Serial 22: The Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve

Doctor: William Hartnell (1st Doctor)
Companion: Steven, Dodo

Written by: John Lucarotti & Donald Tosh
Directed by: Paddy Russell

Background & Significance: Last week we talked about "The Web of Fear", which was a story that we could only judge by viewing the quality of the direction/design of the first episode (the only one to exist) and then extrapolating the quality of the rest by taking the what we know from the first episode and coupling it to the existing audio and the rest of the script. It's a crude science, but it's the best we can do given what we have and it's hardly the worst thing ever. At least we have the audio. And the audio is riveting. And the screencaps we have paint an almost picture of what it looks like this thing looked like in moments.

And then every so often, you'll get a story that doesn't exist (is all audio) and once in a very long while you'll get a story that is severely under telesnapped.

Enter "The Massacre".

"The Massacre" is one of the most unique Doctor Who stories ever, despite the fact that on the surface it doesn't seem to be doing anything revelatory or special. Part of this is down to the fact that we have John Lucarotti on the typewriter once again. For those not in the remember, this is the guy who "created" the historical (if you assume that "An Unearthly Child" wasn't so much a historical as a story that just happened to take place in he generic past rather than being a "true" historical) when he did "Marco Polo" and followed it up with "The Aztecs".

In a lot of ways, this is the third in those loose trilogy of stories from a thematic basis. Where the first story was about a TARDIS crew who adamantly refused to get involved in the contemporary events in any way, shape, or form and the second story was about the TARDIS crew threatening to ruin the foundations of history, "The Massacre" established a further discussion of history by dropping the TARDIS crew (just The Doctor and Stephen at this point) in the middle of a terribly dark and harsh historical climate. What results is... revelatory. It's one of the best examples of John Wiles's influence on the show and how he helped trailblaze a new and completely different path from his predecessor Verity Lambert.

To put it simply, in a season full of experimental stories that try to define "what is Doctor Who" and push the boundaries of what the show can and cannot do, it's telling that "The Massacre" is right up there with "The Daleks' Master Plan" in terms of doing something special and memorable given Doctor Who's early format.

It's also notable for being the first contribution of director Paddy Russell, who would go on to direct a series of other great and memorable Doctor Who stories and one of the few stories to have an evil Doctor doppelganger, giving William Hartnell the opportunity to be the Evil Abbot of the story. That all said, it's unfortunate that this story is completely missing, also that it doesn't even really have any screencaps to speak of (I assume this was Wiles's fault/decision, but I could be mistaken) so the entire story is based almost entirely on its aurality.

Then again, if you're going to have only one story based on its aurality...

So let's get to it!