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Post by number13 on Apr 8, 2017 12:51:29 GMT
'The Aztecs' ? A brilliant, complex story treating the Aztecs very much as independent people, each with their own motives and beliefs, as exemplified by the two priests. Tlotoxl isn't an innocent victim of anything, he's Richard III with a stone knife. And Autloc is a good man who finds enlightenment (at a high cost) thanks to Barbara's intervention. John Lucarotti was 'The High Priest of Knowledge' when it came to writing Doctor Who historicals. It's tragic that only one of his stories survives on screen. The greatest shame given that he was writing novelisations of his stories in the 1980s is that the current production office never sought a script from him. Could you imagine a Sixie/Peri story penned by him set in somewhere like Khartoum or the like? I would have loved a TV story like that, but given the production environment of the time I don't think they would have been happy with a serious historical. Even though we know how well the actors could have performed one, pure historicals were so out of fashion. I was very surprised to learn he was the original choice for 'The Ark in Space', but the scripts didn't work out - so, Robert Holmes and the rest is history.
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Post by Hieronymus on Apr 8, 2017 21:59:12 GMT
The novel Byzantium! also put the First Doctor in ancient Greek civilization, albeit during the Roman period, as did The Secret History. There are a number of persons and events in ancient Greece that would be worth visiting, some of them not much known to a modern audience as they would have been to 19th century schoolboys with a Classical education. The Siege of Melos in 416 BC was particularly tragic, especially as Athens touted itself as a beacon of freedom and democracy.
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Post by charlesuirdhein on Apr 8, 2017 23:16:42 GMT
But then they'd have to confront the reality of native American's human sacrifices and other atrocities... which doesn't fit with the modern image of them as innocent victims of European genocide. I dunno, certain eras of Doctor Who have always been very good at exploring the greyer moral aspects of conflict and it's not as if stories can't do both. It is an inextricable part of Quechua culture in the same way that the Wounded Knee Massacre is a part of both colonial and indigenous American culture or the Battle of Rorke's Drift is part of British and Zulu. The question there is how graphic a depiction of both sides could you have before it became unsuitable for a family television show. As a writer, you'd also have to tread the line where you're not judging cultures, but characters instead and that's often done by having people on the same side (ethnically, culturally, etc.) who are at odds with one another; i.e. wise and evenhanded Saladin vs. the cruel and petty El-Akir from The Crusade. Which reminds me, have to go and listen to "The Settling" again.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 9, 2017 2:21:14 GMT
The greatest shame given that he was writing novelisations of his stories in the 1980s is that the current production office never sought a script from him. Could you imagine a Sixie/Peri story penned by him set in somewhere like Khartoum or the like? I would have loved a TV story like that, but given the production environment of the time I don't think they would have been happy with a serious historical. Even though we know how well the actors could have performed one, pure historicals were so out of fashion. I was very surprised to learn he was the original choice for 'The Ark in Space', but the scripts didn't work out - so, Robert Holmes and the rest is history. I suspect that it would have gotten a bit of a Sawardian rewrite close to what happened to Vengeance on Varos. It could've come into the production office as a full historical and had a few tweaks made to its villains to make them appear alien or at the very least unusual.
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