Episode 87: Temple of Secrets

NB: This episode no longer exists in the archives, nor is there a full set of telesnaps. Representative images are therefore used to illustrate it.

Synopsis:

On the plains outside the besieged city of Troy, in ancient Asia Minor, two men are fighting to the death. The Greek hero Achilles is seeking revenge on the Trojan prince Hector for the death of his beloved Patroclus. The TARDIS materialises close by, and the Doctor observes the duel. Against the advice of his companions, he decides to go outside and enquire as to their location.

His sudden arrival distracts Hector long enough for Achilles to slay him. The young Greek warrior takes the Doctor to be a visitation by Zeus, in the guise of a beggar. His comrade Odysseus arrives soon after with some soldiers, and Achilles tells him of Zeus' remarkable intervention. The cynical older warrior is not convinced, but insists they escort the Doctor to the Greek camp.

Steven and Vicki, who still sports an injured ankle, see him being led away. Steven decides to disguise himself and follow.

In his tent, Agamemnon - King of Mycenae and overlord of the Greek forces - is arguing with his brother Menelaus, who he thinks isn't taking the decade-long campaign seriously. He spends all his time drinking, and has done little to help win his wife, Helen, back from the Trojan prince Paris. The King orders his brother to challenge Hector to a duel.

Achilles has rushed on ahead and informs them of Zeus' appearance, and of Hector's death.

Odysseus arrives with the Doctor who is going along with the misidentification that he is a god - the alternative being that he will be executed as a Trojan spy.

That night, Steven is scouting out the camp when he is spotted by a mute, one-eyed man. This is the spy known as Cyclops, who is in the pay of Odysseus. He informs his master and Steven is arrested, accused of being a spy. He is brought to Agamemnon's tent to be confronted by the Doctor - his alleged accomplice. 

The Doctor denies knowing him and claims that if Steven is brought to his temple on the plain in the morning for sacrifice, the Greeks will be shown a miracle.

Cyclops then brings further information for Odysseus and "Zeus". His temple has vanished...

Next episode: Small Prophet, Quick Return

Data:

Written by: Donald Cotton

Recorded: Friday 17th September 1965 - Riverside Studio 1

First broadcast: 5:50pm, Saturday 16th October 1965

Ratings: 8.3 million / AI 48

Designer: John Wood

Director: Michael Leeston-Smith

Guest cast: Cavan Kendall (Achilles), Alan Haywood (Hector), Ivor Salter (Odysseus), Francis de Wolff (Agamemnon), Jack Melford (Menelaus), Tutte Lemkow (Cyclops)

Critique:

Despite being the third story of Season Three, and opening six weeks into the third year, it should be remembered that The Myth Makers was the first story to be produced for this season following the summer break - Galaxy 4 and Mission to the Unknown having been held over from the second season production block. 

This is the first story to have John Wiles credited as producer.

In its press release, the BBC described the story as "High Comedy" and one of its most sophisticated scripts to date.

Up to this point, Donald Tosh had been working on stories which had already been commissioned by his predecessor, Dennis Spooner. Once he had the opportunity to initiate stories of his own, he decided to seek out writers who were new to the series. He also wanted to make the historical stories more interesting, having seen how they were not proving as popular as the science-fiction ones. To do this, he elected to go for more humour, or more horror.

Tosh knew Donald Cotton from their time together at drama school, and the story editor admired the work Cotton had produced for radio. As well as playwriting, Cotton had been a writer of musical revues, in which he had also performed.

One night Cotton had been at a pub where he bemoaned the fact that his old friends never returned favours. He got home to find a telegram from Tosh asking him to contribute a story idea for Doctor Who.

Reluctant at first, having no experience of science-fiction, Cotton agreed to proceed only if he could pick his own subject and bring in people he knew from his radio productions. This would include actor Max Adrian, and composer Humphrey Searle.

He had previously written dramas based on Greek myths, and so decided on the Trojan Wars as his commission.

