The Aztecs [TV/1964.5.23 ~ 6.13]
★★★★☆
Now this is Doctor Who in history. Visual splendor (would you look at them backdrops!), beautiful set and costume design, intense moral dilemmas for our space-and-time travellers and stunning performances by the actors, in particular Jacqueline Hill and William Hartnell.
Make no mistake — this may be a Doctor Who serial, but The Aztecs is Barbara's story through and through. With her wealth of historical knowledge and quick wit, she establishes herself as the reincarnation of an Aztec god and finds herself woven into a dangerous web of politics and religion intertwined. If we're talking about how polished a script is (i.e. how all the threads wind in multiple directions before converging as one strong strand, how masterfully crafted the dialogue is), I don't think there's any other serial from Season 1 that could top The Aztecs. Hartnell and Hill create gold together as they discuss the morality of interfering with history, and the former also gets to show a much more gentle side to his Doctor as he actually falls in love with a human woman. It's a delightful scenario, and makes one think how amazing it would've been for Cameca to join him and his friends in adventures in space and time. She is, after all, the Doctor's fiancée. Ian and Susan both get their fair share of roles as well, rounding this serial up as an overall masterfully crafted four-parter that's bound to thrill and amaze in equal measure.
*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ
Are we to expect pure historicals of this calibre in the future of televised Who? Will there ever be pure historicals at all? I find myself asking these questions everytime I finish watching one of the Hartnell historicals, with their lyricism and their epic scale. I have every faith in future showrunners to take the mythos in whichever direction they deem most ambitious and confident; then again, a beautifully crafted story without sci-fi elements wouldn't hurt...
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