This is a difficult one to watch.
The source material (the siege of Troy approx 1180 BCE, or more precisely Homer's Iliad) is not (completely) unfamiliar but the intention is.
This is a comedy in the classical Greek sense. Aristotle defined this as "a representation of laughable people and involves some kind of blunder or ugliness which does not cause pain or disaster". Also this makes more sense when you consider that classical Greek literature consists of three main types: comedy, tragedy and Satyrism.
Many of the 'jokes' stem from the Doctor being mistaken for Zeus, Vicki as Cressida and Steven just as a "Greek".
It is *not* a pastische Carry On style of comedy.There are no 'wee' or 'bum' jokes. It's more like drama-edy than The Three Stooges....
So it's difficult to understand for a modern audience for that reason.
It's also not well known, completely missing, with a rare novelization and was not well repeated or distributed around the world.
It should have no chance.
We watched a mix of SIMS style animation (ep1) and LC stills recon. It was hard going.
It's very talky and there's lot of characters. Possibly the first mistake of the production was that many of the characters require the audience to be familiar with the various ancient characters: Menelaeus, Achilles, Agamemnon, Odysseus, Hector, Priam, Paris, Cassandra etc, etc. Without a classical education this is near impossible barrier right there.
What action there is seems to be sword-fights.
The best bits are when the regulars are involved. Unfortunately there are extended portions where they don't feature and these are hard to appreciate.
Bring on the Daleks Masterplan!!!
ABM Rating 2.20/4.00
LJM Rating 3.50/5.00
SPJ Rating 3.50/10.00
Peak Ranking No. 17 (out of 20)
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I was disappointed with the actions of the doctor abandoning Vicki. Hard work to watch. I give this a 3.5
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