Day 14 — January 14th 2021
The Temple of Evil and The Warriors of Death
The Temple of Evil (The Aztecs — Episode One)
I’m fairly certain that this was one of the first Hartnell stories I ever saw, and I have a vivid embarassing memory of reading the back of the DVD and mispronouncing ‘Barbara’ as ‘Bar Bara’ — somehow! — and assuming it was an Aztec name! It’s remained a favourite ever since, and how could it not when it’s this brilliant?
As with Marco Polo, Lucarotti’s script shines, and really shows up the weaknesses in the Nation script it follows. Every character is given their own distinct personality here, and you feel as though you’ve ‘got’ them right away.
The script is also peppered with lots of lovely little moments which help to elevate it. Doctor Who and Ian’s discussion about Tlotoxl is a perfect example;
Doctor Who: ‘You know who he is?’
Ian: ‘The local butcher by the look of him.’
Doctor Who: ‘Exactly.’
Of course the standout moment in today’s episode could arguably also be the standout moment of the entire Hartnell era — and quite possibly of the 1960s as a whole. It’s the scene in which Barbara declares that she’s going to use her position to bring an end to sacrificial rituals, and Doctor Who argues against it. I’m sure you’ve seen it a million times before, but it’s always worth sharing;
Hartnell has never been better than this. The sheer power behind his performance in this scene is incredible. ‘You can’t rewrite history. Not one line,’ gets quoted over and over by fans, and with good reason. It’s sad that he’s often remembered for the fact that he flubbed his lines and got increasingly unwell as the series went on, because it obscures the fact that when he was on form, he was truly dazzling.
And that’s not to do a disservice to Jaqueline Hill, who gives back as good as she gets. The final moment — sadly just cut off the above video — where she turns back to Doctor Who and cooly replies ‘Not Barbara. Yetaxa,’ might be one of my favourite companion moments ever. It’s like John Lucarotti has watched the scene of her telling Doctor Who off in The Edge of Destruction and decided he wants a bit of that magic in his own story.
This scene raises the entire episode up a notch, and is the main reason that I’m giving today a 9/10.
The Warriors of Death (The Aztecs — Episode Two)
John Ringham’s performance as Tlotoxl is an unusual one. In many ways you get the impression that it shouldn’t work, because he’s hamming it up to high heaven, but it actually makes him all the more threatening. The cliffhanger to the last episode, reprised here, with him staring straight down the camera lens while delivering his threat might classify as the most genuinely scary moment in the series so far.
There seems to be some debate among the cast about how to pronounce his name, though. Hartnell and Russell go for ‘Lu-tox-ul’ with a silent ‘T’ — which feels right to me, though I’ve never pronounced it that way — while almost everyone else, including Ringham, goes with ‘Clu-tox-ul’. I realise that I’ve always tended to try and say ‘Tlu-tox-ul’, which is so obviously wrong that perhaps I’ve never learnt anything from the ‘Bar Bara’ incident!
It’s Carole Ann Ford’s turn to take a couple of weeks off, and she’s technically absent from both this episode and the next, but rather than simply writing her out for two weeks, as with Hartnell in The Keys of Marinus, and an upcoming fortnight off for Jaqueline Hill during The Sensorites, they’ve cleverly covered her absence by doing her scenes for these episodes entirely on film, so they can drop them in when she’s not there.
I think it works — it’s nice for Susan to have a storyline rather than vanishing for a bit — but it’s perhaps a shame that her input is confined to a single scene, rather than as two or more shorter ones to be scattered across the episode. I don’t think you ever get a real sense of where she is in relation to the rest of our regulars.
On the subject of which… the sets for the Aztec city. They’re very good, and I think it’s one of those times where you can really see what production teams mean when they say that the BBC would go above and beyond for an historical story, compared to a futuristic one. These places feel real in most cases — it’s just a shame that the painted backcloth isn’t hung straight, as it somewhat spoils the illusion when viewed restored on a larger screen!
The costumes work just as well as the sets, and as with Marco Polo it’s amazing to have plenty of colour images so we can get a sense of just how beautiful it really looked. I’m not one of those people who thinks that the 60s material should be colourised for release — I’m a big fan of black and white across the board — but I do appreciate being able to see it in production photos like this.
There’s one last thing I want to mention on the first day of my visit to The Aztecs. When I did my last marathon, back in 2013, I distinctly remember writing something to the effect of ‘like Barbara, I’m especially interested in the Aztecs’. Which is bollocks, frankly.
I think the Aztecs are pretty cool, certainly. When I was a kid we had a family friend who’d lived for some years in Mexico, and their house was filled with all these fascinating Aztec-style objects. I loved to visit and stare at these items, but I can’t say I’ve ever been a particular fan of this period of history or culture. I can only assume that when I was writing that blog entry, I’d slipped down a Wikipedia rabbit hole and was having an ‘Aztec Phase’!
7/10
