is granted, only for Barbara to realise that they're actually under hypnosis--their surroundings are in fact grubby and disgusting, and the city's population are being used as slave workers by the strange creatures who control them. Of course, she can't defeat the creatures without first having to fight Ian, Barbara and the Doctor, who are still hypnotised. In the next episode, the team enter a region where it is plant life, rather than animal, that holds the dominant evolutionary position--the vines grow and writhe, wrapping themselves around people's limbs and tearing them apart. Another key is held in a solid block of ice deep in a cave, but melting the block of ice also means thawing the four clockwork warriors who stand guard over it, with the mission of killing anyone who tries to steal the key. And in the final location, Ian finds himself on trial for murder, and the Doctor, as his advocate, must navigate an alien legal system based on the supposition of guilty until proven innocent, while trying to figure out who it is that has stolen the final key and framed Ian for murder.

In their first stop, two of the people that Barbara frees from hypnosis turn out to be followers of Arbitan--a young man named Altos, Arbitan's acolyte, and Arbitan's daughter Sabetha. Katherine Schofield, who plays Sabetha, has a breathtaking aristocratic beauty, though her IMDB page informs me she didn't really have anything more than bit parts and occasional guest roles in the 1960s and 1970s. (I do note that she appears in Nicholas and Alexandra, the movie for which Tom Baker was most famous prior to his casting as the fourth Doctor.) Altos and Sabetha join the Tardis team and accompany them through the story's remaining four episodes.

Eventually, all the keys in hand, the crew return to Arbitan's island. But Arbitan has been murdered, and Yartek of the Voords is now in command; he has imprisoned Altos and Sabetha and taken from them all but one key--Ian is carrying the last key. There's a lovely touch, in that Yartek has clothed himself in Aribitan's monkly robes. (That the production team no doubt dressed him like this purely to enable him to impersonate Arbitan when Ian and Susan approach him doesn't lesson that it's still a wonderful character-revealing moment.) Masquerading as Arbitan, Yartek is able to trick Ian into giving him the last key, but when Ian is then taken to the same prison cell as the rest of the TARDIS team, he reveals the truth--the key he gave Yartek was a fake, which they had picked up at one of the stops on their travels. When Yartek attempts to insert it into the Conscience of Marinus, it will cause the machine--and the whole pyramid--to explode.

And so it does, destroying the Conscience and killing Yartek and all his Voords. The TARDIS team and Altos and Sabetha are the only survivors. Altos and Sabetha have by now fallen in love, so they depart to start a new life together. And the Doctor, satisfied that from now on, the inhabitants of Marinus will have to make their own determinations of right and wrong, leads Ian, Barbara and Susan back into the TARDIS.

What Lisa thought: "The Keys of Marinus" isn't really an exceptional story, but I think we both felt it kept us entertained through its six episodes. Lisa did get annoyed that the Conscience of Marinus was destroyed in part six, since that essentially meant that the five episodes spent gathering the keys beforehand were, in fact, wasted time.

The next story is "The Aztecs".

I

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