John Wiles - who actually quite liked the historicals - was in full agreement, having staged a play on the subject himself with troubled teenagers in the 1950's.

Embarking on his research, Cotton naturally turned to the epic poems of Homer - The Iliad and The Odyssey - and Virgil's The Aeneid.

These told of a decade-long clash between the ancient Greeks (Achaeans) and the Trojans of Asia Minor, and of its aftermath. The conflict was supposedly sparked by the abduction by Trojan prince Paris of Helen - the wife of Menelaus, ruler of Sparta. Menelaus' more powerful brother, Agamemnon of Mycenae, then put together an army composed of many Greek states and embarked on a siege of Troy.

This only ended when the Greeks came up with the ruse of a mock withdrawal, leaving a huge wooden horse behind full of soldiers. Taking this as a gift from their gods, the Trojans took it into the city and the Greeks emerged to open the gates - their army having sneaked back as their enemies celebrated.

The story of the Trojan War came down to us through the classical poems, and were assumed to be pure myth. Some people - like the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann - thought that there might be some truth behind the myth. He excavated at a site in Asia Minor - in the Dardanelles region of modern Turkey - and located a citadel beneath the Roman settlement of Ilios which matched Homer's descriptions. Other excavations at Mycenae in central Greece seemed to reveal the palace of Agamemnon. 

We now know that there really was a conflict between the Achaeans and the Trojans in the Bronze Age, over Aegean trading routes rather than a woman. The Trojans were a horse-obsessed society. The myths did appear to have historical roots.

Homer came to write his poetry some 150 years after the events were supposed to have taken place, basing his work on oral accounts handed down over generations.

Schliemann actually excavated right through the Bronze Age citadel, trashing much of it - looking for something that matched the poetry. It is also known that he misidentified Agamemnon's palace - again digging too far back - and fabricated excavations by seeding sites with finds from elsewhere, like the famous treasure of Helen of Troy. He ended up banned from Turkey after illegally removing Trojan finds from the country.

(They were supposed to have been destroyed in Berlin at the end of WWII, but it is now known that some were taken by the Red Army back to Russia).

Cotton's Doctor Who story joins the action after ten years of siege. Hector, the heir to the Trojan throne, has killed Patroclus - comrade and lover of Achilles. The Iliad then sees Achilles take his revenge by killing Hector, dragging the corpse around the walls of Troy tied to his chariot - an incident which Cotton elects to omit. 

The Doctor being mistaken for Zeus derives from the many forms which the Greek god assumed - often as a means of satisfying his lust. These included a bull, a swan, a satyr, an eagle, a flame and a shower of gold.

The Doctor emerges from the TARDIS coincident with a flash of lightning and a peel of thunder - both attributes of Zeus.

Whilst keeping up the pretence that he is the god, the Doctor tells Agamemnon that he knows of events back home in Mycenae - namely that his wife (Clytemnestra) is having an affair. The King dismisses this as common knowledge, but legend states that on his return from Troy Agamemnon will be murdered by his wife and her lover.

Tutte Lemkow dons an eyepatch for the second time in the series (having sported one in Marco Polo) to play Cyclops - the mythical giant which had a single eye in the middle of its forehead. Odysseus (aka Ulysses) would encounter the Cyclops Polyphemus during his twenty year voyage back to his home in Ithaca. (The finding of mammoth skulls, with their large central nasal cavity, led people to believe that the Cyclops had been real).

The Myth Makers was originally going to be directed by Derek Martinus, who had handled the preceding five episodes following the illness of Mervyn Pinfield. Instead, the story went to Leeston-Smith - a BBC staff director. This was to be his only Doctor Who story, which those who remember seeing it at the time think a great shame.

The designer most associated with historical stories was Barry Newbery, but it had been decided that he would be alternating with Ray Cusick on the 12-part Dalek epic which was to follow. John Wood, who had previous experience on The Web Planet and parts of The Chase, was given the job of realising ancient Troy. For this episode he created a model of the city which was filmed on location at Frensham Ponds in Surrey, which just happened to be close to where the director lived.

