The Massacre

The Black Archive #2

by James Cooray Smith

‘Here in Paris we know what is right.’

The Massacre (1966) is a serial of disputed authorship, of which no known video copy survives. One of the last of Doctor Who’s ‘past’ stories as originally defined, it was produced during a fractious transitional period. It nevertheless draws on a variety of primary and secondary sources, many never previously acknowledged, to examine religious civil strife in the Paris of 1572 from some surprising angles, and with maturity and complexity.

James Cooray Smith writes on culture for The New Statesman.

Genres: Doctor Who, Nonfiction

192 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2016

Reviews

[Andrew Hickey · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Crossposted between Goodreads and my blog -- apologies for those who see this twice)

Before I start the review proper, an obligatory note: I am currently towards the end of writing what will be the seventh installment of this series, a book on The Mind Robber. My book will have the same publisher and editor, both of whom have commissioned other work from me in the past, and with both of whom I am friendly. I also received my electronic copy of this book (actually a pre-proofreading draft version) for free -- though not as a review copy, but so I had some idea of the style of the other books in the series.
So while I believe I am still being fairly objective with this review, you may want to take all that into account.

So, first of all, I should explain what the Black Archive actually is. There's been a great deal of writing about Doctor Who over the years, probably more by an order of magnitude than about any other TV series, thanks to its more-than-usually obsessive and more-than-usually literate fanbase. However, much of this has been on a fairly surface level -- the production of the series has been thoroughly documented, but there's been relatively little critical writing about the series on the level of individual stories. Even fairly in-depth works like Lawrence Miles and Tat Wood's About Time series of books, which are fantastic as a look at the series as a whole, tend to devote no more than about five thousand words to each story.

The Black Archive, on the other hand, is a rather different proposition. These are intended to be something like the 33 1/3 book series, but for individual Doctor Who stories rather than albums.
Each book is a novella-length look at a single Doctor Who story, with discussion of the production of the story where appropriate, but examining the work itself critically, in a way that no previous writer has ever done. One would think that everything that could be said about this show already had -- the hope (which I think at least the initial batch of books has proved correct) is that this is very wrong.

The first four are released next week, and the most interesting choice of this first batch, and the one I'm looking at here, is James Cooray Smith's look at The Massacre (aka The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve). The other three books seem fairly obvious choices -- there's Rose, the first story of the 21st century TV series; Dark Water/Death In Heaven, the most recent season finale as of the books being commissioned, and a story which deals with many of (series editor and writer of that entry) Philip Purser-Hallard's writerly preoccupations; and The Ambassadors of Death, the last story to be written by David Whitaker, arguably the most important writer in the series' history.

But The Massacre is a very different story. The Massacre was one of the "pure historicals" -- stories which saw the Doctor and his companions sent back to Earth's past to take part in historical events, rather than the stories with monsters and spaceships which Doctor Who fans have generally preferred (there has been a certain amount of redemption of the historical stories among a younger generation of critics and fans -- I love them dearly myself -- but it's safe to say that fewer people are familiar with even the more popular of the historicals than with, say, The Dalek Invasion of Earth). On top of that, there were two types of historical story -- farces or high adventure stories in which the main cast are plonked into the middle of a recognisable genre and get to have fun with it (The Romans and The Gunfighters, for example), and rather didactic ones intended as at least partly educational, and The Massacre is an example of the second type. And finally, The Massacre is one of the few Doctor Who stories for which we have no visual reference at all -- many of the missing stories have odd episodes still available, and where those don't exist there are usually at least telesnaps (photographs taken as a visual record of the show). For The Massacre, we have none of that. It's safe to say that, whatever its considerable merits as a story, The Massacre is not a story that even many Doctor Who fans are particularly aware of, and not an obvious choice as a fan-pleasing start to a series of books.

What The Massacre does offer, though, is a great deal of material for analysis. In this book Smith offers what amounts to a potted course in sixteenth and seventeenth century French political-religious conflict (Smith talks about how he is not going to go into great detail about the subject, but he gives far more detail about these things than I had ever encountered before). He guides us through the various real people who have been fictionalised in the story, and the ways in which their real lives differ from the presentation in the serial, wearing his erudition lightly but clearly outlining some fairly complicated issues.

