Farewell Great Macedon (unproduced TV story)

You may be looking for the published script or the 2010 audio adaptation.

Farewell Great Macedon was an unproduced six-episode First Doctor serial by Moris Farhi which was commissioned by David Whitaker for the first season of Doctor Who in 1964.

The story featured the Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Susan encountering Alexander the Great in Babylon. Work stopped on the scripts when Farhi felt that the story editor was asking for too many changes that would have compromised the historical accuracy of the scripts. The script was later adapted for audio by Nigel Robinson and then produced for Big Finish Productions, thereby becoming part of the official timeline.

Episode titles

As was the norm in the early seasons, each individual episode would have carried a separate title, with no overall title given on screen for the serial. According to Farhi's script, the individual episodes would have carried these titles:

1. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon
2. The Wrath of the Greatest Grecian of Them All! (Farhi also suggests an alternate title: O, Son! My Son!)
3. A Man Must Die
4. The World Lies Dead at Your Feet
5. In the Arena
6. Farewell, Great Macedon!

Note: the punctuation present in the episode 6 title is not present in the actual title of the serial.

Major characters

• The Doctor
• Ian Chesterton
• Barbara Wright
• Susan Foreman
• Alexander the Great
• Hephaeston
• Calanus
• Cleitus
• Ptolemy
• Roxane
• Seleucus
• Antipater
• Iollas
• Glaucias

Story notes

• According to the article "So Near, So Farhi" in the Farewell Great Macedon omnibus, after the script was rejected for Doctor Who in 1964, Farhi submitted them to the BBC as a potential springboard to a series on Alexander the Great. This idea was rejected. In 1966, Farhi resubmitted the scripts to new Doctor Who script editor Donald Tosh, but was once again turned down.
• Prior to being formally engaged for this story, Farhi also wrote a single-episode spec script for the series — over the well-documented protests of David Whitaker — entitled The Fragile Yellow Arc of Fragrance. He was also commissioned by Graham Williams to write a Fourth Doctor teleplay, The Divided, in 1977, but this unfilmed script no longer exists.

Continuity

As there is a difference between the published script and the Big Finish Productions adaptation, this is a story, like every novelised Doctor Who or Sarah Jane story, in which the individual fan must decide whether to accept the print or the performed version of the story.

There is also the question of when this adventure occurred within Susan's personal timeline. Some fan chronologists have tried to assert that The Fragile Yellow Arc of Fragrance should be placed after Macedon. However, as Fragrance was written before Macedon — and flatly rejected by Whitaker — neither script references the other in any way, leaving one free to choose any order. Moreover, neither script references any other Doctor Who script, so chronological placement can only logically occur between The Reign of Terror and Planet of Giants, because these are the only two stories featuring Susan which have no narrative connection.

The Big Finish Productions audio adaptation of The Masters of Luxor establishes that The Fragile Yellow Arc of Fragrance takes place before Farewell Great Macedon, as it mentions the events of both, but is explicitly set immediately after Farewell Great Macedon.

In Robot the recently regenerated Fourth Doctor does reference once meeting Alexander the Great, though he gives no details to really confirm the plot details of Macedon.