The Myth Makers

STEVEN: Wouldn't it be better if I went?
DOCTOR: I don't think they'd appreciate your kind of sarcasm.

AGAMEMNON: Don't you want to get Helen back?
MENELAUS: Quite frankly, no. If you must know, I was heartily glad to see the back of her.
AGAMEMNON: You mustn't talk like that in front of these.
MENELAUS: It wasn't the first time she'd allowed herself to be abducted. I can't keep on going off to the ends of the Earth to get her back.

PARIS: Now, die, Greek, and tell them in Hades that Paris sent you thither!
STEVEN: I yield.
PARIS: I beg your pardon?
STEVEN: I yield. I'm your prisoner.
PARIS: Well, I say, this sort of thing is just not done.

PARIS: I'm treated with more respect by the enemy than I am by my own family.
CASSANDRA: They don't know you as well as we do.

ODYSSEUS: I wonder, were you really Zeus after all?

DOCTOR: I am not a Doc.

• Humphrey Searle's sole contribution to Doctor Who is... interesting. 
• I like how Vicki takes an age trying to find suitable clothes before leaving the TARDIS. The Doctor didn't bother... 
• I love Donald Cotton's episode titles. It's such a shame he didn't get to call the third episode, "Is there a Doctor in the horse?" That would have been my favourite Doctor Who title of all time. As it is, I think "Horse of Destruction" wins the vote narrowly over "A Holiday for the Doctor". 
• I like how the Doctor's plan to escape would have meant the story was only one episode long if Paris hadn't come and stolen the TARDIS in the meantime. 
• The cliffhanger to episode three is possibly the worst in the entire history of Doctor Who. I'm struggling to think of much worse. It's basically... "oh my God, that's an awful pun!" 
  
• Cassandra is bloody annoying. I know it's probably necessary to have a less friendly Trojan character, but she's just so shrieky and negative it's irritating. That said, the way Priam is always so condescending towards her is quite funny. Priam is good fun, and Paris works well as a figure of fun. The Greeks are a bit less well presented. Odysseus is great fun, but Agamemnon and Menelaus get very little screen time. 
• I quite like that Vicki's departure is done differently. They've done a companion reluctantly leaving, they've done the Doctor reluctantly letting companions leave. The leaving scene itself has already been done, so it's quite smart that rather than show that all over again they focus on Vicki and Troilus. It's a rather brave and surprising decision of Vicki to stay with Troilus. This is a woman who considered aspirin to be some horrible backwards remedy choosing to stay in ancient history. Not only that, what if she hadn't actually been able to find Troilus? Or if Achilles had killed him in that fight at the end? She'd be in deep trouble then! If I thought Ian and Barbara needed some luck suddenly reappearing after vanishing off the face of the earth for two years, Vicki needs a whole mountain of luck. It's also sad she doesn't get to say goodbye to Steven.

 

Verdict

Donald Cotton's second most polished script in his time on Doctor Who. The Myth Makers is decent enough fun. It starts fairly slowly, but once it hits its stride it works very well. The scenes with the Doctor and Odysseus are all very enjoyable, and Vicki and Priam make for a good combination. It does feel a bit disjointed at times, and doesn't always seem to know what it wants to do. And Agamemnon vanishes from the plot completely. But those are minor quibbles in an otherwise very enjoyable story, if one that becomes something of a bloodbath at the end. It's quite impressive in a way that light comedy characters are butchered so brutally in the final episode. It's also very sad to be losing Vicki. She was everything Susan should have been. Fun, vibrant, proactive. And as usual, William Hartnell plays the heartbreak of losing someone dear to him perfectly.