And this isn't just padding, paraphrasing the Wikipedia entry on Gaspard II de Coligny to fill up space -- Smith puts all this information to use in analysing the themes and structure of the story, so we get rather marvellous insights like:

This is a story about inalterability of history and destiny in which several thousand members of a religious grouping whose faith is specifically defined by adherence to a concept of predestination are killed.
The second, and more simple, is that Calvinism emphasises a human’s personal relationship with the Christian God, one which does not require mediation through hierarchies or structures.
The Doctor and the Abbot are both real within the fiction. But on a metafictional level they are both the same person, in that they are both played by William Hartnell. It is not stretching the point to see the duplication of characters played by William Hartnell as serving the duality of Christian religion with which the serial concerns itself.
Both the Huguenot and Catholic figures spend ‘The Sea Beggar’ and ‘Priest of Death’ seeking the Abbot; the former because they believe he’s the Doctor, and the latter because they lack faith in his abilities despite knowing him to be the Abbot. Throughout the televised story Steven struggles to reach the Abbot, believing him to be the Doctor and thus his salvation. His attempts to assert a personal relationship with this figure are wholly unsuccessful and very nearly get him killed. They do, or so it appears to Steven for nearly 24 anguished hours, get the Doctor killed.
Then, just when Steven is in absolute despair, the Doctor reappears. He is not dead. He was never dead. Steven was wrong. The Doctor was never a false Abbot. The Abbot was a false Doctor of Steven’s own making. For Steven, the Doctor’s reappearance is a resurrection. Until the old man walks into Preslin’s shop, he is wholly convinced that the Doctor is dead and believes that he has seen his brutalised corpse.
Resurrection is the central mystery of all variations of Christianity. And The Massacre is a story explicitly concerned with variations in Christianity, which ends with the Doctor’s apparent resurrection three days after the audience last saw him, and which begins with Steven being turned away from an Inn.

Smith also addresses the question of the serial's authorship, looking at the conflicting evidence as to how much of the story is by credited author John Lucarotti, and how much by script editor Donald Tosh. He compares Lucarotti's novelisation of the serial (which bears very little resemblance to the story as transmitted) to the final scripts as rewritten by Tosh, and to other stories from the same time period, and teases out to an extent (though he remains rightly cautious as to his conclusions) the possible origins of elements of the story. In particular, he points out some formal similarities I hadn't noticed to several other historical stories (notably all of the "romp" type rather than the more didactic style in which Lucarotti wrote) and a possible cinematic source for some of the ideas.

After reading this, I'm left with more questions, and with thoughts about an interconnected network of ideas -- about authorship, and identity, and historical processes -- which I hadn't previously considered as especially connected to this story, and I end up wishing that Smith had gone into more detail. Given that this book is roughly forty-six thousand words long, about a piece of TV I've never seen and can never see, that's nothing short of miraculous.

The first four Black Archive books come out next week. They can be pre-ordered at http://obversebooks.co.uk/product-cat...

This review is brought to you by the generosity of my backers at Patreon. Why not join them?

[J. Burton · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novella-length look at a single Doctor Who serial is a great read, very interesting, and well written. It deserves slightly more than four stars, but given the rating system in place here, four is what it will get. (I'd probably rate it 9/10 if given the option.)

A little background. I'm a lifelong Who fan - albeit one who remained 'casual' up until the series came back on TV in 2005 with new episodes. I enjoyed the show, would watch it whenever I was able, and even had a handful of Target novelizations.

But unlike many more-involved fans of the series, I never bought any of the episode guides or analyses that came out during the show's original run, or during the so-called 'wilderness years'. Since then I've picked up a few (some of the 'About Time's, 'Running Through Corridors', some of the 'TARDIS Eruditorum's as well as a handful of books that look at the series more thematically or analytically) but this kind of book is not part of my 'tradition' as a fan.

