The Aztecs

Dear Gary—

The Aztecs. Yet another great story, and yet another story in which Barbara shines. In fact I would say that this story is Barbara’s zenith. It takes advantage of not only her history teacher background but her strength, her compassion, her intelligence, her resilience, her tact, her determination . . . I could keep going, but why? Yet in the end Barbara fails. She learns, as she must learn, and we learn, as we must learn, that history cannot be altered. This is one of the cardinal rules of the Doctor and of Doctor Who, despite the fact that he often skirts the issue and does some history bending of his own. No, in The Aztecs, more so than in any other Doctor Who storyline, the inevitability and integrity of History is upheld as an infallible fact, both the immovable wall and the unstoppable force.

You can’t rewrite history—not one word, the Doctor warns, but Barbara feels she has been given a chance to help the Aztecs get it right. Her interest in them was touched on back on Marinus, and now she finds herself not only transported to this ancient society, but set up in the role of reincarnated god. And how effortlessly she steps into that role. Her historical background helps, surely, but it takes great presence of mind for her to immediately understand the intent of Autloc and Tlotxl and don the mantle of divinity without batting an eye, and then to grasp the gravity of the traveler’s  situation and use this new role to their advantage. But she is also blinded by her desire to save the Aztecs from themselves.

Susan describes the Aztec society as one of beauty and horror developing hand in hand. The Doctor revels in the beauty while Barbara campaigns against the horror. She should have realized the futility of her fight from the start when she commands the stop to the human sacrifice.  “You have denied me honor,” the intended sacrifice proclaims just before jumping to his death. It is a force she cannot stop and a lesson she must learn.

In setting herself against this time honored custom Barbara makes a powerful enemy in Tlotxl while finding a friend in Autloc. But, as Ian later points out, it is Autloc who is the odd man out in this society. He is the extraordinary, reasonable, civilized one, prepared to listen to advice, but he is only one man. Barbara thinks Tlotxl is the only one she is fighting, but Tlotxl is not the one, he is the people and the people are him. It is a whole way of life, a tradition, a religion. An unstoppable force. Barbara can’t win.

But Barbara doesn’t go down easy. She matches wits with Tlotxl as he tries to expose her as an imposter and deftly counters his assassination attempt. She walks among the people with authority when needed to save Ian and cleverly manipulates intended punishments to advantage to keep Susan safe.  Ultimately she does not save a civilization, but she does manage to help one man—Autloc—although she questions even this. The one man she respected, Barbara laments, she deceived; she gave him false hope and in the end he lost his faith. But it is that very faith--the faith of human sacrifice, of death, of fear--that she was attacking, and it was a faith that Autloc so clearly was questioning himself long before Barbara arrived. What she gave him was affirmation and the seeds of a new belief to explore.

“What’s the point of traveling through time and space if you can’t change anything—nothing?” A relevant question for the Doctor and for Doctor Who to be raised so early on in the show’s history. The Doctor, William Hartnell’s Doctor, is not about changing or even helping. The Doctor’s sole interest is in saving himself and his little band of travelers. He does not want to end human sacrifice; he wants to find a way back into the tomb so they can find the TARDIS and be on their way.  He did not want to help the cavemen find fire; he only wanted to escape and get back to the TARDIS and be on their way. He did not want to help the Thals, he only wanted to find his fluid link to fix the TARDIS and be on their way. He did not want to find the keys to the Conscience, he only wanted to lift the barrier around the TARDIS and be on their way.

The Doctor, William Hartnell’s Doctor, is not motivated by compassion or a sense of justice, he is motivated by self-preservation. And by curiosity. It is usually his curiosity that gets him into trouble and his sense of self-preservation that gets him out. Back on Skaro it was his desire to explore the city that led him to sabotage his ship thus paving the way for the Daleks to get their hands on his fluid link. The Doctor wasn’t interested in destroying the Daleks or saving the Thals. He wanted his fluid link back. He was perfectly willing to leave the Thals to the mercy of the Daleks until he realized he was trapped on the planet. Only then did he try to get the Thals to help him. It was up to Ian to inject humanity into that story—he wasn’t about to endanger the pacifist Thals just for the sake of a fluid link. No, Ian had to motivate the Thals to fight for their own sake.

Sorry for the divergence, Gary, but it takes several stories to see the whole picture of William Hartnell and his Doctor. He is not yet the crusader for good that the Doctor evolves into.  And that is one of the things I love about these early stories. The Doctor is not a comic book superhero. The Doctor is not human. The Doctor is a mystery. The Doctor is a traveler. He travels through time and space not to change but to discover. This is something that gets lost somewhere along the way.

I believe it is in this story of The Aztecs that he refers to himself for the first time as the Doctor. I might have missed it in earlier stories, and of course Marco Polo is missing so I wouldn’t know if he said it then, but this is the first that I have noticed, at least, his self-reference. “They call me the Doctor.” How often does he say that now? But this is the first. He goes on to describe himself as a scientist, an engineer, a builder of things. However he does this in order to explain his interest in the tomb’s design, so I take it with a grain of salt. Yes, he is all these things, but perhaps not to the literal degree he implies.

“I serve the truth.” Another definition of the Doctor. The Aztec religion, history, these are Truths, not to be manipulated or changed. Unmoveable. The Truth has no compassion or humanity. It is. It simply is.

But we do see a softer side to the Doctor in this story. “I made some cocoa and got engaged.” This could be a Gilligan’s Island plot device, but how sweetly handled it is here. The Doctor in the Garden of Peace, where all who have attained their 52^nd year pass the remainder of their lives free from responsibility and care. “Poor souls,” says the Doctor, bored to tears, and yet there is Cameca, a companion of wit and interest. His relationship with this lovely lady is more than a subterfuge to gain information about the tomb. It is truly gentle and moving. The Doctor in love. And yet he must move on, find the entrance to the tomb, find the TARDIS and fly away. A part of him longs for the peace and boredom of the garden, but only a small part that he stores away in his heart. Just as he almost leaves behind but then takes the pin given him by Cameca—one of many souvenirs of his travels—he retains the memory of this lost love.

Memories. Echoes of the past. Lost in the Doctor’s time swirl. I hope this finds you somewhere in this vast configuration of things dear Gary.