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:
Vicki and Steven have revealed that they know each other, confirming in Cassandra's mind that the pair are Greek spies. She orders that they both be executed...
Paris objects, and Priam takes Vicki aside - giving her one day to prove her supernatural powers. Until then, she and Steven are to be confined in the dungeons.
Priam's younger son Troilus is quite taken with her - and she with him.
At the Greek camp, the Doctor has made a paper aeroplane for Odysseus, to illustrate his idea for building gliders. These will be launched to glide over the Trojan walls. Odysseus is not impressed, and when he tells the Doctor that he will be the first to test his own plan, he rapidly goes off the idea as well.
The Trojan cells have a window onto the city square, and Steven sees Cyclops appear. he instructs him to go back to his master and warn the Greeks not to launch any attack until the day after tomorrow.
Troilus arrives with some food, for Vicki alone. Steven will have to wait for scraps from the guards.
The youngsters have found a lot in common, including their ages and love of adventure.
Troilus is jealous of her friendship with "Diomede".
The Doctor, stuck for another idea, resorts to Homer and suggests a hollow wooden horse. It will contain Greek soldiers who will emerge at night to open the city gates after their main force has appeared to sail away. The Doctor is sure he is not meddling with history, as he is sure Homer will come up with the idea himself and he is merely copying it.
Agamemnon and Menelaus accept his proposal and Odysseus insists that he will lead the horse party - and the Doctor will accompany them.
As Cyclops attempts to leave the city he is spotted by Paris as he sets out on patrol. One of his men kills the spy.
The horse is constructed quickly and Agamemnon arranges the rest of the Doctor's plan. He, meanwhile, is having second thoughts about the scheme but it is too late. Paris and his patrol are approaching.
As soon as news of the Greek departure reaches the city, Troilus rushes to the dungeon to free Vicki. Priam is convinced that she has been responsible for the lifting of the siege.
Paris arrives with news of the apparent gift which the Greeks left behind, which he believes to be the Great Horse of Asia.
Sensing it to be an omen of doom, Cassandra tries to warn her father and brother not to allow the wooden horse into the city, but Paris states that it is too late.
Soldiers drag the horse though the gates and into the city...
Next episode: Horse of Destruction
Data:
Written by: Donald Cotton
Recorded: Friday 1st October 1965 - Riverside Studio 1
First broadcast: 5:50pm, Saturday 30th October 1965
Ratings: 8.7 million / AI 49
Designer: John Wood
Director: Michael Leeston-Smith
Additional cast: James Lynn (Troilus)
Donald Cotton later claimed that there was no spy who died in this episode so he had to have Cyclops added to the story just to kill him here, but written records show that the character was included from the outset, and this title was always intended for the third instalment - leaving the audience to fear that it referred to either Steven or Vicki who had just been accused of being Greek spies.
Whilst Tosh and Wiles might have been reining him in a little, Cotton succeeds in getting a really groanworthy punning line retained: in response to his sister's cries of "Woe to the House of Priam! Woe to the Trojans!", Paris counters with "It's too late to say 'woah' to the horse...".
Other humorous moments include Steven's continued efforts to flatter Paris - "Oh Lion of Troy".
Paris accuses Cassandra of potentially giving them all "galloping religious mania".
Having explained the wooden horse plan, Odysseus asks "What more do you want?", to which Menelaus replies "A drink".
Annoyed at the Doctor's fidgeting in the horse Odysseus retorts: "Upon my soul, you're making me as nervous as a Bacchanate at her first orgy...".
Later producers would have blanched at the use of the word "orgy" in a series aimed at a family audience (and many thought of it as a children's show at the time - not least the BBC's Children's Department, who felt that they ought to be making it).
A Bacchanate would be a follower of Bacchus, who helped preside at his ceremonies. Oddly, Bacchus was the Roman name for the Greek Dionysus. He was a fertility god who later became associated with wine and festivity.
John Wood elected to make his model of the Wooden Horse in a week, so that it would not have a polished finish - reasoning that the Greeks would have put theirs together quickly using whatever pieces of wood came to hand.
The model was filmed both in studio and on location at Frensham Ponds.
A filming technique known as the "Schufftan Process" was used to depict the Horse being taken into the city through the gates. This involved the use of models filmed against a mirrored sphere - in this case the model of the city.
Part of the mirroring was scratched off to leave a gap - representing the open city gates for instance. The city model footage could then overlap other footage of the model Horse or live action, positioned just where the gap in the mirroring was. Put together, you could have a sequence of the Horse entering through the city gates - both models but filmed separately.
In the draft script, the Doctor wasn't concerned so much with Homer as with inventing the siege engine several centuries too early. One theory concerning the Wooden Horse is that it was such a machine, either given a horse design or simply mistaken for one.
One other theory is that the Horse was a metaphor. Poseidon was the god of horses as well as of earthquakes, and it has been suggested that it was a major earthquake which brought down the walls of Troy - Poseidon had caused it, and horses were amongst his symbols.
Excavations at Troy have shown evidence of at least one level having been destroyed by such an event, and the region is prone to them.
The Doctor's informing the Greeks of the Wooden Horse is an ontological paradox - better known to Doctor Who fans as the "Bootstrap Paradox" (viz Under the Lake). The Doctor gives the idea to the Greeks who, through oral tradition, give it to Homer, who - having read the epic - gets it from Homer, who got it from the Greeks, who got it from the Doctor...
Wood's dungeon set was a linked one, with a raised dais behind the external wall so that citizens - and Cyclops - could be seen walking past the window.
Priam describes the dungeons as "quite comfortable", and says he often spends time there himself when he's fed up with court life. Purves and O'Brien spend almost the entire episode in the cells.
- The audience numbers see a slight improvement, but the appreciation figure continues to fall, dropping below 50 again.
- One reason for the slight rise might have been ABC's decision to move Lost in Space to a different timeslot, so it was no longer in competition with Doctor Who.
- Two brief 8mm off-air clips exist from this episode: the Doctor telling Odysseus that his being in the horse wasn't part of the plan; and then telling the warrior king that he will only get in the way. On the Lost in Time DVD set, these clips are wrongly attributed to the previous episode.
- On the Tuesday after broadcast, newspapers covered the departure of Maureen O'Brien and the imminent arrivals of Adrienne Hill and Jean Marsh.
- Vicki's age appears to be 16, as Troilus claims to be 17 next birthday and she responds "That's hardly any older than me".
- One of the Greek soldiers is extra Mike Reid, long before he became famous as a stand-up comedian, host of chaotic children's game show Runaround, and second hand car salesman Frank Butcher in EastEnders.
- Colour photographs of the horse model, as above, don't derive from the production of this story but from the 1980's, when David J Howe took new images of the original prop.
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