The regular cast returned from their summer break to commence rehearsals on Monday 13th September, and none of them were happy. Maureen O'Brien had embarked on an expensive foreign holiday, and spent money on her London home, on the supposition that she had a regular income due from Doctor Who. Instead, she discovered that Vicki was to be written out at the end of the first new story. As well as the costs of her summer, she argued that she could have better spent the time seeking other work instead of holidaying.

Both Hartnell and Purves were angry at the way she was being treated - and Donald Tosh would later admit that the whole thing had been badly handled by he and Wiles (though the buck has to stop with the producer).

Hartnell was just recovering from a bad cold, which did not help his famed irritability. With Verity Lambert now gone, the relationship with Wiles quickly deteriorated. To get his own way, Hartnell started acting older and more infirm than he was, or he would go over Wiles' head to get his own way. This coincided with his actual illness - arteriosclerosis - making it harder for him to learn lines. 

Pre-filming took place on location at Frensham Ponds between 27th August and 2nd September, mostly for fight scenes. There was no pre-filming at Ealing on this occasion. Some model work was undertaken at the unlikely venue of the Ham Polo Club at Ham, Middlesex.

Production moved once again to Riverside Studios in Hammersmith. 

On the day of recording, there were further troubles when Hartnell was hit by a camera in the afternoon, bruising his shoulder. He was not getting on with Francis de Wolff who was mocking his acting. (Hartnell had been on holiday the week when de Wolff had featured in The Keys of Marinus as fur-trapper Vasor). Instead of the scripted line about sitting down and having a ham-bone, in rehearsal de Wolff had said "Sit down, ham, and have a bone". 

Hartnell struggled with pronouncing "Agamemnon".

The opening fight between Achilles and Hector had been pre-filmed at Frensham Ponds. The final shot of the evening was a close up on a plaque depicting a stylised horse, left by the Trojans on the ground where the TARDIS had stood.

In between we have a very witty script, played like it was a modern sit-com. The Doctor bristles as Achilles describes him as looking like a beggar, and the interplay between Agamemnon and his cowardly, drunken brother is very amusing. Hartnell tends to declaim all his lines, but this is in character as he is impersonating a god at the time.

One reason for the poor audience appreciation figure was highlighted in the BBC's viewer report on this instalment. Many respondents were confused by the non-appearance of the Daleks after the previous week's episode, some even believing that a mistake had been made and the wrong programme broadcast.

Trivia

• The ratings remain consistent with the previous instalment, but the appreciation figure drops to below the 50 mark.
• Cotton's initial title for his story was "The Mythmakers". Some BBC paperwork titles it "Doctor Who and the Trojans".
• This episode had the working title of "Deus ex Machina", which would have been a clever play on the Doctor being taken to be Zeus, emerging from a machine - his TARDIS.
• The character of Cyclops was included from the start, though Cotton misremembered this later. He claimed that he had to introduce him when a later episode title was changed, necessitating the inclusion of a spy into the story.
• Ivor Salter had previously featured as the Morok Commander in The Space Museum, and he would later play the police sergeant in Black Orchid.
• Tutte Lemkow had appeared in Marco Polo and The Crusade, and would later choreograph the dancing dolls in The Celestial Toymaker.
• Series regular background artist Pat Gorman doubled for Achilles.
• The day after recording, Saturday 18th September, saw William Hartnell attend a Battle of Britain memorial event at RAF Finningley, near Doncaster.
• Radio Times gave its readers the impression that this story was titled "The Trojan War" in its half page preview. It highlighted two of the story's guest artists - neither of whom actually appeared in this opening instalment.

• The costume Francis de Wolff wears as King Agamemnon just happened to be the same one he had previously worn in Carry On Cleo (1964), in which he played General Agrippa.

• Below, a rare behind the scenes image of the filming at Frensham Ponds. As a flat featureless area close to London it was a popular location for TV and film productions. In Doctor Who, for instance, it later appeared as the battlefield of Culloden in The Highlanders.