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This is the essay that’s long been in the making. In The Dead Planet I preempted this piece by coining the term “Whitaker’s Original Sin” to describe a racialised rot at the origins of Doctor Who, and in Marco Polo I mentioned how a story moving through the geography of China was filtered through layers of white eyes and that the most important lens through which a full appraisal of that story’s engagement with race—namely, the crucial lens of Waris Hussein’s visuals—is lost. Following an intermission, The Keys of Marinus, we can finally tackle Whitaker’s original sin head-on.

I’ve previously stated what this original sin is, but let’s now ask the more crucial question—why does it exist? This isn’t asking “is David Whitaker racist”, but something broader. We are, after all, lingering in questions of history throughout this story—The Aztecs—and questions both about changing history and our relationship with it.

There is a lot to say about the sudden, confident vigour Lucarotti writes this script with, especially in contrast with Marco Polo, but if this is a story engaged with questions of history, we need to first establish a concept of history.

Enter Walter Benjamin.

Benjamin was a German Jewish philosopher who committed suicide in September, 1940. His essay “On the Concept of History” was written earlier that same year, before Benjamin escaped Vichy France—specifically, as a Jewish man in the early 1940s, escaping  the actual Nazis. So, the racialised rot in Doctor Who? Approaching it by way of Benjamin’s writings, we’re going to be pretty damning—Benjamin, after all, claims that “…there has never been a document of culture, which is not simultaneously one of barbarism.” Specifically, Benjamin writes this in reference to the idea of “cultural heritage,” noting “cultural heritage is part and parcel of a lineage… which [the historian] cannot contemplate without horror.”

“On the Concept of History” isn’t particularly enamoured with ideas of “history”, a concept Benjamin depicts as a shadow on the wall: the “past” exists, but “history” is something conjured up by the present. History, it’s said, is written by the victors—and Benjamin believes the victors didn’t win cleanly. Despite a global empire gradually disintegrating around them, Britain in 1964 very much thought of itself as being an historical victor: as Dan Stone notes in Goodbye to all that?, Britain “‘standing alone’ in 1940 [has] facilitate[d] ‘a fifty year inflation of the national ego’” persisting even into the early 21st century.

This explains why Whitaker’s original sin exists. David Whitaker, Anthony Coburn, Terry Nation, John Lucarotti, Verity Lambert, Waris Hussein, Christopher Barry, Richard Martin, John Gorrie and John Crockett are inhabitants of their present—in other words, 1963/64 Britain. Doctor Who is a document of culture, while simultaneously a document of the British Empire’s barbarism. It’s a barbarism Britain hasn’t reckoned with here, in 1964.

Benjamin writes that “there is a secret protocol between the generations of the past and that of our own… a weak messianic power, on which the past has a claim”. Our own time has been prophesied, and the past informs the present. The legacy of imperialism is best represented in the iconography of the Doctor himself—dressed as an Edwardian gentleman, an echo in 1964 of the Imperial Century. This reading—that the Doctor himself is a document of the British Empire’s own barbarity—reveals something new about a line of dialogue we took to task in “An Unearthly Child”: the “Red Indian” and “his savage mind”. I pointed out the seeming juxtaposition of how Ian treats the line upon hearing it, and Hartnell’s choice to read the line with amused condescension. The Dead Planet built upon this, showing it to be the start of a racialised rot setting in at this earliest point in the series.

But now we know what it is. It’s the explicit barbarism of the British Empire being bottled in a time capsule, a 1960s present to which the 19th century continues to hold a claim. 

Is The Aztecs the right story for me to delve into this in such detail? Well… yes. In his second script for the series, John Lucarotti returns to his preferred genre—historical—and continues to build off of ideas we detected back in Marco Polo. In terms of the epic-dramatic binary we’ve discussed previously, and at length, Lucarotti is still clearly writing in the dramatic mode here. The director, John Crockett, similarly isn’t nudging his actors into the same kind of estranged performances we’ve previously used to determine stories working in the epic mode. 

This all amounts to necessary housekeeping, however. Let’s now dive into the meat of things. Let’s talk about Elizabethan theatre.