Certainly no one (to my knowledge) has before attempted a series of extended pieces like this - each centering on a single Doctor Who story. So whether or not you have experience with this type of non-fiction approach to Who literature, this ought to be as new to you as it is to me.

All right then. This book focuses on the 'Season Three' serial known by various names. (Indeed, the book I'm reviewing addresses this issue within its pages.) For the purposes of this book, and of this review, the title "The Massacre" is preferred.

For anyone not aware, the serial tells the story of the Doctor and Steven arriving in Paris in the year 1572, experiencing the lead up to the massacre that largely commenced on St Bartholomew's Day. At the time the serial was something of a ratings flop (more or less beginning a long period of struggling ratings for the series) but ever since (and despite only the audio surviving) it is largely regarded as one of the show's best-told tales.

So what does this book look at? The answer is: pretty much everything.

It is split up into several sections, each looking at a different aspect of the story - covering both the real-world construction of the episodes, and examining the story as presented in the fiction.

Before the book proper begins, there is a series of introductory segments - including a fairly unnecessary synopsis. I call it "unnecessary" because it is somewhat longer than just a vague description of what each episode entails (a Radio Times 'logline' approach) but less than the extended summaries used later (in Chapter 2). As it is an easy thing to skip these synopses, however, they certainly do no harm with their presence.

A nice introduction sets the stage - explaining what the serial is, how it came to be, the way the show was made at the time. It's informative and entertaining even for those of us familiar with the serial in question - it's an effective chapter in its own right and not merely a precursor to the more detailed information to follow.

This section unfortunately begins the difficulty of my Kindle Paperwhite with the book's footnotes - but this does not appear to be a problem with the formatting of the book. My Kindle vacillates between displaying footnotes improperly in a pop-up window, and taking me to the end notes themselves; I have, however, had the same issue with several other books and I believe it be a Paperwhite issue rather than one specific to this book.

(There is a formatting issue in the Ratings appendix, where a table showing figures goes off the edge of the screen of the Paperwhite - and presumably other small-screen e-ink Kindles - but the only info missing is also presented on the previous page of the book.)

We start the main meat of the book with a chapter called: "Adventures in History". This is a fascinating little chapter detailing the way in which the story as shot uses real-life history, what it retains, what it changes, and introduces some very intriguing notions about the inspiration for the story (including the real Abbot of Amboise).

Perhaps it delves too deeply into 'showing off the writer's research' than what I might personally be interested in reading, but not for great lengths of time. And what my eyes glaze over during, others will no doubt consider to be the most enjoyable sections of the book, depending on our respective interests.

This is a chapter that examines real history as it relates to the series - but also takes time to consider what Doctor Who's actual approach to history was in general, and how that changed over the years.

Author James Cooray Smith makes an intriguing statement about the historical dramas used in Doctor Who of the time:

"The people of the past are people of the time of the serial's creation but in more complicated clothes."

Something to think about the next time the current iteration of the series is criticized for the same thing...

Chapter 2 ("What Happens in The Massacre?") is more of a standard textual analysis. I don't mean to say 'uninteresting' (indeed, it is by far the most entertaining part of the book for this reader) but the approach of looking at what happens in the story - robbed of external factors - and analyzing what was meant, pointing out flaws, extrapolating meaning... This is the standard fare of these types of book. This is the part that oughtn't require explanation on my part, as anyone going into such a book should know what to expect from it.

I will say that the writer makes a great attempt to explain to anyone unaware what state the episodes are in, and why, and the problem this causes for anyone attempting to do the job that he is, in fact, doing in analyzing the serial. He puts everything in its local perspective - removing decades of fan myth and collected attitudes and opinions that might sway a viewer coming to the episodes today - and really looks at the episodes as a viewer of the time might have. As well as, of course, looking at it through the prism of a Doctor Who fan with greater distance and perspective.

It is very intriguing trying to strip away the filter through which we see these old serials now, trying to imagine the way an audience of the time might have perceived it. It is vital, though, to the proper experience of the episode to try and view it the way it was intended to be viewed - something more difficult than it sounds once you realize that we can't actually view the episodes at all...

