Written by John Lucarotti | Directed by John Crockett | Produced by Verity Lambert | Original air date 06/13/64
Even though Ixta is convinced the tunnel filling with water will kill Ian, the production never shows us this directly - we only see a small trickle of water flowing next to Ian's feet. He's able to climb up into the room where the TARDIS is in the tomb in an oddly dreamlike sequence (there's nothing to it - he's just climbing, he's not hallucinating or anything. It's just edited strangely, and honestly I don't know what they're going for).
The Doctor is about to deliver the bad news to Barbara that Ian didn't make it when he pops up, and the Doctor is clearly overjoyed. He definitely enjoys the company of his reluctant passenger, and you can tell he feels responsible for his safety as well (recall the Doctor's mood in The Keys of Marinus when he thought he'd failed and gotten Ian sentenced to death - absolute numbness and disbelief. This is not the same man that we saw in An Unearthly Child). We also get a similar scene with someone who hates Ian - Ian again pops up out of nowhere to take Susan with him, as Ixta taunts her that he's dead.
The Doctor and Cameca scenes in this episode are somewhat depressing. Cameca has caught on that she won't be marrying the Doctor - why the Doctor's whittled wheel tells her this, I have no idea. Perhaps she intuits it, I don't know.
Autloc, who appears to have known Cameca for a long time, is disillusioned after being attacked early in this episode. He doesn't know if it was by Ian or someone else, and Barbara says it couldn't have been Ian, because why would she order the attack of the one man who trusts her? His faith in her gone, he decides to forsake his position and belongings and go to the wilderness to live (whether this is simply exile or suicide, I don't know. I don't know which would be worse for the poor guy, to be honest). Barbara realizes she's ruined this man's life by trying to change history and failing.
The scene where Cameca brings Ian and Susan to the throne room after springing them from capture is just cold on the Doctor's part. She saves his friend's lives, but he refuses to let her go with him. He doesn't explain or lie or anything. He turns his back to her and she just leaves. The Doctor's feelings for Cameca are ambigious, too - he goes to leave the coin she gave him in the last episode in the tomb before the TARDIS departs, but changes his mind and takes it with him. Maybe he did feel something for Cameca... but why leave her on such bad terms? Is it some patronizing attitude on his part that it'd "be good for her?" For a man who tends to call people not as technologically advanced as him "savages," I'm not sure he had much in the way of feeling for her beyond just a general attraction. That he led her on knowing this makes it all the more cruel.
Tlotoxl's plan is to kill Barbara in front of the whole city at the sacrifice during the solar eclipse (the eponymous day of darkness). His timing is strange - he attacks Barbara before any sacrifice is made (Ian stops him in time), but what if he had gotten her? He just claims that she's a false goddess. Though I suppose he'd have proven she wasn't a real goddess when she dies and is proven mortal. The TARDIS crew are able to get in the tomb to the TARDIS and make their escape, after Ian fights Ixta, during which he kicks him off the pyramid, ostensibly killing him. We get no dialogue about this - whether Ian is just happy Ixta is dead, whether he's upset, feels guilty, nothing, not in this episode or any other. Now, Ian is old enough, maybe, to remember World War II, so maybe he's able to handle better death better than me. Or he's not given a scene to grieve because of the serial nature of the show. Probably both.
We get a little epilogue where the Doctor and Barbara discuss recent events. Barbara is upset that she hurt Autloc, but the Doctor assures her that though he's lost his faith, he's better off, which is patronizing as hell (and probably wrong, as I'm sure Autloc's mental state is not in a good place - like I alluded to above, it's possible he killed himself as a result of all this).
This is the best full serial so far. It has problems - Barbara's idea that the only thing that prevented the Aztec society from surviving beyond Cortes was human sacrifice is ridiculous and, well, racist. There's no way Cortes and the other conquistadors weren't going to swoop in and kill everybody they found so they could pillage all their wealth. That was going to happen, human sacrifice or not. If Barbara really wanted to save them... well, I don't know how it'd be done, but preparing the Aztecs for Cortez, somehow, might have been nice. Don't ask me, though, ask Barbara - she's the supposed Aztec expert.
But, as I said, it's a well constructed four-parter. The pacing, for once, isn't glacial, and the characters are interesting and play off each other in surprising ways. All the little plot threads intertwine and affect the others throughout, which is not as common in this show as I'd like it to be. Susan's plotline was pretty bland, but it was Carole Ann Ford's turn for a vacation for most of this serial, so I suppose that's why. She does get a pretty big role for parts of the next serial, too (and is actually fairly good in it, for the most part). If I were to recommend a single serial from what I've seen so far, it'd be The Aztec, as it's the best serial of the first season (the next two serials aren't bad - I quite like The Sensorites - but they don't reach the heights of this one).
"Doctor Who" puns so far: 2 | Tomorrow: "Strangers in Space"
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