The Massacre by John Lucarotti and Donald Tosh
5 - 26 February 1966
It didn't occur to me until I sat down to write this review that it had been such a long time since I'd written about the work of John Lucarotti. The last occasion was when I wrote my review of The Aztecs, two and a half years ago. This is also to be the final such occasion, as notwithstanding a partial script submitted for 1975 and some work on the Target novelization range in the 1980s, this is his last contribution to the series. Although his tenure as a writer is not quite long enough to justify a "word on" post like Verity Lambert, nor were his innovations long-lasting enough, it is fitting to take a moment and acknowledge his work on the earliest years of Doctor Who. All three of his serials are (spoilers) among the best of their period, and have proved highlights of this marathon. It is sad to know that there won't be any more of his scripts to look forward to, but as more and more essential aspects of "Who-ness" have started to accrue around the program, it's hard to argue that this style of story hasn't had its day. There will be two more of its ilk from other writers (The Smugglers and The Highlanders) but after that, they will disappear from Doctor Who forevermore - on TV, anyway.
As skillful as Marco Polo, The Aztecs, and (albeit to a lesser extent) The Massacre might be, it's impossible to shake the feeling that we aren't actually watching Doctor Who here. Very little of the essence of these three stories actually lives on in future ones, even excepting the general lack of pure historicals from here on out. Even modern historical stories owe far more of their DNA to The Time Meddler, ultimately, than The Aztecs or The Massacre. Marco Polo, being the prototypical celebrity historical, is the outlier of the three, but even then it barely resembles more modern iterations. It's a bizarre avenue - another alternate history. But it's difficult to argue that the show wasn't better off jettisoning this format eventually. As intriguing as it can be to observe how alien the past is, there are only so many ways that the show can have this same formula play out. Put plainly, it is a little depressing when the Doctor and company are forced into a situation where they can't fix anything. There's only so many ways that you can play the trick of "at least you saved one person" (in the case of Autloc and, dubiously, Anne Chaplet), and it will frankly take until 2008 for the show to pull off such a plot right. So although we enjoy the pure historical, it must be said that I find few reasons to miss them.
Not to get too far ahead of myself, but this is one area in which I find it easy to credit the current iteration of the program. Series 11 had two pseudo-historicals, each so light on their science fiction elements that they were almost pure historicals in their own right (Rosa and Demons of the Punjab), but which still had a fantastic amount of nuance, gravitas, and maturity that made them highlights of that season for me. It could have been a return to form for a genre of Doctor Who story which had its heyday so long ago, but with the apparent return of the somewhat formulaic Davies-era celebrity pseudo-historical in Series 12, it seems that this was only a brief aberration in and of itself, just like the original pure historical. More's the pity.
To focus specifically on The Massacre, I think it does suffer, like most of the Wiles era, for being too dark. The darkness of it is done splendidly, lending to great moments such as Steven's (brief) departure from the TARDIS and the Doctor's soliloquy, but on the back of The Daleks' Master Plan and the ending of The Myth Makers, it has started to feel like a little much. I'm glad that some lighter stories are on the near horizon, though it does also have to be pointed out that the abrupt about-face from this darker direction and into Dodo's arrival on the set feels very strange.
I would be more annoyed if I thought it was some sort of backing down from wherever the storyline was going - even when I don't particularly like a story direction, I always prefer to see it play out rather than get axed halfway. I'm a strange creature like that, there really is no winning with me. But I do happen to know that the oncoming tonal shift is more to do with changes in the production staff. Although we've only had his production team, including Donald Tosh (who authored some of this story) since The Myth Makers, a span of four serials as of The Ark, this small number of stories is deceptive due to the mammoth size of DMP. Still, it's a blink of an eye next to Verity's tenure. Like Lucarotti, Wiles won't get a post of his own, but I thought I'd segue into it now, as despite remaining on for the next serial, his vision for the show ends, for all intents and purposes, here. I'm too charitable to quite say "good riddance", but I agree with the chorus of voices that has said over time that his vision for Doctor Who was unsustainable in the long run, so it's probably for the best, even though many of his episodes were great.
For the reasons stated above, Steven's sudden decision not to leave, after it's been built up so expertly, rubs me the wrong way, though it is understandable that they'd want to keep Peter Purves on a little longer to lend a bit more stability as the show begins to enter a rocky period. And I'm hardly about to complain, because once again, Steven is great in this story. With the Doctor off screen for almost the whole serial, he becomes the leading man. I think it was a deft trick leaving a man from the distant future as our eyes in this historical landscape, as its remoteness to him leaves him totally lost, which makes us empathize with him. He still tries his best, but out of his depth as he is, he's forced to move with the story instead of shaping it, forced by the machinations of the nobles ruling France at this time.
William Hartnell, of course, still gets a lot of good stuff to work with during this serial, notably his scenes as the Abbot of Amboise. The ambiguity over whether this is the Doctor or not is an interesting dimension to add to the story, though based on textual and non-textual clues, I'd say that he is probably not. Although the local Catholic nobles seem suspicious of him, this could just as easily be a result of the paranoia and fear running rampant in Paris at the time this story is set. The fact that he drops stone cold dead before the end, as witnessed by innumerable people, suggests that actually being the Abbot would have been beyond even the Doctor's powers of disguise. It's just another curious lookalike, something which will happen more than once in the show's future.
Even when he isn't having fun getting to play another character for once, Hartnell is on form in what little of the serial he is actually the Doctor for. His excitement to meet a local alchemist is infectious and reminds us, once more, that the Doctor is first and foremost a man of science. The fact that he is as excited to meet an obscure 16th century alchemist as most people would be to meet a great celebrity, is immensely endearing. His hidebound refusal to give in to Steven's reasoning at the end of the story puts a light on this Doctor's inflexibility, but unlike in previous stories (The Aztecs, The Sensorites) where his stubbornness is ultimately shown to be correct, or at least not challenged, once Steven leaves the strain finally breaks the Doctor. The incredible vulnerability of his scene alone in the TARDIS shows that being forced to safeguard history isn't something he takes pleasure in. Instead, it's a terrible burden, one which, he tells us, time and time again forces him to leave behind those he cares about. For the first time, one of the central tensions of the Doctor's character is laid bare, and the lonely god we know from some later stories begins to take shape.
Aside from shockingly good character moments, the subject matter is pretty daring in and of itself. Religious conflict is never a politically neutral subject even in the best of times, much less so in a Britain where the scars of the Troubles had not yet been opened. Although an effort is made to be even-handed and show the humanity of both sides of this Massacre, it's hard to dispute that the Huguenots come out in the more sympathetic light, which makes sense given that they were the ones being Massacred and not the other way around. There are still absolutists on the Huguenot side (like Gaston), but we're made to feel for de Coligny most of all, who seems like a decent fellow, while the royalists are backed by coldblooded creatures like Catherine de' Medici. This Protestant leaning might be a reflection of Great Britain's historical values, and it might not. I'm not really qualified to say. What I can say is that this is the sort of theme to inspire deep thought, and it lends The Massacre with a lot of weight.
Overall, despite suffering greatly from being the most missing Doctor Who story and from a baffling final few minutes, The Massacre is a worthy addition to complete the John Lucarotti hat trick, and definitely another enjoyable outing in my eyes. Before proceeding with the rest of Season Three, we'll make a literary pit stop for the first novel of the marathon, Salvation.
(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 27 April 2020.)
No comments:
Post a Comment