The Myth Makers

Information

Writer: Donald Cotton
Director: Michael Leeston-Smith
Script Editor: Donald Tosh
Producer: John Wiles
Executive Producer(s): None

Originally Broadcast: 16th October - 6th November 1965
Episodes: 4
Duration: 25 mins
Production Code: U
Series: 3
Story Number: 20
Enemy: None
Setting: 1200 BC

Synopsis

When the TARDIS arrives on the plains of Asia Minor, not far from the besieged city of Troy, the Doctor is hailed by Achilles as the mighty god Zeus and taken to the Greek camp, where he meets Agamemnon and Odysseus. Forced to admit that he is a mere mortal - albeit a traveller in space and time - he is given just two days to devise a scheme to capture Troy.

Steven and Vicki, meanwhile, have been taken prisoner by the Trojans, and Vicki - believed to possess supernatural powers - is given two days to banish the Greeks and thus prove that she is not a spy.

Having initially dismissed the famous wooden horse as a fiction of Homer's, the Doctor is eventually driven to 'invent' it himself, thereby giving the Greeks the means to defeat the Trojans.

In the climactic battle Steven is wounded by a sword-thrust to his shoulder and Katarina, handmaiden to the Trojan prophetess Cassandra, helps the Doctor to get him back to the TARDIS.

Vicki meanwhile, having adopted the guise of Cressida, elects to remain behind on Earth with the Trojan prince Troilus, with whom she has fallen in love.

Cast

The Doctor — William Hartnell

Vicki/Cressida — Maureen O'Brien

Steven Taylor — Peter Purves

Katarina — Adrienne Hill

Achilles — Cavan Kendall

Hector — Alan Haywood

Odysseus — Ivor Salter

Agamemnon — Francis de Wolff

Menelaus — Jack Melford

Cyclops — Tutte Lemkow

Priam — Max Adrian

Paris — Barrie Ingham

Cassandra — Frances White

Messenger — John Luxton

Troilus — James Lynn

Story Notes

• This is the final story featuring Vicki
  
• This is the first story featuring Katarina
  
• The working titles for this story included The Mythmakers, The Trojans, and The Trojan War. Individual episode titles included Zeus ex Machina (episode 1) and Is There a Doctor in the Horse? (episode 3).
  
• All 4 episodes of this story have been lost, with only very limited photographic material being held in the BBC archive 
  
• Some limited material from episodes 1, 2 and 4 exist in the form of 8mm home movie reel shot on a television set 
  
• This is also one of the least documented stories, with only very limited material (film/photographic) existing.
  
• William Hartnell was struck and injured by a camera during the filming of the first episode and sustained a bruise to the shoulder.
  
• William Hartnell suffered a bereavement while working on the story: the death of his Aunt Bessie, who had looked after him during his troubled childhood. Unfortunately, the tight recording schedules prevented Hartnell from taking time off to attend her funeral.
  
• In the 1980s, Reeltime Pictures launched a series of home video releases featuring interviews with the cast and crew of Doctor Who. This long-running series of tapes (which later included the first independently-produced Doctor Who spin-offs) was entitled Myth Makers after this story.
  

Preceded by: Mission to the Unknown - Followed by: The Daleks' Master Plan