I have no difficulty with this one. It has brilliant actors, magnificent sets, wonderful costumes, it exists and is superb. Barbara is front and centre and Jacqueline Hill makes the most of it. Barbara builds a lovely relationship with Autloc, a character few people discuss in their reviews but Keith Pyott plays a well balanced counterpoint to John Ringham's Tlotoxl. And in the end, Barbara fails to change the Aztecs and history but manages to change one man - Autloc.
Of course, the only reason The Doctor is right here is that we all know that the Aztecs didn't cease human sacrifices and thus were rather vulnerable to the arriving Spaniards, leading to the end of their civilisation! For the same reason, many years later, RTD introduced fixwd points in time! I first encountered the story in the archive section of "Doctor Who Weekly" when, not having heard of the Azrecs themselves, and being a little confused by Marco Polo, genuinely thought that this was an alien planet! And it is really, the most alien...and terrifying....of all the Doctor Who historicals!
Barbara reasoning that doing away with human sacrifice would save the Aztecs was really absurd to me. Once the Spanish arrived, they wouldn't have cared. Much less European diseases.
