John Ringham (as Tlotoxl), William Russell (as Ian Chesterton), Jacqueline Hill (as Barbara Wright), William Hartnell (as the Doctor) and Keith Pyott (as Autloc) rehearse a scene from The Aztecs in May 1964.
Interfering with Earth history was forbidden in the earliest years of Doctor Who. But rules are made to be broken…
There is a defining moment in The Temple of Evil, the first episode of The Aztecs (1964), when the Doctor (William Hartnell) warns history teacher Barbara Wright (Jacqueline Hill) about interfering in her own world’s barbaric past. “You can’t rewrite history,” he stresses. “Not one line!”
This wasn’t the TARDIS crew’s first trip back into Earth’s history, but this was its first real opportunity to intervene and make changes. When Barbara is mistaken for the reincarnation of the god Yetaxa, she attempts to use her influence to abolish the Aztec ritual of human sacrifice. Her efforts come to nothing, but her argument with the Doctor allows him to explain his manifesto.