In Marco Polo, Lucarotti establishes the default mode he approaches Doctor Who with, which I described as the tension between a Shakespearean plot and the intrusion of a 1960s audience into it. In Marco Polo the generator of this plot was Tegana, an Iago-like character who loses his manipulative power through being recognised as such by the TARDIS travellers. Lucarotti seemingly felt the Tegana archetype and the double act shared with Mark Eden’s Marco Polo was good enough that it’s mirrored here in the double act between the Aztec high priests Tlotoxl and Autloc. Tlotoxl, according to this reading, is the more fascinating—scheming and perpetually hunched over, he evokes the image of Shakespeare’s own depiction of Richard III as “deformed, unfinish’d” and “rudely stamp’d.”

If we’re dealing with ideas of history, Richard III might be a fascinating means of reading The Aztecs in its own right, but this is more than just the idea of history—this is Whitaker’s original sin as an outgrowth of history, and how The Aztecs is Lucarotti (and, by extension, Whitaker himself) attempting to redress a problematic morality already percolating within Doctor Who.

With Whitaker’s original sin being British imperial values that persist into the present-day of 1964, and The Aztecs being set in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, we see here a story designed to interrogate the moral basis for empire.

SUSAN: The little I know about them doesn’t impress me. Cutting out people’s hearts. 
BARBARA: Oh, that was only one side to their nature. The other side was highly civilised. 
SUSAN: The Spanish didn’t think so. 
BARBARA: They only saw the acts of sacrifice. That was the tragedy of the Aztecs. The whole civilisation was completely destroyed, the good as well as the evil.

Doctor Who, “The Temple of Evil,” (John Lucarotti)

From the onset, Lucarotti leans into Barbara’s established totemic power as the source of the show’s morality—Barbara believes that the Aztecs are a multifaceted culture, and we the audience is similarly invited to consider Aztec culture as being more than merely “cutting out people’s hearts” and “evil”. This is reflected in how Lucarotti fleshes out the guest characters—however, he makes this “the good as well as the evil” logic a little too reductive in creating two cultural factions within Aztec society: the “good” Aztecs who are accommodating and receptive to a 1960s audience, and the “evil” Aztecs who are irreconcilably hostile.

The leader of this latter bunch is Tlotoxl, immediately introduced to the viewer by Ian as “the local butcher” (a description which the Doctor acknowledges here, saying “exactly”, but repeats following Tlotoxl introducing himself as “High Priest of Sacrifice”). As the leader of the “evil” in Aztec society, he’s also ideologically opposed to the 1960s values espoused by our TARDIS travellers—specifically Barbara, performing the role of the reincarnated Yetaxa and using that social clout to question the practice of human sacrifice. Nowhere is this ideological conflict more explicit than in the cliffhanger ending for the first episode, “The Temple of Evil.”

There’s a lot going on in this scene, but in essence tensions increasingly escalate between the TARDIS travellers and Tlotoxl. First, Susan screams out in horror upon realising that a human sacrifice is about to take place. Barbara then responds to Susan’s horror by using her performed role as Yetaxa to demand an end to human sacrifice: “I, Yetaxa, command you. There shall be no more blood spilt.”

The sacrifice disrupted, Tlotoxl goads the seemingly-spared victim into committing suicide, “honour us then with your death”—and, immediately after, rains begin to fall.

Tlotoxl claims that death has won the favour of the gods, who have blessed the land with rains. Barbara points out that human sacrifice, however, had nothing to do with this. His response to this is swift—he attempts to have Susan punished for ruining the sacrifice, and as Barbara attempts to undermine his brutality with softer alternatives (such as suggesting that Susan “be taught respect for your customs” rather than be “beaten”), Tlotoxl turns to the camera.

It’s a gripping moment, in many respects because the relationship between camera and actor in Doctor Who has gradually evolved throughout this season as the show has cycled through directors, missing episodes and narrative modes. Originally the camera began as a way for William Hartnell to reach out to the audience and cultivate a conspiratorial alliance between the Doctor and the viewer at home—more recently, John Gorrie in The Keys of Marinus used the camera to align Barbara’s perspective of the world with that of the audience watching.

The director of The Aztecs, John Crockett, seemingly builds on both of these established uses of the camera. Tlotoxl, however, doesn’t use the camera to create an alliance between himself and the audience. It’s a promise that he makes, glowering out of the television screen:

TLOTOXL: No, no, this is not Yetaxa. This is a false goddess! And I shall destroy her.

