Doctor Who: The Aztecs

The Doctor is NOT constipated!

The Aztecs... I saw this episode a couple years ago when my cousin Stevie allowed me access to her Netflix account. The episodes aired between May 23 and June 13, 1964. These four episodes make up the sixth serial of Doctor Who. They're also the first episodes to address whether or not time travelers should or can change established history which later reflects on the New Series with The Fires of Pompeii, The Unquiet Dead, Father's Day, all the World War II episodes, and The Girl in the Fireplace. Oh yeah, and pretty much all of Season Six of New Who. So, it's a pretty significant episode in that respect.

On the other hand, it's also another one of those episodes where the only aliens are Doctor Who and his granddaughter Susan.

I keep bringing up her relationship to the Doctor because a lot of people get all upset when the Doctor claims he was a father in the new series when the First Doctor sort of has proof that he passed along his genetics in some way. I'm totally with bizarre alien mating habits with looms and such, but intentionally creating offspring in any way would usually engender some affection and be spurred by some wish to create children.

But I'm a sentimental female human. I'm just thinking that if making children takes more thought than the way we humans do it and it doesn't have the... pleasurable aspect, then the reward would come in the children themselves. Of course, the question that must be asked after that is...

If all that is true, where are Susan's parents? Do we ever find out? Did the Doctor kidnap her?

These are important questions. I hope future episodes lead to answers.

In the meantime, let's watch the Doctor fall in love with an Aztec woman!

Two Hours Later...

Well, this episode is exactly as I remembered it. Basically, Barbara becomes and Aztec god and she decides she wants to get rid of the whole human sacrifice thing. She finds it horrible and barbaric and she wants to bring the Aztecs to modern morality. Like with most times when this happens there's a good priest and a bad priest. The good priest, Autloc played by Keith Pyott, believes Barbara is a goddess and human sacrifice is bad. They have a lot of intellectual conversations and really connect early on. Tlotoxl is the bad priest, played by John Ringham. He spends most of the episodes trying to bring down Barbara and get her friends in trouble. So, it's a standard plot that was done years later with The Road to El Dorado.

The other characters have their own plot.

Susan was taken to be educated in Aztec culture and then she was forced into an arranged marriage and nearly tortured for it.

Ian is forced to be int he Aztec military and fight Ixta to be in control of the Aztec army. Ixta spends the rest of the serial trying to defeat or kill Ian.

The Doctor strikes up a friendship with a lovely Aztec woman named Cameca while trying to get back to the TARDIS which is locked in a tomb. He accidentally becomes engaged to her through ignorance of Aztec customs. Basically, they share a cup of cocoa. In the end, Cameca wants her beloved to be happy so she helps him find a way into the tombs knowing he will leave her forever. The Doctor does keep a brooch Cameca gives him to remember her by. So, he may have reciprocated a little.

In the end, The episode was very cliched, but I don't know if it was cliched because it's been ripped off so much since then or if it was already a cliche beforehand. I liked certain parts of it. I liked how the ultimate message was: "You can't change history."

Because they don't. They fail at getting rid of human sacrifice... mostly because they couldn't change everyone in that culture. It's like things I've read where history pretty much fixes itself by making similar things happening to force the timeline back the way it was. However, this story really proved nothing. You can't change a culture in such a short time. It takes a lifetime to change a culture and sometimes that doesn't even work.

Next time...The Sensorites...