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Jun 4, 2022Liked by Jonn Elledge

If Ian is about the same age as the actor who plays him – a reasonable assumption, I'd say – then he was born in the mid 1920s. If not called up to serve towards the end of WW2, he would almost certainly have done National Service.

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Jun 4, 2022Liked by Jonn Elledge

When I was writing summaries of each story for The Complete History, I was surprised to discover that part four of The Aztecs is, IMHO, the most densely-plotted episode in the series' history. It has so much going on, so fast, I suspect it was originally ten or twenty pages longer and David Whitaker had to chop it down. Don't let anybody tell you TV was slow in the 1960s! Doctor Who was probably the most fast-paced show on television.

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It's been a while since I watched it but while I'm firmly in the Moffat camp of 'The Doctor clearly has sexual desire in the classic series and flirts with or feels romantically towards other characters, it's just often subtler in the Classic Series', then in the Classic Series (and I think in the Aztecs) there's an argument The Doctor likes or fancies people occasionally but in a very platonic way - that yes, The Doctor may well have feelings for Cameca, or Astrid in Enemy of The World, or even Jo/Sarah Jane/Romana, there isn't really any suggestion that there's a sexual interest there, unless you want to read some of those relationships in the context that we know The Doctor's a sexual being from the TV Movie & NuWho generally.

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