Doctor Who, “The Temple of Evil,” (John Lucarotti)

Following on so soon from The Keys of Marinus, this line, spoken directly through the camera and promising the death of Barbara, is an explicit declaration of war on the values both Barbara and the audience share. It’s one of the most striking scenes the series has produced so far, and is perhaps the most overt visualisation of Lucarotti’s narrative focus on juxtaposing the past and the present. 

This also establishes Tlotoxl as being a character with similar narrative power to characters such as Barbara or the Doctor—specifically, in taking control of the camera and using it to speak directly to the audience, actor John Ringham asserts Tlotoxl as a character with the power to warp the narrative. Indeed, the character not only has a relationship with the camera which parallels its relationship with two of the show’s protagonists: Tlotoxl’s role as a narrative warping character furthermore distorts the morality of Lucarotti’s narrative:

BARBARA: Tlotoxl’s evil and he’ll make everyone else the same. 
IAN: They are the same, Barbara. That’s the whole point. You keep on insisting that Tlotoxl’s the odd man out, but he isn’t. 
BARBARA: I don’t believe it. 
IAN: Well, you must. If only you could stand away from this thing, you’d see it clearly.

Doctor Who, “The Bride of Sacrifice,” (John Lucarotti)

What this exchange does is two-fold. Firstly, it reveals to the viewer the extent of Tlotoxl’s overwhelming narrative power: Barbara, whom the series has taken pains to establish is a moral anchor capable of warping the narrative, recognises Tlotoxl as her foil. “He’ll make everyone the same,” says Barbara—showing that she is aware that the scheming Tlotoxl functions to unbalance the narrative. She is, in essence, playing the part of the historian here. Barbara is able to see the various factional forces at play within Aztec society, a “cultural heritage [that] is part and parcel of a lineage.” And she “cannot contemplate without horror” at once the distillation of Aztec barbarity which Tlotoxl represents and the looming, existential threat Spanish imperialism poses to Aztec society.

Ian, on the other hand, is wrong.

Despite starting off as Barbara’s equal, where she has become an increasingly subversive narrative force Ian has remained much as he was. This is something that Lucarotti leans into—although both Ian and Barbara are beholden to a 1960s moral framework informed by the values of the British Empire, Barbara is subversive enough to clearly confront these tensions within her own arc. Ian… can’t. He “cannot contemplate without horror” because for him Aztec society as a whole is already damned.

Ian’s simplistic appraisal of Aztec society, however, is deliberately misleading. Although Barbara is clearly pushing against the narrative and finding pushback in the similarly, narratively ontological Tlotoxl, she’s right that there’s more to Aztec society than just the High Priest of Sacrifice.

And we know that this is Lucarotti’s point, because Ian is oblivious to just how important the character of Cameca is to The Aztecs and its efforts to redress Whitaker’s original sin.

Lucarotti first introduces Cameca in a way that establishes her role within the narrative—the Doctor is immediately drawn towards her:

DOCTOR: And what about her?
AUTLOC: Cameca? Of all those here, her advice is most sought after.
DOCTOR: What did you say her name was?
AUTLOC: Cameca. You will find her a companion of wit and interest.

Doctor Who, “The Temple of Evil,” (John Lucarotti)

The way that this exchange unfolds between the Doctor and Autloc, the High Priest of Reason and Tlotoxl’s ideological opposite within Aztec society, resembles an act of matchmaking. The Doctor notices Cameca in “the Garden of Peace,” an area within the Aztec city reserved for elder citizens—a kind of retirement home if you will—and a place where they receive queries and requests for advice from the younger citizenry. And of all the learned individuals within this tranquil microcosm of Aztec society it is Cameca, “a companion of wit and interest,” who the Doctor gravitates towards.

Autloc earnestly sings her praises, further appealing her to the Doctor. There’s more going on here however. As I’ve mentioned, Hartnell spent considerable time over the first few episodes of this season cultivating an alliance between his character and the audience—as such, it has served the Doctor well in retaining the audience’s sympathies even as he’s pushed into direct tension with his fellow travellers. Here, Lucarotti builds off of Hartnell’s work to use this Doctor-audience alignment for a new purpose: just as he uses Barbara to prime the viewer to behold the Aztecs as more than just “cutting out people’s hearts” and “evil,” because Lucarotti writes the Doctor as intrigued and drawn to an ordinary Aztec woman the viewer is similarly invited to view this budding romance positively. The Doctor likes her, and so do we.

