1x6. The Aztecs
Writer: John Lucarotti
Director: John Crockett
Script Editor: David Whitaker
Producers: Verity Lambert & Mervyn Pinfield
Synopsis: The TARDIS materializes inside an Aztec
tomb, where it immediately becomes trapped after the Doctor and his
companions exit.
Barbara, who has been mistaken for a reincarnation of the Aztec priest
Yetaxa,
uses her position of power to try to end some of the Aztecs' more
gruesome
customs while the time travelers try to figure out how to reopen the
tomb.
All of them, however, are at risk as the rivalry between two of the
Aztec
high priests escalates, with Barbara's position of authority
exacerbating
the conflict.
Review: After the disappointment of "The Keys of Marinus," the
inaugural season of Doctor Who bounces back admirably with "The
Aztecs," which I would not hesitate to name as the first truly
exceptional serial. (Or at least the first of those preserved -- I
haven't seen "Marco Polo" and don't really know anything about it.)
While
it may not be an essential piece of the canon like "100,000 B.C." or
"The
Daleks," writer John Lucarotti's plotting and characterization is
nearly
flawless, and the serial certainly boasts the most sophisticated themes
of
any we've seen so far.
The Doctor's insistence that they not tamper with Aztec history may
seem
inconsistent with his later propensity for meddling. In fact, according
to
the information text on the DVD, script editor David Whitaker
apparently
once tried to answer a fan who wondered why the Doctor couldn't change
Earth's
history. Whitaker suggested that the Doctor's view of past and future
was
like that of someone sitting at the top of a hill looking at a road
rising
to the top and then descending down the other side. He can see both
paths,
but cannot change either of them; he can only change the lives of
individuals
who did not have a major impact upon history. While this is an
interesting
perspective, I think it still only reflects the viewpoint of these
earliest
episodes. The Doctor does plenty of meddling in Earth's future down the
road,
and this certainly doesn't hold up if applied to other planets and
civilizations.
(To take an obvious example from later-era Who,
the Doctor and Ace topple a government in "The Happiness Patrol," and
there's
no indication that the Doctor knew anything of that civilization
beforehand
or had any reason to think that a revolution might already be on the
way.)
For the purpose of this serial, however, it's probably best to put such
concerns
aside and instead consider the early-1960s context in which it was
written
and produced. The age of European empire was drawing to an end, and the
British and their continental neighbors had learned
first-hand the difficulties and dangers of trying to impose their own
cultural
norms and structures upon other societies.
Barbara has good intentions in deciding to exercise her authority as
Yetaxa's
supposed reincarnation, hoping that she could rid the Aztec culture of
its
brutal custom of human sacrifice, which would later so horrify Cortes
that
it prompted him and his forces to destroy their civilization. But it
doesn't
take long before she realizes she's waded into the middle of a
simmering
power struggle between two of the Aztec high priests, and soon she
finds
herself resorting to intimidation and threats of violence to carry out
her
designs.
"The Aztecs" rejects imperalism and any accompanying notion of the
"white
man's burden," but it does not embrace total isolationism either. One
might
be tempted to read into the episode an equally racist and offensive
notion
that the Aztecs were simply a bunch of irredeemable brutes who wouldn't
be
worth Barbara's trouble, and in fact I was afraid at one point that the
script
was leading us towards that conclusion. Thankfully, Lucarotti offers us
a
different perspective with his handling of the character of Autloc, the
High
Priest of Knowledge who supports Barbara and ends up withdrawing from
Aztec
society. He knows by the end that she's not really Yetaxa and that he's
lost
his power struggle with the Tlotoxl, the High Priest of Sacrifice, but
he's come away more convinced than ever that knowledge and learning are
the
way forward. He may be a failure in political and religious terms, but
his
presence reflects a view of Aztec culture as simply in an earlier stage
of
civilization rather than hopelessly and irrevocably mired in murderous
ritual.
The Doctor and his companions know, when they finally get back to the
TARDIS and depart from the tomb, that they are leaving behind a doomed
civilization, and Lucarotti does not seek to whitewash the Aztecs'
violence. And yet it
is the tragedy of "The Aztecs" that we feel that it didn't have to be
that
way, that the seeds of humanitarian progress were there in Aztec
culture
(and, by extension, in any human culture) and would have eventually
borne
fruit if only their conquerors had given them the chance. Autloc may
have
been influenced by Barbara, but she hasn't really changed his mind so
much
as she's simply helped him along a path he was already traveling, and
one
which more of his people might soon have followed. If any viewer were
inclined
to conclude that the Aztecs got what they deserved, such a notion is
countered
by this subtly complex and humanizing portrayal of their people. Even
Tlotoxl,
despite the sneering and sadism (about which actor John Ringham now
seems
thoroughly embarrassed in the DVD interview), is arguably a product of
his
circumstances. He acts in ways designed to preserve his own power, but
then
so does Autloc: it just happens that the former, as the High Priest of
Sacrifice,
looks to ritual for guidance and structure while the latter looks to
learning,
and Tlotoxl is, of course, actually correct when he accuses Barbara of
being
a fraud.