Chapter 3 looks at the religious conflict in the book, and is more of a history lesson than anything else. It gives us a precis of a forgotten moment in history that was apparently expected to be more-or-less recognized by the audience at the time. The chapter explains the reasons for the Catholic/Protestant clash in France occurring during the events of the serial (as much an issue of politics, it would seem, as one of actual belief) and examines the way that this is presented in the televised episodes.

Obviously, much of the complexity of the real-world issues are left out of the children's TV scripts. This book's author, however, takes a look at what is there, the layers of it, the way it was twisted and used for fictional purposes. All very interesting to read - and he has a highly amusing aside comparing the Doctor's role in the story to a figure central to the religion itself.

Chapter 4 is even more of a history lesson than Chapter 3 - this time focusing more on the events themselves and less on the motivation behind them. It examines the way the two writers of the TV story (credited writer John Lucarotti, and script editor Donald Tosh who may or may not have been co-credited for the final episode, or any of the others) clashed on the way to use this history to tell a story.

More than anything else, though, this chapter is concerned with how much of the real history the audience at the time would be expected to know. Smith, the author, argues that the way we approach the events in the story very much alters depending on our knowledge of real events. At the remove of modern fandom, it is easy to make assumptions about what the audience of the time knew, and approach the serial accordingly. It is another thing to discover what the audience at the time was expected to know; the experience of the serial may be quite different when approached from this angle.

Chapter 5 is called "What Happened With The Massacre?" (deliberately contrasting with the title of Chapter 2) and explores the conflict between story editor Donald Tosh and credited writer John Lucarotti. Smith makes an attempt to 'reconstruct' Lucarotti's (long missing) scripts from his later novelization of the story, and from what can be guessed by looking at Tosh's final drafts.

Smith admits the problems with this approach (the novelization was not written based on the original scripts - which were already long gone - but instead on new research by Lucarotti) but does his best to strip away what is obviously new material from the novelization, and compare what is left to what seems to lie under the final teleplays completed by Tosh.

The idea is a good one (and we certainly have enough - contradictory - comments from both writers over the years as to what their intentions were) though the results are debatable. Smith is careful never to claim that his deductions are any kind of proof, but sifting through interviews about ancient memories, and reading between the lines of camera scripts, is only going to glean you so much information you can rely on.

As a writer myself, this is the most interesting chapter for me as learning about the writing process - and about the differing styles and approaches of two men attempting to write the same basic story - is exactly the kind of thing I want to be reading about. Plus, this kind of screenwriting archaeology is amusing and entertaining in and of itself.

Wrapping up the chapter is a similarly interesting discussion about the relationship between producer John Wiles and his various cast members - and the same for the next producer, Innes Lloyd. The way the creation and casting of various regular roles relied on the tastes or the competence of the men in charge is fascinating to read about, and Smith makes some good arguments about the nature of some of the characters created by the show's team.

At the end of the main body of the book are seven appendices. Given the widely varied nature of the topics the book has thus far covered, these are basically just "short chapters" given another name. They are just as relevant to the thrust of the book as the regular chapters, but don't have the same weight to sustain a longer word count and so get relegated to 'appendices'.

We have here the following topics: Production Timeline; Flight of the Dodo; The Family Chaplet; A Note on Etymology; Title Fight; Reception and Ratings; The End of History.

All of these are just as exciting as the main chapters in the book, and as informative, even if the content couldn't generate a full-length chapter for each. I'll say little about them here, except that the arguments made in "Title Fight" had me thinking more about my own preferences for what this serial should properly be called.

(I have usually typed the title out as: "The Massacre Which Historically Actually Happened on St Bartholomew's Day", but Smith may have convinced me to be less snarky when dealing with the title argument.)

James Cooray Smith has clearly done a lot of research, and a lot of thinking, to prepare for this book - and it all shows. His writing style is a sort of 'casual scholarly' tone - precise and intellectual, but readable and light on the syllables.