This arc culminates in the Doctor making some cocoa and inadvertently getting engaged to Cameca, but despite the Doctor’s immediate embarrassment it’s clear in their farewell that there is a true romance between the couple:

DOCTOR: There you are, my dear, it’s nearly finished.
CAMECA: As is our time together. I do not know what its purpose is, but I’ve always known it would take you from me.
DOCTOR: Yes. I’m sorry, my dear… You’re a very fine woman, Cameca, and you’ll always be very, very dear to me.

Doctor Who, “The Day of Darkness,” (John Lucarotti)

We’re clearly not meant to see Cameca as party to “the evil” within Aztec society, and unlike characters such as Autloc or Tlotoxl who are clearly part of a hierarchical class Cameca is presented as an ordinary woman who has a romance with one of the TARDIS travellers. Having read Ping-Cho in Marco Polo as having a subtextually queer relationship with Susan, here we can see clearly that this theme of romance is a recurring tool in Lucarotti’s writing arsenal: it’s a means of humanising his narratives. 

But here it functions as well to undermine Ian’s blanket statement condemning Aztec society. He claims that Tlotoxl represents the society as a whole, a corrupt and brutal rot that the invading Spanish are going to eradicate, yet Lucarotti clearly uses Cameca (and Ian’s deliberate erasure of her role in the narrative) to establish that this isn’t the case. If British imperial values percolate within the morality of the present (1964), undermining “our forefathers’ valiant acts” of civilising monolithic savagery by splitting the monolith into even a two-dimensional society where characters as distinct as Tlotoxl and Cameca exist side by side places the values of the present as open to critique. Aztec society might be overwhelmed by the narrative warping presence of a character like Tlotoxl, but it isn’t a one dimensional monoculture.

In fact, the Aztecs are far more nuanced than either society depicted in previous serials. To pick one at random, say The Dead Planet, “the good” were the Thals and the “evil” were the Daleks—reductive moral alignments informing reductive monocultures.

It’s not simply a case, however, of Lucarotti leaning into a tension between Tlotoxl’s Shakespearean narrative power and Barbara as representative of 1960s morality. Instead, Lucarotti finds a trick that not only escalates this tension, but makes reading The Aztecs by way of Walter Benjamin mind-numbingly obvious.

After the TARDIS lands, Barbara is the first to walk out. She immediately recognises that they’re in an Aztec tomb, and from a quick observation of the tomb’s decor and the make of the jewellery hidden here with their dead owner—a priest— she estimates that they’ve arrived in the middle of the 15^th century.

“That’s what I call really knowing your subject,” Susan says, impressed that Barbara could date the tomb at a glance.

“Ah, well, that was one of my specialties, Susan.”

Barbara’s hands wander over the collection of jewellery and gold buried in this tomb, before settling on a serpentine armband. Barbara innocently slips it on, engaging in a bit of tourist-y grave robbing, before Susan notices a section of wall decorated in Aztec art. Susan presses her hand against the stone, which moves.

The wall swings open—it wasn’t a wall, it was a secret door. Barbara cautiously wanders out, eager to explore the period of history closest to her heart.

“It’s perfect,” she exclaims.

At this moment Barbara is spotted by Autloc, High Priest of Knowledge. Barbara has trespassed and is immediately placed into custody, so that she may be punished according to Aztec law.

But Autloc notices something: the serpentine armband spiralling up Barbara’s arm.

As Barbara herself later explains to her travelling companions:

BARBARA: They think I’m a reincarnation of that priest in the tomb. I found this and put it on, and when the High Priest caught me I was still wearing it.
SUSAN: So he thought you were a god?
BARBARA: Yes.
SUSAN: But the priest in the tomb’s a man! How can you be a reincarnation of him?
BARBARA: The form the spirit takes isn’t important, Susan. (Indicates the arm band) This is what’s important.

Doctor Who, “The Temple of Evil,” (John Lucarotti)

There’s a reason why it’s the armband itself which is important—the armband is the physical object where both Lucarotti’s engagement with Shakespeare and this serial’s understanding of history intersect.

