In the previous two and a bit seasons, we’ve become used to the idea of time being a strange concept in Doctor Who. Not just in the sense of travelling through it or skipping time tracks (okay, I admit, I still can’t get “The Space Museum” to work properly in my head at all) but also in the sense of no one seems to be able to keep track of how much time has passed in what part of the plot. So far things haven’t been variable. At the more accurate end of the scale, the countdown at the end of “The Dead Planet” is more or less done at a constant rate, “Marco Polo” gave details of the passage of time between locations and there was the open admission of the month-long holiday in “The Romans”. At the other extreme we seem to have the Doctor able to analyse rock samples in the space of 45 seconds (“The Rescue”), seemingly sit in the same spot for a few days (“The Dead Planet”) and as for Barbara’s ability to get hypnotised, in to new clothes and laying in the lap of fake luxury in the space of a few seconds well… but from here on, things in Doctor Who are going to get exceptionally confusing and “The Myth Makers” is the first in a long line of blink and you’ll miss it stories when it comes to the passage of time. It’s also going to provide more hints about issues we’ve already made some educated guesses about and make us wonder if free will is an illusion after all.
Before we get into the weirdness with time, I think it’s worth noting that with this story not even having telesnaps, we’re robbed of the chance to witness the first revision of a room within the TARDIS and, of course, it’s visual evidence that could have given us so much help with previous and future stories. For the first time, we get the companions not just wanting to try and blend in with the era but we get to see Vicki trying to select her outfit (Steven sorts his out off camera). This is clearly not the wardrobe that we saw in “The Space Museum” (which was more akin to an actual wardrobe complete with a recycled door) but is, instead, a full blown walk-in affair as we’d eventually witness more of during the 70s and 80s. In one of those “please don’t ask me how I know this” moments, I happen to know that getting someone kitted out in roman gear can be a faff. What’s more, I wouldn’t have had a clue about any actual historical details of outfits or if there were any symbols that should or shouldn’t be displayed. The only thing I really knew was that purple wasn’t a colour to use, something that the revival era should have known better on. Okay, so Steven ends up dressed in Greek gear but the theory is still the same. Unless you really know what you’re doing, getting into full battle dress quickly, on your own and neatly is going to present most people with a challenge. And that’s IF you know the outfit is the right size for you. Without visuals we’ll never really know if there was an entire rack of Greek soldier outfits in different sizes (I’m thinking that as people have apparently gotten taller over the centuries on average, Steven would have needed an XXL or so) or if it just so happened that there was just the one in there which was conveniently just the right size for him. It still wouldn’t fully explain the outfits in “The Romans” but we’re heading more towards the idea that there’s some sort of costume generator in there. Except, when it’s Vicki’s turn, she ends up getting frustrated that there isn’t anything suitable in there for her. This results in a whole load of potentially awkward questions about why the Doctor keeps a load of Greek soldier outfits around and nothing for the females which are probably never going to be answered.
Let’s skip to the end, so we get our TARDIS related bits and pieces out of the way. At the end of the story, Vicki departs the TARDIS to spend her life with Troilus (more of whom later on). Female companion leaves because she’s in love with a man she’s only just met is going to turn out to be something of a running theme through Doctor Who, out of the three female companions who have now left, Vicki is the second one to be doing so because of a whirlwind romance and the only reason Barbara didn’t complete the trio was because she was already chummy with Ian. This departure is riddled with issues though. On the historical accuracy front, “The Myth Makers” is on a very uncertain ground to begin with. Trying to decide who actually existed, if Troy actually existed (and which Troy this is) and whether or not there was a ten year siege is something for historians to endlessly debate over but the lack of any historical certainty means that trying to decide what the off screen eventual fate of this fictional version of the fictional characters is likely to have been is a challenge. For it to work out as a happy ending, there’s going to have to be rather a lot of assumptions made. First up there’s the language issue. In “The Crusade” piece I suggested that humanity hasn’t yet evolved a natural telepathic translation that all the other alien species seem to have but Vicki is from the future. I suppose it’s possible that she has the natural gift for languages because if she’s been relying on the TARDIS to do the translation for her then she’s in for a bit of a shock once the Doctor departs. The other possibility is that somehow the Doctor and/or the TARDIS have the ability to permanently bestow the gift of translation on people but you then have to wonder what the morals of doing this are, how easy it is to do without some sort of psychic surgery and why the Doctor didn’t just do it to everyone on the Earth to make life easier for us all for the rest of time. Perhaps, in her speed learning future, along with the hour a week of sciences she did a top up course (to go with hairdressing) of ancient and foreign languages that you might randomly find yourself needing for the rest of your life. The second issue is one that, weirdly, will form the plot of an upcoming story only here it will be in reverse. Vicki is from the mid to late 2490s. The siege of Troy, if it happened, was at least in the 1180s BC if not further back. This means she’s on the Earth more than three and a half thousand years before she’s born. Given the massive advances in science and medicine that seem to have taken place between the 1960s of Barbara and Ian’s time and Vicki’s native era, it’s quite worrying to think what germs and diseases there were back then that Vicki would have no immunity to. And though she’s unlikely to wipe out any Monoids with a cold, she’s probably going to be very unprepared for trojan viruses. Mind you, is she prepared for anything at all? The TARDIS has done most things for her and other than a month’s holiday in Rome, it’s unlikely that she’ll have had to do too much in her native time (actually, what DID she do outside of the hour a week of education, other than look at castles?) so just exactly why the Doctor thinks it’s a smart idea to leave a 16 year old in ancient Greece with a boy she’s known for 36 hours or so at most (including time spent sleeping in a cell!).