Occasionally he will drop a deliberately bathetic colloquialism to button a topic - for the purpose of humor - but I'm not certain that this approach really works more than once. (For example, in a section where he felt the need to use the term 'antepenultimate', he ends with the sentence: "So there.")

It's intelligent, it reads easily, it makes you think, and it amuses. Perhaps a little too much time is spent regurgitating history books for my personal tastes, but given the subject matter this is hardly inexcusable.

If you've ever read and enjoyed a textual analysis of Doctor Who, then you need to get this book. (And, I'm guessing, the others in this series which I have not read yet.)

If you haven't done so before... here's a great place to start!

[Nicholas Whyte · Rating 5 out of 5]

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3772970.html

The second of the Black Archive books analysing past stories of Doctor Who looks at The Massacre, a 1966 First Doctor story which has been lost from the archives, apart from an off-air audio recording, a few photographs, and the Loose Cannon reconstruction. It's set immediately before the Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve in 1572, also the subject of Christopher Marlowe's last play. Incidentally, it was the first Doctor Who story to be directed by a woman (Paddy Russell). It also features William Hartnell playing a double of the Doctor, the Abbot of Amboise; and Annette Robertson.

James Cooray Smith has done a really superb job of digging into The Massacre for the Black Archives. The first chapter looks at the historical basis of the plot, which more than any other historical Who story engages with the actual political drama happening on the ground, rather than just having dramatic events in which our protagonists get enmeshed. "The Massacre has 15 named speaking characters. Of those, seven are demonstrably real people (and mostly people of sufficient note in their own lives as to be conspicuously embedded in the historical record) and two have a basis in history but are not (necessarily) real individuals. Six are clearly fictional. Of those six, three are the Doctor, Steven Taylor and Dodo Chaplet, the last of whom only appears in the last five minutes of the final episode and not, in any case, in 16th-century France at all." A glorious footnote to this paragraph begins "To put this into context, only five real people have speaking roles in all of 1980s Doctor Who, and none at all in 1970s Doctor Who." Cooray Smith questions why a supposedly educational show didn't make more of the history, and then makes the interesting finding that there really was a fake Abbot of Amboise during the French Wars of Religion.

The second chapter looks at plot and structure, making the point that "no episode of the story, uniquely for episodic 20th-century television Doctor Who, begins with a reprise of the final scene of the previous episode". In particular, Cooray Smith teases apart the question of why Steven should think that the Abbot is the Doctor in disguise, and why the other characters do not; and tries to find sympathetic readings, or at least excuses, for other plot ambiguities.

The third, and most interesting, chapter, looks at religion. This is a story about Catholics killing Protestants (and to a lesser extent vice versa). The script is on the side of the Protestants, but not uncritically; both sides have their bigotries. Having myself been born in Belfast the year after this story was shown, I find the mid-century take on Christian sectarianism fascinating. It might have been a lot more difficult for the BBC to make a story like this after the Troubles broke out. But Cooray Smith also sees the story investigating the themes of predestination and redemption. "Resurrection is the central mystery of all variations of Christianity. And The Massacre is a story explicitly concerned with variations in Christianity, which ends with the Doctor’s apparent resurrection three days after the audience last saw him, and which begins with Steven being turned away from an Inn. Just putting that out there."

In the fourth chapter, Cooray Smith challenges the idea that the end of the story came as a surprise to viewers in 1966. It was not called The Massacre then; each episode had its own title "War of God", "The Sea Beggar", "Priest of Death" and "Bell of Doom", at least three of which rather clearly signal that this is not a comedy. But he further makes the case that actually the 1572 massacre was a relatively well-known historical fact in 1960s Britain, much more so than today.