For this reading to work, I’m leaning on the very specific resonances of words so bear with me. Thomas Nashe, an Elizabethan writer, wrote the 1592 pamphlet Pierce Pennilesse where the character of Pierce articulates a defence of Elizabethan theatre (and, specifically historical plays) in the following terms:

First, for the subject of them (for the most part) it is borrowed o ut of our English chronicles, wherein our forefathers’ valiant acts (that have lien long buried in rusty brass and worm-eaten books) are revived, and they themselves raised from the grave of oblivion, and brought to plead their aged honours in open presence, than which, what can be a sharper reproof to these degenerate effeminate days of ours? How would it have joyed brave Talbot (the terror of the French) to think that after he had lien two hundred years in his tomb, he should triumph again on the stage, and have his bones new embalmed with the tears of ten thousand spectators at least (at several times), who, in the tragedian that represents his person, imagine they behold him fresh bleeding.

Nashe, Thomas. “Pierce Penilesse His Supplication to the Devil.”Oxford Shakespeare, http://www.oxford-shakespeare.com/Nashe/Pierce_Penilesse.pdf.

Pierce (or Nashe) sees historical plays as a means by which “our forefathers… are revived”, or more specifically that great historical figures might “have his bones new embalmed with the tears of ten thousand spectators at least (at several times), who, in the tragedian that represents his person, imagine they behold him fresh bleeding”. Nashe, or Pierce, seems to believe the purpose of this kind of theatre is a means to “reproof… these degenerate effeminate days of ours”—Pierce Penniless is, however, a satire and the ins and outs of Nashe’s intent and the line between author and narrator is outside the scope of my work here.

The point is, however, that Nashe depicts historical theatre as an act of necromancy.

Within The Aztecs, Barbara is believed to be the reincarnation of the high priest Yetaxa, and the proof that Autloc seizes upon to support the claim is an aspect of costuming: the armband. Barbara then, throughout the serial, is required to perform the part of “Yetaxa”. This is particularly evident in a scene from the serial’s third episode, “The Bride of Sacrifice,” where Barbara confronts Tlotoxl after he tries to trick her into drinking poison as a test of her divinity:

TLOTOXL: Yetaxa would have lived. The gods are immortal.
BARBARA: Well I would have died. I am not Yetaxa. 
TLOTOXL: False. False! I knew. 
BARBARA: And who will believe you? I warn you, Tlotoxl, you say one word against me to the people and I’ll have them destroy you. Destroy you!

Doctor Who, “The Bride of Sacrifice,” (John Lucarotti)

The choice of Tlotoxl’s actor, John Ringham, to perform the character hunched over as a type of Richard III pays dividends here: he throws himself upon the sacrificial altar, cowering as Jacqueline Hill imbues Barbara with great vengeance and furious anger. But there’s more to this scene than just Ringham’s physical performance—Hill, too, is using her body throughout this scene. She is, after all, playing two characters: Barbara, and Barbara performing as “Yetaxa”.

As Yetaxa, Barbara is a goddess in flesh. Hill holds herself tall, raising the volume of her voice to amplify her presence and overpower Tlotoxl. Yet, as Tlotoxl slinks away, Hill shrinks. She removes the regal headdress of Yetaxa and looks downward, palpably melancholic. Here, the divide between Barbara and Yetaxa is made clear: the costume is “what’s important”. 

In removing the headdress, Hill shifts from Barbara-as-Yetaxa back to Barbara, and leans into the performativity of historical theatre. If we accept Nashe’s description of historical theatre as necromantic (and, clearly, I think this is a powerful reading of historical theatre), then John Lucarotti has crafted a historical piece explicitly working through these concerns of resurrection and theatre by explicitly depicting resurrection as theatre.

Necromancy, however, is more than just resurrecting the dead. Nashe alludes to this through the character of Pierce Penniless in claiming that reviving “our forefathers’ valiant acts” on-stage is an assertion of the past over the present. We’re back, then, in the realm of Walter Benjamin’s claim that “there is a secret protocol between the generations of the past and that of our own.”

Benjamin, however, seems to go further than just saying the past informs the present. Indeed, Benjamin states that the past “makes history into its affair. The past carries a secret index with it, by which it is referred to its resurrection.” In “On the Concept of History,” Benjamin describes “the past” and “history” as two distinct concepts—with “history,” then, being a resurrection of the past in the present. 

