Serial W, in four parts:
- War of God - 2/5/66, 8.0m viewers
- The Sea Beggar - 2/12/66, 6.0m
- Priest of Death - 2/19/66, 5.9m
- Bell of Doom - 2/26/66, 5.8m
Sound Bytes:
"The subject matter of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of 1572 in Paris was imposed on me and the absence of Bill as the Doctor seemed to me incongruous [...] The director, Paddy Russell, did the best she could with what I considered a botched-up idea with frequent inconsistent rewriting and a denouement I thought ridiculous." - John Lucarotti, writer, from The Doctor Who File by Peter Haining (W.H. Allen, 1986)
"An atmosphere of doom prevails, miles away from the usual panto runaround [...] Steven's disgust, his departure and the Doctor's subsequent tortured monologue are beautiful, and the redeeming arrival of Dodo is a great coda. Not only the best historical, but the best Hartnell, and, in its serious handling of dramatic material in a truly dramatic style, arguably the best ever Doctor Who story." - review from The Discontinuity Guide by Cornell, Day and Topping (MonkeyBrain Books, 2004)
"This was also a story that silenced some of William Hartnell's critics. His intense performance as the Abbott showed that his eccentric, doddery Doctor was not just an extension of his own character; it was a character Hartnell had created." - from the liner notes of The Massacre (BBC Radio Collection, 1999)
Comments:
I have three favorite Doctor Who serials, to fit three different moods: The Aztecs, for when I'm feeling cerebral; The Talons of Weng-Chiang, for when I want to enjoy 'pop culture' Who; and The Caves of Androzani, for when I'm looking for something intense. I wish I could add The Massacre to this list, and join the gang of enthusiastic critics who have labeled it an all-time Doctor Who classic. But sadly -- I can't believe I'm about to write this -- I think this serial is boring. It's well-acted, literate and occasionally powerful, but for me, it's also a four-part slog.
John Lucarotti wrote two classic history-based adventures for Doctor Who's first season, Marco Polo and The Aztecs. He also wrote the first draft of The Massacre, but he subsequently lost creative control over the script to Donald Tosh. Later, Lucarotti pretty much disowned the final televised version of the serial, so he and I are in agreement about its relative lack of merit.
Some Doctor Who reviewers think that Tosh's rewrites probably made the story better; in fact, the liner notes of The Massacre from the BBC Radio Collection cheekily dismiss all of Lucarotti's problems with the final scripts. But I agree with Lucarotti's reservations, as expressed in the quotation above. The absence of the Doctor from most of the story is indeed distracting. While the Doctor is away, William Hartnell gets to play a villain, the Abbott of Amboise, but even the Abbott is only around for a handful of scenes. So, despite playing a dual role, the star of the series is hardly in this serial.
With Hartnell basically gone, it falls to Peter Purves as Steven to carry the day. I've taken some potshots at Steven in earlier reviews, but I must admit that he's pretty good here. Only pretty good, though. He still doesn't have enough charisma to be a truly great companion on the order of Ian, Barbara or Leela; somehow, he never comes across as much more than a nice, earnest and somewhat drab guy.
The other characters in The Massacre aren't too much better. For the most part, they lack distinct personalities; they exist simply to embody various political viewpoints. The story as a whole is, in fact, tediously political, and freighted down with about five serials' worth of exposition. By the time the complex struggle between the Protestants and the Catholics is outlined in full, there isn't much space left for a plot. Bluntly, this is more of a history lesson than an adventure. It lapses into a lecturing tone that's missing from the more exciting scripts of Marco Polo, The Aztecs and The Crusade.
Boring exposition isn't the only problem with the script. It's also full of frankly silly coincidences, like the fact that the Doctor and the Abbott look exactly the same. I suppose doppelganger stories have some dramatic potential, but that potential is basically wasted here. The visual similarity between the Doctor and the Abbott generates a little confusion for Steven, but basically doesn't change the flow of the plot at all. So why bother?
In another ridiculous coincidence, the Doctor and Steven meet a girl called Anne Chaplet in 1572, and then travel forward to the 1960s and run straight into Anne's apparent descendant, Dodo Chaplet. What are the odds of that? I assume that Dodo's arrival is the "ridiculous" denouement that Lucarotti disliked, and once again I must say that I concur with him. Adding to the absurdity, when Dodo shows up in the TARDIS, she isn't shocked at all by its space-age technology and huge interior space. She simply shrugs and accepts that she's stumbled on a time machine with a minimum of protest. We've come a long way from the realism of An Unearthly Child, folks.
Though I'm having some fun burying this story, it would be negligent of me to pass over its good parts. Prior to the ludicrous arrival of Dodo, the Doctor and Steven have a memorably blistering argument about the responsibilities that come with time travel (Steven thinks that they should have tried to save lives during the massacre; the Doctor sticks to his party line that history must be allowed to take its set path). This is a very good scene -- much better than anything preceding it -- and, after Steven leaves the TARDIS in disgust, the Doctor gets to deliver a great monologue about the loneliness of his existence. Hartnell plays the scene beautifully, and it's touching to be reminded that his character still loves and misses Susan.
Unfortunately, such brilliant moments are rare in The Massacre. I'm afraid that the emperor has no clothes in this case; despite all the praise lavished on this serial, it's pretty clearly a boring one. Reviewers often point out that Hartnell's performance is great, and I agree, but he's hardly in it.
Whenever I think of The Massacre, I always remember the tedious scenes early on wherein Steven befriends a bunch of dry Huguenot guys for no particular reason (later, the Huguenot guys turn on Steven, again for no particular reason). It really doesn't seem like the stuff of a great historical Doctor Who adventure. It's more like those boring Big Finish historicals, in which the writers get so preoccupied with foisting history factoids on their audience that they forget to tell a fun story.
Grade: B-