1.23: The Massacre [of St Bartholomew’s Eve]

In which we meet the Doctor’s doppelganger, but he doesn’t.

Broadcast: February 1966

Watched (listened): July-August 2019

Some notes before we begin. Yes, ideally this would have appeared before yesterday’s entry, and we’ve gotten out of sequence: post-covid cock-up, apologies, I’ll try to get back to normal again now. 

Secondly, the title. Normally, in the case of these early stories where individual episodes have on-screen names but the story as a whole does not, one title came to dominate through little more than the hardening of consensus into orthodoxy, and then eventually the BBC stuck in on an official release. The most official release this has had, as a so-far unanimated missing story, is the BBC Radio Collection’s release of the soundtrack. This, annoyingly, uses both titles on the same product, which is some truly excellent trolling.

I prefer the shorter title, but, as happens so often with these things, there isn’t really a correct answer. Onwards.

1. War of God

It’s... not great is it? For the first time since The Web Planet, I think, I was bored. Worse, it’s quite hard to follow on audio. I had to read the synopsis afterwards and realised I’d missed quite a lot. Struggling to keep track of who everyone is. I think the audio needs more narration.

Quite weird that the cliffhanger is the audience discovering the Abbott of Amboise looks like the Doctor but Steven doesn’t find out til the next episode.

Only bit I liked really is the Doctor talking to the science bloke about germs.

Anne Chaplet is dull.

Erm.

2. The Sea Beggar

Not noticeably better. Still barely following. I just don’t know who anyone is.

I always had it in mind this one was great, but thinking about it I’m fairly sure that’s because it’s got a really good novelisation and that isn’t that close to the script, is it?

WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THE MAGIC OF JOHN LUCAROTTI???

[Right, it turns out, via Eddie Robson and James Cooray-Smith, that there actually is an answer to this. Lucarotti, whose previous stories Marco Polo and The Aztecs, are two of the highpoints of early Doctor Who, submitted a script as normal. But the script editor Donald Tosh – who had been in post since The Time Meddler, and who left the show after part three of this story – did a top-to-bottom rewrite to keep the Doctor and Steven away from the historical figures, for some reason. 

I’ve never been quite sure about Tosh – a few years ago, he did an interview in Doctor Who Magazine, in which I’m pretty sure he criticised every story he ever worked on or, come to that, remembered – and apparently neither was Lucarotti because when he novelised his story he produced a book with very little relation to what appears on screen, presumably based on his original script. If you want more of this, check out Jim’s Black Archive book about this story.

One epilogue to all this that is interesting to me, but I fear nobody else, is that Donald Tosh was one of the last surviving creatives to have worked on 1960s Who: he lived until December 2019, so appeared as an extra in An Adventure in Space & Time. This means, weirdly enough, he was alive when I wrote most of this post, so if I’d got my arse in gear he could have read it and complained. Let’s get it over with.

3. Priest of Death

4. Bell of Doom

Listened back to back so not sure what happened when.

Trying to get tension out of “Oooh the Doctor has been murdered in 16th century France” is bulls**t isn’t it. 

Amusing that Catherine de Medici is both the same character and the same performance as Stephanie Cole as Carolyn Knapp-Shappey in Cabin Pressure. That makes her son Charles IX Arthur. (In my text about this to Jim I said “Henri IV” but he’s not in it: a measure of quite how hard this script is to follow without visuals.)

It’s quite a nice idea in some ways – something terrible is happening, the regulars can’t stop it. It’s clearly an inspiration for Fires of Pompeii. But it lacks the “Save someone!” bit. Sidelining the regulars, throwing in so many characters, not really giving us anyone to care about... it’s an interesting experiment in its way, but we need to be rooting for someone. I just felt adrift. I guess we’re meant to be rooting for Anne, but there’s not enough to her, there’s no “save the cat” moment to get you on side.

Steven’s rage at the Doctor at the end is genuinely quite brilliant though. It also feels oddly like an epilogue to Master Plan, there’s a whole thing this year about the cost of the Doctor’s adventures, which is oddly modern. I like the listing of the past companions after Steven leaves. Although “None of them understand!” feels like the Donald Tosh equivalent of “AND NO ONE HAS EVER THANKED HIM”.

Finally, WTF is with Dodo’s accent? [Dodo, the new companion, barges into the TARDIS in contemporary London at the end of the story, and seems to be a descendent of the left-for-dead Anne; in her scene here she has a broad cockney accent that is never heard from again.] And why doesn’t she care about the little boy whose accident she’s meant to be telling the police about? “You look just like my granddaughter,” is quite creepy. 

You can buy Jim’s Black Archive here.