As such, there’s delicious cheek in how Barbara has developed into such an ontological narrative force that she’s the obvious pick to be so prominent in The Aztecs: as Yetaxa, she’s literally the past resurrected in the form of a history teacher. This helps us better understand not only how The Aztecs works thematically, but also just why this serial has proven to be one of the most mature and engaging narratives Doctor Who has put together so far.

If “history” and “the past” are two separate concepts—one attempting to resurrect the other—then this has a profound impact on how we read quite possibly the most quoted exchange in this story. Barbara, throughout this story, is in explicit opposition to the traditions of human sacrifice which Tlotoxl upholds, but it’s not just Tlotoxl she finds herself up against—Barbara’s resolution to refine Aztec society in her image brings her into direct opposition with the Doctor himself:

BARBARA: Don’t you see? If I could start the destruction of everything that’s evil here, then everything that is good would survive when Cortes lands.
DOCTOR: But you can’t rewrite history! Not one line!
SUSAN: Barbara, the high priests are coming.
DOCTOR: Barbara, one last appeal. What you are trying to do is utterly impossible. I know, believe me, I know.
BARBARA: Not Barbara, Yetaxa.

Doctor Who, “The Temple of Evil,” (John Lucarotti)

Lucarotti’s version of the Doctor, distinct from Whitaker’s established trickster, seemed to lean more into the character as an elderly man—by turns cheeky or cantankerous in Marco Polo, but not quite the performative, medium-manipulating force the character has shown flashes of in scripts with great input from Whitaker. Here, Lucarotti continues to lean into the Doctor as an elderly man but he finds new angles on the character. In this exchange, for instance, he’s clearly here as the elder time traveller advising his companions—and, in the face of Barbara’s resolute moral decision to refine Aztec civilisation, he oscillates between blind fury and sheer desperation.

I want to unpack specifically the most quoted line in this exchange—“you can’t rewrite history!”—but for now let’s emphasise this point. Lucarotti seems to have realised that there are two characters who have shown signs of phenomenal dramatic potential so far. William Hartnell stole the show in “An Unearthly Child” and spent the first several episodes of the series cultivating a relationship between himself and the audience. On her end, the character of Barbara inserted a moral code into the series in The Tribe of Gum and, especially in The Edge of Destruction and more recently in “The Velvet Web” (The Keys of Marinus), has shown herself to be a narratively totemic character. By contrast, for all that Ian as a character seemed to begin as Barbara’s narrative equal and a straightforward male lead, William Russell has clearly developed more into a “glue guy”—here he’s stuck in a b-plot where he has a warrior rivalry with Tlotoxl’s henchman, or alternatively fulfilling narrative roles that neither Barbara or the Doctor quite can (such as climbing around in secret passages to break into the tomb). He’s a functional, rather than dramatic, character.

And Susan. Oh Susan.

She was the “unearthly child” of the show’s premiere episode, but she’s been oscillating throughout the season from “Doctor’s very young granddaughter” to “1960’s mod child” to “performatively estranged and alien”. Of all the leads, she’s the one who the writers haven’t seemed to quite get a grasp on—and Carole Ann Ford’s two weeks holiday here do her no favours, leading to this story deliberately minimising her presence.

What The Aztecs, and Lucarotti, succeeds at here is thrusting William Hartnell and Jacqueline Hill into heated, dramatic moments that consolidate their centrality to the series.

Now let’s unpack that “you can’t rewrite history!” line. 

If “the past” and “history” are two separate concepts, then what we have here is the Doctor saying that one can’t rewrite a resurrected approximation. Barbara isn’t meddling in Earth’s past; she’s meddling in a kind of necromantic ritual. The past, according to Benjamin, has a claim on the present. Barbara is attempting to assert the inverse—the present has a claim on history, but it can’t lay a claim on the past: the past is a thing resurrected through academic, or even theatrical, necromancy.

But there’s more going on than just Lucarotti exploring “Barbara can’t tell history and the past apart” by invoking historical theatre as literal necromancy. Benjamin goes further, providing us with a language we can use to diagnose specifically why Barbara is ultimately unable to convince the 15th century Aztecs of the wisdom she “possesses” as an inheritor of British Imperial barbarism:

“Fustel de Coulanges recommended to the historian, that if he wished to reexperience an epoch, he should remove everything he knows about the later course of history from his head.”

