Day 90: Horse of Destruction

I suppose that I was predisposed to like The Myth Makers. Because for all its gags and hijinks in Ancient times, the final episode is where things really start to happen. If you were expecting the culmination of the Siege of Troy to be a farce, you are wrong. It is a war. People die. It is shocking and disturbing to see Paris, Cassandra and King Priam, three characters that have previously been figures of fun in the story, get killed, because this is how history plays itself out. Odysseus is no longer the comical straight man, he is instead a soldier, fighting to kill all who get in his way. It's nice to see Doctor Who tell stories like this, where they do not talk down to the audience and make it into a simple case of goodies vs baddies, it instead allows for sympathetic characters to play their part in history, and if that means that they'll be brutally killed, then so be it. This is partly down to the writer, Donald Cotton, but also due to our new script editor, Donald Tosh. He won't be with us for very long, and we'll deal with this concept more when we reach his final story in a couple of weeks, but he has been able to help make Doctor Who more adult, while still keeping the children's programme status, and all the fun and adventure that it implies.

We also, this episode, bid farewell to Vicki, as played by Maureen O'Brien. Vicki has been a wonderful character, more fun and light hearted than Susan ever was. She was the first new companion that the show has seen, and she has been able to take to travelling in the TARDIS well, and form a much missed double act with the Doctor, where she was able to act as granddaughter figure for him, where Susan, due to being mostly paired off with Ian or Barbara, was unable to. Vicki has been a wonderful character, fun and full of energy,nand has helped the show survive theough the loss of three of the four original regular characters. Her replacement is Katarina, a Trojan handmaiden, and as the TARDIS flies off to a new adventure, she is left questioning her own fate, particularly as it was prophesied that she would die. But that won't happen surely, the Doctor will save her, won't he?