History Recap / DoctorWhoS1E6TheAztecs

It's time for another historical episode, as the TARDIS materialises inside an Aztec tomb. The Aztec era happens to be one of Barbara's specialties, and she loves the tomb's shiny trinkets so much that she immediately [[KleptomaniacHero puts one on]]. Upon emerging from the tomb wearing the snake bracelet, Barbara is hailed as the reincarnation of the Goddess Yetaxa. Oh, and the door to the tomb shuts itself behind them.

* TheBadGuyWins: Tlotoxl gets rid of the pesky false god, his rival, and he gets to keep sacrificing. For the time being at least. The Aztecs will still be massacred and enslaved by the Spanish and the practice of human sacrifice will cause future generations to look down upon the Aztecs as mindless savages. In other words: this episode was a lose-lose situation.

The one where Barbara steals jewelry.

* DownerEnding: The story ends with the TARDIS crew leaving Aztec Society knowing it will soon be destroyed, the High Priest of Sacrifice [[TheBadGuyWins ends up in control]], and the best that they did was cause the man who was opposing the High Priest of Human Sacrifice to leave society for life as a hermit.

* UnbuiltTrope: Barbara tries and fails to save Aztec civilisation by ending human sacrifice. The ending is, at best, bittersweet, in which the High Priest of Sacrifice [[TheBadGuyWins ending up in control]] and the only consolation is that the High Priest of Art leaves society to meditate on his faith.

* AuthorAppeal: The story's writer, John Lucarotti, loved Aztec culture.
* Myth/AztecMythology
* TheBadGuyWins: The villain gets rid of the pesky false god, his rival, and he gets to keep sacrificing. For the time being at least. [[DownerEnding The Aztecs will still be massacred and enslaved by the Spanish and the practice of human sacrifice will cause future generations to look down upon the Aztecs as mindless savages]]. In other words: this episode was a lose-lose situation.

* ShownTheirWork: Notably, {{Mayincatec}} is averted, as the writer John Lucarotti evidently did a bit of research.

* DatedHistory: Barbara's argument that stopping the Aztecs performing human sacrifice will prevent their conquest by Cortes is pretty diametrically opposed to how modern historians view the colonisation of South America by Europeans. In particular, the question of what happened to all the other civilisations the Spanish wiped out, most of whom had nothing to do with HumanSacrifice, never comes up.

** In "Defining the First Doctor" Creator/StevenMoffat says that as the Doctor is starting out he hasn't quite got the rules of time travel and that we can assume Aztecs civilization being destroyed is a fixed point in time.

* UnbuiltTrope: Barbara tries and fails to save Aztec civilisation by ending human sacrifice. The ending is, at best, bittersweet, in which the High Priest of Sacrifice [[TheBadGuyWins ending up in control]] and the only consolation is that the High Priest of Art leaves society to meditate on his faith. * TheUnpronounceable: The cast members never seemed to have reached a consensus on how "Tlotoxl" is actually said, although nobody manages to get it right (it would've been more like "Tlo-tosh-l").

* UnbuiltTrope: Barbara tries and fails to save Aztec civilisation by ending human sacrifice. The ending is, [[spoiler:at best, bittersweet, in which the High Priest of Sacrifice [[TheBadGuyWins ending up in control]] and the only consolation is that the High Priest of Art leaves society to meditate on his faith.]]
* TheUnpronounceable: The cast members never seemed to have reached a consensus on how "Tlotoxl" is actually said, although nobody manages to get it right (it would've been more like "Tlo-tosh-l").

* YouCantFightFate: "You can't rewrite history, Barbara. Not one line!" (Later stories show that it's actually closer to "You ''can'' change history, but it's a really bad idea to do so.")

* MightyWhitey: When Ian is forced to compete for command of the armies of the Aztecs with the best soldier in the empire. Rather than realistically being portrayed as out of his league, he manages to beat the Aztec warrior with one thumb and later the Aztec has to resort to poisoning him to stand a chance of beating him.

** Actually a case of HistoryMarchesOn as, at the time the serial aired, historians viewed Cortes as a peaceful science-minded explorer who was driven, reluctantly, to conquer the Aztecs only because of his horror at the evil of human sacrifice. So Barbara thought it was evil versus good and that she could avert the whole thing by talking the evil out of it. The DVD release includes a BBC documentary of the time, unironically presenting this older view of Cortes.

* Protagonist-CenteredMorality: Tlotoxl, of course, is quite right. All his actions (extreme though some of them may be) seem to be in the genuine interests of stopping his people from being deceived by the false goddess. Strictly speaking, it's the time travellers who are in the wrong, the odd attempted murder notwithstanding.

* AllThereInTheManual: The novelisation dates the story as 1507.

* GodGuise

* LargeHam: Tlotoxl. Who knew Richard III was in fact an Aztec high priest?
* ManipulativeBastard: Tlotoxl

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: The Doctor has a romantic subplot with a guest character, something which for most of the 1963-1989 show would be unthinkable.

** In "Defining the First Doctor" Creator/StevenMoffat says that as the Doctor is starting out he hasn't quite got the rules of time travel and that we can assume Aztecs civilisation being destroyed is a fixed point in time.

* ShownTheirWork: Notably, {{Mayincatec}} is averted, as the screenwriters evidently did a bit of research.

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: The Doctor has a romantic subplot with a guest character. For most of the 1963-1989 show would be unthinkable.

Ian, off on his own, actually meets the son of the tomb's architect, who immediately takes exception to him -- having been the champion of the Gods until Ian arrived. Ian is forced to fight him in judicial combat, and the Doctor, hoping to get his hands on the tomb's blueprints, unwittingly helps the guy (not knowing that Ian will be his opponent). Luckily, Ian turns out to be pretty damn BadAss and can easily hold his own in combat.

* {{Badass}}: Ian defeats an Aztec warrior with his ''thumb''.