Doctor Who: 25 time periods Thirteen and Team TARDIS should visit
By Lacy Baugher
Image extracted from page 259 of volume 3 of
The Iliad of Homer. Translated by Mr. Pope
, by Homer. Original held and digitized by the British Library. Public domain.
The Siege of Troy
William Hartnell’s First Doctor and his companions actually visited Troy in “The Myth Makers,” but this is such a rich period in history – and the Doctor is so different now – that a return to this time makes a certain amount of sense. One particularly intriguing angle is the presence of women in the tale – or at least, what we know of them, thanks to Homer’s writings. The recent rise of fiction focusing on the women in this story – Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls is particularly good, if you’re looking –suggests an intriguing opportunity given that the Doctor is herself now a woman to give a voice to the women who live in the margins of this history.
Furthermore, since we only know most of these stories from an oral poem that was passed down for generations before it was ever written down, there’s plenty of gaps to fill in and explore!
Historical people we might meet: Briseis, the slave of Achilles, is one of the few named women in Homer’s The Illiad. As a character she seems a perfect fit for a Doctor Who story – a recognizable name about whom almost nothing concrete is known. Another idea: The lovers whose story would go on to be immortalized by both Chaucer and Shakespeare: Troilus and Krisayis (though we know her better as Cressida now).
Potential adventures: The obvious pick is that somehow it’s the TARDIS that’s the actual Trojan Horse in this story, but since the First Doctor is sort of responsible for the actual horse idea that might not work. Many of the Trojan women who were captured by the Greeks during the war were taken as sex slaves by the conquering army. How about Team TARDIS helps a few of them escape?