Escape To Danger 2.0 No.7

In my original post for "The Aztecs", I confessed to not having thought very highly of the serial until recent years. But if you considered my original "ooh!-four-episodes-to-get-to-the-other-side-of-a-wall!" objection was suitably bad-brained, spare a thought for poor old Tat Wood and Lawrence Miles. As much as I admire their "About Time" series of books, I did chuckle somewhat when I read that their enjoyment of Serial F was significantly lessened by the DVD restoration work and the application of the vidFIRE process.

However, I do remember that I was also a bit sceptical of the whole idea of making fuzzy old film prints look like VT recordings again, but I soon got over it. At the end of the day, I personally find VT charming mainly because of its perceived shortcomings. VT is not film, and should never pretend to be otherwise.

But I do feel the pain of Messrs Wood and Miles, and I still consider that having the tatty old unrestored film telerecordings we grew up with as extra features on the DVD releases would have been a splendid bit of fan service.

Anyway, where was I?

 

"Ah, the Aztecs! They knew how to build!". I think that shot above must have seeped into my consciousness when Gary Russell was editor of DWM. There seemed to be a mania in the early 1990s for unpublished photos of empty sets, much to the delight of aging set designers, I suppose.

 

 

Hartnell's expression is priceless here, and it's always a joy to see him in his rehearsal slacks. And here he is again in mufti, with Carole Ann Ford doing a wonderful "fuck off, Grandfather" look...

Probably the best thing about "The Aztecs" (apart from the magnificent costumes and design) is the depth of John Lucarotti's research into the period. The script is peppered with both small and substantial detail (the latter sometimes rather clumsily delivered unfortunately) which both highlights the education remit of the series at the time, and also provides almost unparalleled depth to a routine "historical" story. (Compare this with "The Highlanders", where the most vivid thing you learn about the clans of the Eighteenth Century is that the men had rather large handkerchiefs).

But it is Lucarotti's view of history itself that persists in being the most disappointing aspect of Serial F, even though I concur that there wouldn't have been much story without it. From the irritatingly large infodump that Barbara expounds as soon as she sets foot out of the TARDIS, we're in the "noble-savage-against-uncivilized-barbarian" reading of history. Just because the Aztecs built an impressive city or two and had a bit of art laying around the place, modern sensibilities suggest that theirs was a relatively advanced culture sadly let down by the need to persistently (and on rather a grand scale at times) tear out the still-beating hearts of anybody who happened to be nearby in order to placate their gods.

Of course I am over-simplifying for comic effect, but this view of history annoys me. I concur that a self-serving priesthood is usually to blame for such excessive behaviour, but the Aztecs took it to particular extremes. Cortez managed to penetrate as far as Tenochtitlan unmolested due to the assistance of neighbouring tribes who couldn't wait for the Aztecs to get the shit kicked out of them, and the Aztecs themselves were unashamedly in favour of expansion through military conquest.

I believe that the Aztec culture was at heart one of institutional sadism, with regular human sacrifice being its most obvious manifestation. (Mind you, any culture that believed that a rain god could be propitiated by the tears of children has to be kind of admired). And whilst we're at it, what did they do with all the leftover corpses? Hmm?

Anyway, Doctor Who has never been at its most level-headed when sympathetically discussing religion, so it's hardly surprising that the series falls into line with the "learning good, religion bad" approach. And apart from being a bit of a disgusting little fellow, what crime does Tlotoxl commit other than try to expose a group of self-serving frauds who are actually, erm... self-serving frauds?

And let's not get into why Dr Who is so against changing the course of Earth history when he doesn't have similar reservations about doing it on other planets. (Remind me to discuss the FASA Doctor Who Roleplaying Game of the mid 1980s sometime... they had a concept of something called a Temporal Nexus Point which went some way to addressing this old chestnut...)

 

So maybe free will WAS an illusion after all...