So now we get to the real issue over “The Myth Makers”. It’s time, but not as we know it. This story is tied with “The Seeds of Death” for the most baffling passage of time in the show’s history. If push came to shove then “The Myth Makers” would take the title because it commits a cardinal sin for things like this, it gives details. One of the greatest ways around messing up details is to not give them. A great example of this comes in one of Big Finish’s releases (which I’ll eventually do a whole piece on anyway) where, rather than just mumble his way through calculations, the Doctor gives us a clear set of numbers upon which to hang a cliff-hanger. Unfortunately even GCSE physics is enough to show that those numbers are very far off the mark indeed and, yes, the problem with that one is to do with the passage of time as well! In “The Myth Makers” we have a pretty clearly defined timeline across the four episodes as the production does actually go to the trouble of giving us night scenes that help show which day is which.
Episode 1 – the TARDIS arrives in daylight and the fight has been going on for an hour or so already and is held out on the plains. Later on in the episode we get a night scene with Steven ending the first day.
Episode 2 – the TARDIS has been removed from the plain in the early morning and taken into Troy. Half way through the episode, the Doctor is given a strict two day deadline to come up with the attack plan. Priam indicates that nightfall is vaguely close. Later on, Vicki sees Troilus for the first time.
Episode 3 – we get the evening of the second day and Odysseus tells the Doctor that he has very little time left out of his two days. Because the original plan won’t work, the Doctor resorts to suggesting a giant horse. This leads us up to the scene that ends with Menelaus wanting a drink. We get a scene in the prison, a scene outside Troy and then… well the wooden horse is fully constructed and ready to go. It could be that there’s intended to be a “time passes” scenario between the prison scene and the horse being built but there’s nothing in the feel of the scenes that suggests this and, just before the end of episode 3, Priam says that Vicki could have saved herself all those hours in the cell. Hours, not days.
Episode 4 – the horse came into the city overnight and it’s still daytime when the TARDIS leaves.
As far as I can see, the Greeks aren’t just talented warriors, they’re outstandingly fast carpenters too. Forget the army, they should have rented themselves out as builders. Plus, of course, the Doctor is seemingly an exceptionally talented designer as he can come up with the plans, complete with dimensions etc, seemingly in a few minutes. Which leads very nicely into the other aspect of time travel that this story presents us with. Just as in “The Romans”, where the Doctor inspires the burning down of Rome, “The Myth Makers” has the Doctor responsible for another major historical event. Here though, the Doctor initially dismisses a wooden horse as being a fabrication of history so we have to ask… who came up with the idea of a wooden horse? The revival series would eventually make a big deal about its use of bootstrap paradoxes but it’s just sort of ‘there’ in “The Myth Makers”. Did the Doctor get it from Homer or did Homer get it from the Doctor? Or, as there’s huge debate about whether or not this battle ever even took place, could we be very VERY cheeky and come up with a third possibility that keeps history going but doesn’t have the paradox.
What if, prior to the Doctor’s arrival in episode 1, one of the Greek army had ALREADY had the idea of a wooden horse. It needn’t be one of the big names, in fact the scenario almost works better if it’s just a bunch of nameless low ranking soldiers. They’ve all been camped outside Troy for 10 years and, during that time they’ve been gradually putting aside bits of wood etc and gradually they’ve been starting to get their horse together without telling anyone. Then suddenly one of their gods falls out of the sky and tells them “we’re going to build a wooden horse”… well if the Trojans can have someone who can seemingly accurately predict the future then perhaps one of the Greek soldiers saw all this coming. Whatever the reason behind the horse being built on the quiet, this would then have the added advantage of most of the horse being pre-built and so getting the last bits of the assembly done in one day suddenly doesn’t seem quite so impossible as building absolutely everything from scratch does. Of course, to keep things neat and tidy, the poor soldier who thought up the idea is one of the ones who ended up in the horse and got killed in the battle, thus meaning he never got to take the credit. And it’s not technically a bootstrap paradox as the soldier would probably have built it anyway (remember, Trojans would do anything for a horse according to Priam).
One last thing. Suppose, just suppose, against all the odds a 16 year old with very few practical skills really is in love with a 17 year old Trojan and somehow, against all the odds, they don’t die quickly and Vicki is lucky enough to survive giving birth to a child (well in the 24th century it was probably all automated and no one had encountered pain before)… I wonder what her descendants would be doing about three and a half thousand years after the time of Troilus and Cressida. They’re probably out there, on a spaceship, heading for Dido…