Benjamin, Walter. “On the Concept of History.”Marxists Internet Archive. DATE ACCESSED 17 SEP. 2019
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/benjamin/1940/history.htm.

If the purpose of the TARDIS is to be the novum—Darko Suvin’s term for an absolutely new machine that changes one’s perspective of the world—it appears Lucarotti is revealing the limitations of this basic thesis. Not, I hasten to add, that using Suvin as a reference point is limiting—rather, that the TARDIS can change one’s perspective on the world is limited because of the existence of history. Because Barbara here is fundamentally caught up in questions of history, of the teleological arc, which ends in Aztec civilisation being wiped out by European imperialists in one barbaric act.

Barbara can’t “reexperience an epoch” because she refuses to remove everything she knows “about the later course of history” from her mind. Indeed, The Aztecs explicitly frames its conclusion as one of failure:

BARBARA: We failed.
DOCTOR: Yes, we did. We had to.
BARBARA: What’s the point of travelling through time and space if we can’t change anything? Nothing. Tlotoxl had to win.

Doctor Who, “The Day of Darkness,” (John Lucarotti)

Having analysed both Walter Benjamin and how The Aztecs can be read by way of “On the Concept of History,” we now know the reason why our TARDIS travellers “had to”. It’s entirely down to Barbara herself, and her own poor grasp of the nature of history. She doesn’t, however, seem to have come to a realisation as to why she was unable to change history: instead, Barbara here is defeatist. She doesn’t understand her failure. She only understands that she failed.

Through Barbara, however, Lucarotti does raise a final point. Having depicted a scenario where the TARDIS travellers are unable to change the past, he ends with the lingering question “what’s the point?” This reinforces Barbara’s inability to grasp her failure—believing that in the necromantic rituals of history and performance she can alter the past—but it does leave us with a lingering, pointed question.

What is the point of travelling through space and time, if our protagonists are just passive wanderers? For all that Marco Polo had incredibly wholesome content for Susan and broadened the way in which Doctor Who could be written, it also seemed to push the protagonists to the margins—the final episode, “Assassin at Peking,” almost happens despite the presence of the TARDIS travellers rather than because of them. Lucarotti has done the opposite here—literally writing Barbara as performing a reincarnated god and lingering in the building tension between Barbara and Tlotoxl. But he leaves a damning resolution. There has to be another way of writing historical Doctor Who, because The Aztecs pushes one mode to its absolute limits. A Doctor Who that engages with history—that necromantic husk of the past, constructed from the assertive teleology of the present—can only do so much.

It’s not a question that Lucarotti himself is going to answer. It’s a challenge levied at the next writer to resurrect the past: a writer named Dennis Spooner, and the story of how he responds to Lucarotti is going to become a theme in its own right.

Jacqueline Hill here gets a tour-de-force—her third, following on from The Edge of Destruction and “The Velvet Web”. She’s the only lead in the series so far to receive this wealth of material primed to centre her—almost as if the production office, and writers, have realised she’s the show’s secret weapon.

But percolating just behind Hill’s performance is William Hartnell—the man who we began this project with, and who immediately stole the show in the final act of “An Unearthly Child”. And here the two of them, Hartnell and Hill, are pitted against one another as ideological opposites. And those scenes crackle with phenomenal energy.

But The Aztecs reveals limitations to Barbara’s character. Lucarotti revels in pushing Barbara’s character to her limits, and Jacqueline Hill is—as I’ve mentioned—giving a tour-de-force of a performance here, but the character is limited. She’s a 1960s everyman, and Lucarotti has figured out that this means she ultimately has a 1960s morality as well. The mix of the Doctor and Barbara is the causal nexus for phenomenal drama here in The Aztecs, but Susan is (deliberately) minimised as a presence and Ian is seemingly intentionally shafted to a B-plot giving him a warrior rival. In a TARDIS team of four, having only two dramatically functioning characters is… incredibly disconcerting. 

The show’s core ensemble is unbalanced, a fact that The Aztecs throws into sharp relief. Lucarotti , through his depiction of a multifaceted culture, definitely attempts to redress Whitaker’s Original Sin, challenges the show to engage with the past from a new angle, and reveals a drastic shakeup is needed within the core ensemble. And fast.