Doctor Who: The Myth Makers

A thoroughly silly First Doctor adventure, one of his "history" stories. This time he materializes on the plains outside of Troy and contributes in a minor way to the death of Hector at the hand of god-fearing Achilles, who is convinced that the Doctor is Zeus. Gotta love stories of mistaken identity and circumstances where the Doctor turns out to have played a part in making history (or myth, in the case of The Iliad).

The story actually differs significantly from the episode of the show as it aired on TV, but if you don't have access to the show -- and let's be honest, few people do at present because it was a First Doctor one and I'm not sure how much of it is still extant -- you won't notice. The gimmick here is that Homer, the show more creator of the Iliad, is our faithful narrator and actually had a hand in events himself. He's an amusing narrator and very observant, but some of his turns of phrase were a bit anachronistic in my mind, like when he talks about Odysseus caulking the bilges on his ship, or the Tardis bouncing around N-dimensional space (that was particularly odd). But I did like his descriptions of the stench of the Greek camp (it was the olden days and they didn't have soap, so yeah, B.O. and rotting animals/dead soldiers would be a problem) and his very good pacing. It was also neat how the author wrote the narration to allow for only one guy seeing the events unfold (although later on the poor guy didn't literally see anything...), with presumably either the Doctor filling in the blanks later with regard to names, or Homer himself making a few key deductions after the fact.

And I must say Vicki was a somewhat useless companion at points, or at least in this story she was. Poor Steven was a bit better, but still. Perhaps I need to see them in more stories to appreciate their personalities, but for a first outing it was rather bland on the companion front.

As for the actual historical/mythological characters, Odysseus was a hoot, all cunning and violent, and Prince Paris seemed very much a Wodehouse kind of upper-class twit. Priam also had a few good lines, like when Paris came in with the Tardis, which he captured -- Paris has a fanfare and crowd cheering him on, and Priam comes out going "What the hell's all this racket?!" Priam is a character to watch, for sure, and Cassandra also gets some good repartee with her brother Paris. And there was some excellent rationalization for how Homer became blind. Poor guy.

Overall, this is a very good story if you're in the mood for some light reading and like Dr Who and the Trojan War, and can forgive a few anachronisms in the narration. show less

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Once again, Cotton produces a memorable Who novel through a first person narrative: this time he has the poet Homer telling the story of how he witnessed the Doctor and friends interfering with the outcome of the siege of Troy. Homer didn't appear at all in the story as broadcast (though Cotton has him absorb the silent role of the Cyclops played by Tutte Lemkow); constricting the whole narrative to a single viewpoint character does create some difficulties in telling the story, but basically it is a really good story anyway, and while it's not Cotton at the utter peak of his form, it is surely one of the top ten novelisations. Cotton has taken the opportunity to restore as chapter titles show more some of the punning episode titles scrapped by the production team (eg "Doctor in the Horse"). show less

I really didn't care for the ending of this one.