Escape To Danger No.51

Confession time: the text I previously mentioned as struggling with in this installment of Escape To Danger has turned out to be more pertinent to a completely different story. So let's hit pause on that and go back to the drawing board in the hope of cranking out something quick and relatively painless...

 

 

When I was first kicking ideas around for this one, I got incredibly bogged down in pondering what exactly constitutes a (cough) "historical" Proper Who story and the variations in emphasis and content between them all.

 

And then domestic paradigms shifted, work interfered and I soon tired of the sound of my own half-arsed tittings on the subject.

 

Incidentally, readers like myself who stupidly kept on buying new packs of 1996's unplayable Doctor Who Collectable Card Game will well remember the above shot. "Greek Hoplites" was one of the most depressingly common cards in the series.

 

 

Anyway, "The Myth Makers" is sadly one of those handful of "missing" stories that have disappeared virtually without a trace. There are no telesnaps known to exist, relatively few publicity photos in circulation, and apart from the obligatory fan-recorded soundtrack (and bloody hooray for that, let it be said), there are only a handful of wobbly off-air 8mm cine fragments known to exist.

 

Which is more than "The Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve" can boast, I'll admit. But a pretty shit archive status nevertheless.

 

Which is a shame, because "The Myth Makers" has a hell of a lot going for it.

 

 

Donald Cotton's script sparkles with genuine humour and displays a depth of knowledge that he was actually renowned for. Not that anybody tuning in at the time would have cared; after the bizarre one-off that was "Mission To the Unknown", everybody was probably expecting some kind of Dalek action.

I imagine that titting about in Troy for four weeks didn't go down all that well...

Maureen O'Brien suffered the first of a series of Piss-Poor Companion Send-Offs (TM) that plagued the latter years of Hartnell's tenure. (And by the way, it wasn't until the 1990s that I recall seeing any published photographs of Vicki together with her hurried on-screen squeeze Troilus at all).

(Maureen O'Brien was probably more concerned at the time about the fact that she returned to work from an expensive foreign holiday to find that her contract had not been renewed. Hence her somewhat, erm... ambivalence towards Yer Who over the years).

And the whole Max Adrian and William Hartnell thing has been looked at here. So please have a look over there if that tickles your fancy.

There's still a very interesting "history versus mythology" angle to look at here, but I am going to cowardly postpone that until I finally pull my thoughts together on considering "historical" stories in general. (It might take some time, so don't hold your breath...)

Great cast, great script and the fact that "The Myth Makers" has its main character view the expected conclusion of its plot to be a preposterous invention of an ancient poet is just grist to the old cleverclogs mill here... 

Great Fan Myths of Who No.2

Another old favourite, this one.

TRUE OR FALSE: In "The Myth Makers", William Hartnell refused to share any scenes with Max Adrian, because Adrian was homosexual.

 

This one probably started doing the rounds (or gained considerable momentum) when people like Anneke Wills stopped titting around and started telling anyone who would listen just how difficult and intolerant Hartnell could be at times.

 

(Personally I'm surprised that by the mid-1990's, allegations that William Hartnell stamped on puppies for fun weren't being printed as truth in some of the more sensationalist fanzines of the time).

 

In other words, this particular myth is often deemed believable solely due to our urge to think the worst of someone, so it jolly well serves us right.

But is there any truth to it?

 

Well, a quick glance over the camera scripts for Serial U reveals a total lack of scribbled notes, and no last-minute rewriting of scenes to accommodate the prejudices of the series' star, if that's of any help.

Hartnell was admittedly rather more "crotchety" (as Doctor Who Monthly used to say) than usual during the production of "The (Fan) Myth Makers", and that was largely due to incoming producer John Wiles.

As if having a new boss wasn't bad enough, Hartnell wasn't well pleased when Wiles refused to give him time off to attend his aunt's funeral. And to compound his ill temper, Hartnell had to cope with another upheaval in the regular cast, when Wiles took Maureen O'Brien at her word when he learned of her frequent mutterings about leaving. (O'Brien found out she had effectively been sacked on her return from a lengthy and expensive foreign holiday, booked on the expectation of ongoing regular work).

So that's that one sorted out.

And besides, if William Hartnell refused to work with every actor who was openly gay, he would have found himself doing an awful lot of one-man shows...