Doctor Who: Companion Pieces - KATARINA - Warped Factor - Words in the Key of Geek.

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Doctor Who: Companion Pieces - KATARINA

Christopher Morley enters the temple of Zeus to look back at the short but memorable journey of perhaps the Doctor's most fervent worshiper, Katarina! 


The servant girl Katarina mistakes the Doctor for the Greek god of thunder, as in fact does everyone else in Troy once his ''temple''- the TARDIS arrives during the Trojan War in The Myth Makers.............


DOCTOR: What is this? What is it you take me for?
ACHILLES: The Father of the Gods and ruler of the world.
DOCTOR: What! Do you really? And who might you be, may I ask?
ACHILLES: Achilles. Mightiest of warriors, greatest in battle, humblest of your servants.
DOCTOR: Well, if I may say so, you're not very humble, are you? Yes, I think I know you. Yes. And this friend of yours must be.....
ACHILLES: Hector, Prince of Troy. Sent to Hades for blasphemy against the gods of Greece.
DOCTOR: Blasphemy? I'm sure he didn't mean it.
ACHILLES: He threatened to trim your beard should you descend to Earth.
DOCTOR: Oh, did he now? Well, if you notice, I have no beard.
ACHILLES: If you had appeared to me in your true form, I would have been truly blinded by your radiance. It is well known that when you come amongst us you adopt many different forms.
DOCTOR: Oh, do I?
ACHILLES: To Europa, you appeared as a bull. To Leda, as a swan. To me, in the guise of an old beggar.
DOCTOR: I beg your pardon. I do nothing of the kind!
ACHILLES: Oh, but still your glory shines through!
DOCTOR: Oh, indeed. Indeed so. Yes, so I should hope. Yes, well, thank you. I'm glad to meet you.
All this despite not commanding him to ''kneel before the God of thunder and rock and roll ''. He'd long since wiped away any traces of Kiss-style make-up- guitarist Paul Stanley's ''Starchild'' obviously his favourite look during any glam rock moments given his vocation travelling the universe! He just can't help playing up to his godly bearing, either. ''Do you realise whom you are addressing?''. Odysseus isn't all that impressed by the ''temple'', though. ''The temple of Zeus, you say? A trifle modest, is it not, for so powerful a god.''


Katarina enters proceedings as a spy for her mistress Cassandra, adding to the sense of ancient-world intrigue! Things are really beginning to get going- Vicki is on a path towards becoming Cressida to the priestess's brother Troilus, a turn of events which will give Shakespeare quite some inspiration when he turns his attention to it............
CASSANDRA: Katarina, go and look for the sorceress. I don't trust my lovesick brother.
KATARINA: But, great priestess, the auguries said that...
CASSANDRA: Do you dare to question me?
KATARINA: No.
CASSANDRA: Very well, then. Go and watch for that girl.
But she's eventually won around to helping ''Zeus'', & subsequently overwhelmed upon entering his ''temple'' for the first time, believing herself to have died! She hasn't quite yet, though she will in her second & indeed final appearance in the very next story of Season 3, The Daleks' Master Plan.
KATARINA: Strange god, you bring me peace.
DOCTOR: No, I don't know what Vicki has advised you, but...
KATARINA: Oh, the Priestess Cressida told me all would be well and I knew it was to come.
DOCTOR: What was to come, my dear?
KATARINA: That I was to die.
DOCTOR: My dear child, you're not dead. That's nonsense.
KATARINA: This is not Troy. This is not even the world. This is the journey through the beyond.
DOCTOR: Well, as you wish.
KATARINA: Thank you.
DOCTOR: Yes, yes, yes, as you wish, my child.
At least as the first of the Doctor's companions to die, she dies a heroine!
STEVEN: She pressed the wrong button, Doctor.
DOCTOR: She may have wanted to, dear boy. She wanted to save our lives.
BRET: It must have been quick.
DOCTOR: I hope she's reached her Place of Perfection.
STEVEN: Yes, but not that way.
DOCTOR: She didn't understand. She couldn't understand. She wanted to save our lives and perhaps the lives of all the other beings of the Solar System. I hope she's found her Perfection. Oh, how I shall always remember her as one of the Daughters of the Gods. Yes, as one of the Daughters of the Gods.
Ultimately the decision to write her out of the series was taken by producer John Wiles, as he felt it too much of a challenge for any of his writers to work with a character so far from the modern era.

The deletion of several scenes prior to recording meant that of the 93 lines originally scripted for her character across the five episodes she appeared in, only 78 made it into the final programmes, with her character's final death scene being the first shots to be recorded for The Daleks' Master Plan.


The short story Katarina In The Underworld by Steve Lyons, from the Short Trips:The Muses anthology, depicts her journey through the Underworld. Rather poetically it's the Doctor himself who helps her gain entry to the Elysian Fields, a sort of Greek answer to Heaven. A fair resting place for a fair maiden, it's fair to say.

Following her appearance in Doctor Who, Hill acted in several small roles prior to moving to the Netherlands, and subsequently to the United States. After returning to Britain she retrained to be a drama teacher and worked in London. She participated in the 1985 Children in Need program along with other Doctor Who actors. Her last known acting role was a library assistant in an episode of City Life (a New Zealand soap opera), which was broadcast posthumously in February 1998.

She sadly died of cancer in 1997 at the age of sixty, and bemoaned the BBC policy of wiping tapes shortly after episodes were broadcast which has led to so much of the early years- 108 episodes, to be exact- of Who being lost.
"I was over the moon to get the part. My main memory is skulking about and saying 'What next, Doctor?'. It was all fun. And now of course it's all been wiped – it's a tragedy!"
...as Hill told Doctor Who Magazine before her death. A great shame indeed, hmm?

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