Doctor Who - The Myth Makers by Donald Cotton

Published: September 1985

Edition read: Target first, 1985

Coolest Cover: Andrew Skilleter of course, although it took me several years to find out that the Trojan Horse built for the story actually looked like that.

Purple Prose: "The adulterer in question was Paris, second son of Priam, King of Troy. Perhaps you will have heard of La Vie Parisienne. Well, then, I hardly need say more: except perhaps, in mitigation, that the second sons of Royal Houses - especially if they are as handsome as the devil- have a lot of temptation to cope with." (p.11)

The TARDIS materialises with..."a noise reminiscent of a camel in the last stages of dementia praecox"

Childhood Recollections: Not sure that I ever read this one, in spite of having two hardback copies at one point.

Ramblings: A wordy and offbeat take on the legends surrounding the fall of Troy, ‘The Myth Makers’ is so unconventional in terms of Dcctor Who both in 1965 and 1985 that it was always going to take an equally radical departure from the usual style of adaptations for the Target version to work properly. So much of the serial’s uniqueness rests on its rich dialogue and fruity performances that a plain, prosaic Terrance Dicks-style approach would have fallen flat on its face. It’s fortunate, therefore, that Target tracked down Donald Cotton and persuaded him to adapt his own scripts, because Cotton’s prose retelling is something special.

To begin with, ‘The Myth Makers’ is one of the first stories from the late Hartnell era to adopt what would become the fairly regular approach of sidelining the Doctor to an extent and instead placing the regulars in a race-against-time situation which propels the action forwards. The Doctor’s role for much if not all of the story is to spar verbally with the Greek heroes, before finally realising that his is the responsibility for giving the Greeks the idea of the wooden horse; at the same time Vicki has much the same role in Troy and Steven is left shuttling back and forth between the two. A straight adaptation of this dynamic would almost certainly not bring out the wit of the dialogue and characterisation, so Cotton comes up with the device of having the story narrated by none other than Homer. First person narration hadn’t been tried since the very beginning of the range, and it works here because one of the running jokes in the book is the way in which Homer seemingly eludes the Greek and Trojan guards to travel back and forth and relate events happening simultaneously in Troy and the Greek camp.

There’s a dark side to the story, however; Homer takes over part of the role of the mute Cyclops in the narrative, and in consequence is blinded in both eyes in separate (if slightly Pythonesque) incidents. Characters such as the fussy Priam and evasive Paris are killed, and this lends the book something of an ambivalent tone, certainly in the second half. Having said that, the range of humour Cotton employs is impressive to say the least, from the most excruciating puns ("Hull Low, Young Lovers", anyone?) to glorious anachronisms in Homer’s story, the novelisation retains the subtle and not-so-subtle comedy of the original scripts while also adding to them unobtrusively. That such an oddity (and one missing from the archives at that) was ever adapted at all is a pleasant surprise; that it should be adapted with panache, confidence and a twinkle in the eye is a positive joy.