📝6/10

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time! 

This time: Farewell, Cressida!

MY SCATTERED AND TOTALLY IRRELEVANT NOTES:

The Myth Makers is where, arguably, Season 3 of Doctor Who kicks off into high gear. Enter the Dark Ages, both literally and figuratively: the stories turn darker and less kid-friendly, and most of them are entirely or mostly missing (such as this very story). So there'll be quite a lot of reviews based on reconstructions for a while now, unfortunately.

The serial features one of my all-time favourite openings to a Doctor Who story. It throws you straight into the action through the battle between Achilles and Hector, effectively setting up the historical period in the process. What follows is the Doctor suddenly entering and pretending to be Zeus—it is both hilarious and memorable at the same time!

I like the Dennis Spooner-esque approach to a historical here: there's a slight comical quality to it, and it ends with the Doctor very directly meddling with historical events, causing the entire Trojan Horse legend most of us are familiar with. It's a lesser take on The Romans, but it’s one I’m generally fine with.

Donald Cotton writes fantastically thick dialogue, which seems to go on and on in a string of lengthy and repetitive scenes that sadly aren’t very exciting to watch with only a few telesnaps here and there. The dialogue is both theatrical and very poetic, almost like it had been brought over from the pages of the Iliad. I genuinely love the dialogue and hate it because I rarely manage to focus enough to truly follow what the characters are saying.

This is a very dialogue-driven story with theatrical conversation pieces that don't translate very well to audio. There are also plenty of scenes with long pieces of dialogue about essentially nothing (such as the one early in Part 2 with three characters chatting about the nature of the TARDIS). This is the single biggest drawback that makes The Myth Makers somewhat of a chore to sit through in one sitting.

To be fair, there isn't a whole lot going on here. It's mostly a story filled with conversation for three episodes, as the plot doesn't build up to any climax or conclusion of sorts, and the main characters mostly bide their time talking and not taking any action. This is, in many ways, a step back towards the writing style of Season 1.

Those familiar with the Iliad and the myth of the Trojan Horse won't find much new or exciting here; the plot is very predictable early on and doesn’t really play around with its ideas all that much. Part 4 is the strongest of the lot, but it’s not spectacular by any means.

Part 4 takes an unexpected turn for the darker, as the famous Trojan Horse event gets underway with all its chaos, murder, and destruction. This is one of those single missing episodes I would pay anything for to be able to watch in full. It openly and boldly pictures the death and chaos of the siege of Troy and is a testament to the darker and more serious tone of this season. And isn't it pretty horrifying to think that the Doctor essentially caused the slaughter, since he provided the plans for the horse...? Then there’s also the pretty dramatic duel between Achilles and Troilus.

The tail end of Part 4, with Vicki's final scene with Troilus, is heartwarming and happy, and it's followed by one of the more stressful endings to any Doctor Who story, with Steven mortally wounded inside the TARDIS.

William Hartnell was reportedly difficult to work with during this serial for several reasons, and while that doesn't shine through in his performance, the Doctor comes across as a bit more grumpy and stubborn again, which actually feels like a breath of fresh air and suits the intended tone of the serial well.

This is Vicki's final story (much to the surprise of everyone, not least Maureen O'Brien herself, who found out she was to be written out after returning from her holiday to film her final episode), and Cotton does nothing with her for the majority of the story and doesn't build up to her exit, thus making it all seem very rushed and cold. If Susan's romance in The Dalek Invasion of Earth felt sudden, this one is no better. It is weird, by the way, how Vicki's story here feels similar to that of Susan's in The Aztecs (1964). Despite not being a huge fan of how Vicki is written out at the end of this story, I have to admit that her scenes with Troilus are very lovely, and the way she sends him away to avoid him being slaughtered in Troy is heartwarming.

Steven isn't up to much, and I'm kind of bummed he's essentially an Ian copy in this story, which is really not how he is usually depicted by other writers. We get the best onscreen chemistry between O'Brien and Peter Purves since The Time Meddler (1965), and it's a pity this companion pairing wasn't allowed to develop across more stories.

This is yet another historical story with an altogether great guest cast, playing famous historical figures. Francis de Wolff, returning to the show after playing creepy "ladies' man" Vasor in The Keys of Marinus (1964), is the perfect fit to play the gruff Agamemnon. Another returning actor is Ivor Salter, who completely makes up for his unimpressive turn in The Space Museum (1965) by being the loud and abrasive villain Odysseus.

Despite a fine performance from Salter, I don't find Odysseus very interesting or actively perilous for our TARDIS travellers (the Doctor notwithstanding).

Frances White offers a wonderfully grungy and scheming performance as Cassandra, while Max Adrian's Priam proves to be a likeable father figure for Vicki and the viewer.

With another historical adventure lost to time, we are left with only snippets of the impressive costume design and set decoration seen in these four episodes. It truly looks great, but it's impossible to form a coherent picture due to the lack of existing material.

From the sound of it, The Myth Makers features some cool fight scenes that we just have to imagine now. The music during these scenes is fantastic, though.

I'm very happy the soundtrack of this story survives because it is fantastically bonkers and energetic, and there's some kind of a mythical quality to it as well. The incidental music is another one-time contribution, this time from Humphrey Searle.

The Myth Makers is one of the slower historicals, and I feel it would flow much better had it existed (or would it ever be animated). The biggest weakness is the three episodes of mostly unessential plotting before the eventful final episode.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

• Small Prophet, Quick Return must be one of the better episode titles in all of Doctor Who. There's something beautifully poetic about it. Horse of Destruction, meanwhile, isn't as much a classic.
• Katarina is ushered into the story from nowhere during Part 4 as the new (short-lived, quite literally; see the next story!) companion, and my first and only thought is: what the heck were they thinking?
• What a pity that the third appearance from Tutte Lemkow on the show (following Marco Polo, 1964, and The Crusade, 1965) ends up being lost as well—his performance and character here seem the juiciest yet.