It's to Lucarotti's credit that he manages to get all this across
without
pounding us over the head; he brings out the sociopolitical content
through
the interactions of the characters, and in doing so he also delivers a
fine
piece of human drama. We know Barbara well enough now to recognize that
something
has gone seriously wrong when she starts threatening Tlotoxl and
forcing
him to acquiesce in what he knows is a lie, and we identify with her
struggle
as she tries to find a way to navigate the situation without literally
getting
blood on her hands. Indeed, while her attempt to force the Aztecs to
give
up human sacrifice is ultimately shown to be misguided, we nevertheless
understand
and sympathize with her every step of the way, just as we understand
Ian's
revulsion when he's asked to help restrain the victim for one of the
sacrifices.
The suspense of the episode is not found in the rather simplistic
question
of how the time travelers will get back to the TARDIS, but in the more
complicated
issue of how they can work through their crises of conscience without
taking
risks that would likely prove futile. All of this is reflective of a
hard
truth that the script is trying to get across, namely that there is
sometimes
no easy and obvious moral choice to make when two established cultures
come
into conflict, and that the unintended consequences of a misstep in
such
a situation can be disastrous.
The Doctor is actually the strongest advocate of non-involvement, but
this isn't quite a return to the selfish Doctor of the first three
serials:
he seems at least partly motivated by the belief that they can't change
history anyway. On a similar note, while it's a bit cruel and
manipulative for him to allow himself to become engaged to Cameca, his
feelings for her do appear to be genuine, and he probably would have
risked a confrontation with the
others if he'd turned her down. I'll refrain from any long-winded
pontifications
about whether or not the Doctor having a "romance" fits with his
characterization in later years, but I will observe that it actually
seems mostly platonic (albeit perhaps partly due to the standards for
family-friendly programming in the early 1960s) and that they seem to
engage each other primarily on an
intellectual level. In other words, if the writers were determined to
give
him this kind of storyline, they at least did it the right way, and the
scene
where Ian can't help but give him some good-natured ribbing about the
whole
thing is one of the few moments of comic relief in the serial.
I have one complaint, which isn't really specific to "The Aztecs" and
which
I've danced around up until now in the hopes that the problem might
rectify
itself, but since that doesn't seem likely I'm going to come right out
and
say it: Susan can be really annoying sometimes. Honestly, how can this
girl
be an experienced time/space traveler and yet be so dense as to
identify
the Aztec hieroglyphs as "cartoons" and giggle because they have
"bubbles
coming out of their mouths"? I realize that asking for too much
consistency
with later Doctor Who mythology is probably futile in a serial
where
the Doctor has a girlfriend and insists on not meddling with other
civilizations,
but she still sticks out like a sore thumb at times. Surely the writers
had
some notion that the Doctor and Susan came from an advanced
civilization,
and while "100,000 B.C." established her as being strangely ignorant
about
certain subjects, would such a basic aspect of early cultural
development
be one of them? Frankly, I'd expect her to be more likely not to have
heard
of cartoons than not to have heard of hieroglyphs.
"The Aztecs" is a representative of the "historical" formula that would
eventually fall out of use on Doctor Who, and
I doubt the series would have lasted so long if it hadn't eventually
stuck
to more of a "hard" sci-fi approach. Taken on its own, however, it's an
episode
that should stand the test of time as a superbly written and
well-executed
piece of drama and social commentary.
DVD notes:
- The restoration team have done an outstanding job with "The Aztecs,"
recreating
the smoother "video" look of the original broadcast, as opposed to the
grainier
appearance that we're all used to seeing in the early black-and-white
serials.
The extra features are pretty interesting for the insights into the ins
and
outs of TV production at the time, though the interviews with three of
the
guest actors also offer a few anecdotes about the regular cast. There's
also
a brief but informative snippet of a documentary about the Aztecs which
recounts
the fateful meeting between Cortes and Montezuma, as well as another
"TARDIS-cam"
feature and an amusing animated short in which Tlotoxl and the warrior
Ixta,
both voiced by the original actors, discuss the Aztec recipe for cocoa.
- The commentary features producer Verity Lambert as well as William
Russell
and Carole Ann Ford. At the time of posting this, I've only watched the
first
episode with the commentary on, but so far I'd say that, again, their
most
interesting observations are about the production side rather than the
story
itself. If there's anything particularly earth-shattering in the rest
of
it, I may come back and add another brief comment or two about it
later.
(Unless, of course, one of them says something that completely
contradicts
my entire review, in which case I'll quietly ignore it and hope nobody
notices.)
Other notes:
- The technical quality of the "action" scenes is still rather poor in
"The
Aztecs," especially one of Ian's "dueling" scenes which is so obviously
staged
that it almost looks like slow-motion. I suppose it's a testament to
the
quality of the storytelling that this is only a momentary irritation
rather
than a drag on the story like the lame fights and chases in "The Keys
of
Marinus."
- Speaking of which, these early serials all seem to have at least one
small
link from one to the next in a way that the later installments really
don't.
In "The Aztecs," for example, we begin on the dematerialization scene
from
"The Keys of Marinus" before the time travelers arrive inside the tomb.
Rating: **** (out of four)
"You can't change history! Not one line!"
-The Doctor
Back to the main Doctor Who Reviews page.