AustLit

'Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec empire, 1480. The Doctor visits a feather shop owned by Tochtli the merchant. Tochtli invites the Doctor to his home but is unsure whether he must kill him. On the way they encounter four warriors who taunt the pair. Tochtli shrinks from them in fear while the Doctor persuades them that there is no need for violence and the two carry on their journey. At the merchant's house there is a brief conversation. His father died before Tochtli was born, killed by the 'bonepuppets', an alien race that were planting the seeds of a weed that would have covered half the Earth and driven out the human race. Tochtli's (pregnant) mother helped the Doctor (in a previous incarnation) to destroy the weed and then he delivered her child. She had a psychic gift, an ability to read people's intentions from any object that they had touched. She had previously used this gift to keep her husband alive in dangerous times, and aided him in some spying for the Emperor. For the Doctor she had 'read' a piece of discarded bonepuppet plastic and understood the true nature of the weed. In return the Doctor had buried her son's umbilical cord on a battlefield, as his mother requested, in order to allow him to achieve the status of warrior. The Doctor chose a muddy battlefield on the other side of the galaxy. Tochtli is aggrieved. He blames the Doctor for delivering him a month early on a Nothing Day (one of five days in the Aztec calendar that do not belong to a specific month). Because of this he has become a merchant like his father. The Doctor gives him an object to hold. It looks like a jewel but Tochtli 'reads' it as a seed. At first it seems benign but then he detects a lie in the intentions of the bonepuppets who made it, it is another weapon to be used to kill another world. As soon as he has imparted this knowledge the merchant tries to kill the Doctor but loses the fight. The Doctor says that he knows the merchant has inherited his mother's psychic gift and is using it to spy for the Emperor, his life always in danger but with none of the honour accorded to soldiers. Tochtli reads the Doctor's intentions and sees that he is no threat. The Doctor tells Tochtli that he is not merely a merchant but a warrior in his own way, and that his actions that night will have saved the lives of hundreds of thousands on another world.'

[The Doctor is the Seventh Doctor.]

Source: drwhoguide.com (http://www.drwhoguide.com/whotrip18.htm). Sighted: 20/5/11