20. The Myth Makers

Another historical story, based at the battle outside of legendary Troy. Pretty much no footage survives from the story like so much of this season.

The story is decent but without the video this story really suffers. There is a lot of action happening that simply doesn't come through in stills. It also seems like the number of stills they had to work with was quite limited. It felt like they used the same two shots of Vicki for all of the scenes where she was locked up. I was frequently bored throughout the serial.

I thought it was clever how they split the TARDIS crew up and had them working against each other - both required to provide victory, under similar time constraints for their respective sides. Of course it worked out quite well for them in the end, but not so well for the Trojans. Poor Cassandra was right about Vicki and the Trojan Horse all along.

The shake up on board the TARDIS that was triggered last season continues as Vicki runs off with a Trojan hero and departs the crew. In her place is Katarina, a woman from Ancient Troy that worked for the seer Cassandra.

I feel like this one could have been much better had video of it existed and I feel bad penalizing a story simply because it had episodes wiped by the BBC but it did have a dramatic effect on my enjoyment, similar to how I felt the Crusades were hurt by its missing footage. There will be more on this concept in my review of the next episode, the Daleks' Master Plan. That story has 10 missing episodes but didn't suffer the same way this one did. More on that later.

Ranking: 5/10