In the fifth and final chapter, Cooray Smith undertakes the difficult forensic task of working out exactly which bits of the story are Lucarotti and which are Tosh, not least because both writers have given detailed and contradictory accounts of how the story was written (though both are in agreement on the core narrative: that Lucarotti's work was heavily revised by Tosh). He makes the point that the show was in real trouble at this point. The show's ratings had collapsed from their 1964-65 peak (which, as Cooray Smith points out, was higher than achieved by any subsequent era of the show, including Baker/Holmes/Hinchcliffe or Tennant/Davies); the new producer John Wiles and script editor Donald Tosh were both already on their way out after only a short time at the helm; there was a merry dance of companions, with Maureen O'Brien fires at three weeks' notice, Adrienne Hill hired and fired so quickly that her first scene to be filmed was her character's death, Jean Marsh likewise in and out and Annette Robertson considered but rejected as the new regular. More importantly, management seems to have decided to get rid of William Hartnell at the end of The Celestial Toymaker, two stories after The Massacre, but apparently there was a mistake in the paperwork and instead he was renewed for another six months. Ultimately of course Innes Lloyd and Gerry Davis took over, fired all of the leading cast and made the show what it largely is today. But there was no inevitability about that.

An appendix looks at Dodo Chaplet, the new companion who appears out of nowhere at the end of the story. Other appendices look a the possible relationship between Anne Chaplet and Dodo Chaplet, the fact that the word "massacre" was first used in English to refer to 1572, the question of the story's title, contemporary ratings and reactions, and the demise of the historical Doctor Who stories.

I really enjoyed this book which packs a lot of good chunky and new analysis into 100 pages. You can get it here: https://amzn.to/2VTXGSg

[Tony · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a really intriguing and interesting black archive. Plenty that I both knew and didn’t know put together in a very readable book from James Cooray Smith

[Christian Petrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a spur of the moment read. I started seeing some Doctor Who writers tweeting about and decided to go ahead and give it a try. The bottom line: A great analysis of a lost Doctor Who story.

If you decided to read this book, it is not a rehash of the plot, a nitpicker's guide to it, or a reference guide. It is a review of the story that is both analyzed on different levels, and a background on the creation of the story.

The first part that interested me was the breakdown on how the story was written, whose hands touched it, and what script was used for the Target novelization. The second part was the behind the scenes on the production. Both of these sections gave a rich history on what was happening at the time.

The reason I did not give it a full 5 stars, was the religious section. It is important for those not familiar with the time period to understand what was going on. For some reason it was just not as interesting to me.

I also like the fact that more of these books will be coming out regarding other stories. I think if I pick up another it will be on a story that I want to learn more about.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

An incredibly thoroughly researched book that highlights some interesting debates, makes exciting discoveries and speculates on a whole host of things relating to this Doctor Who story.

I've had kind of a weird fascination with this story since I listened to it a few years ago. It's essentially a historical drama more than a Doctor Who, and this book gave me an insight into the background history that I've been trying to find for a while. It's also probably discouraged me from reading anything else about the subject! The history is incredibly complex, but is explained very efficiently here. My existing knowledge about this historical era was less than nothing, which did make some parts of this book which assumed some pre-knowledge a little hard to follow. But the episodes are a bit like that as well, and I enjoy them, and this book, all the same.

The most interesting stuff here for me is definitely the background of how this story got made and written. The history of Doctor Who in its third ever year is fascinating and still feels under-explored. This book provides so much detail about that time, and speculates on many of the things it can't readily explain with the scant paperwork that still survives. (I *loved* the speculation that the post-cliffhanger reprises were slowly being phased out in this time. It's a proper deep-cut fan observation to make, and so interesting.) The comparisons with the novelisation are fascinating, and it compares the memories of both writers of The Massacre to try and work out what the hell was going on with the drafting and redrafting of these stories. The detail in this book is another level, and though at times this becomes a little too much for me (!), it gets the balance absolutely right when writing about the history of the show.

I couldn't help but think the answer to some of the book's speculations might simply be that 'the writer had to write this story in about a fortnight', but this is a very slight complaint. There a few comments made in a strange tone that are a little off-putting, but I've found that to be a quirk of a couple of the early books in The Black Archive series, and this gets ironed out the more the series develops. And it is an incredible series. The Black Archive is amazing in that not only are all the entries so different in their approaches, but the level of research and dedication to something that was, basically, written in a fortnight, is astonishing and admirable. Both James Cooray Smith and I contributed chapters to the 'Flux' entry of The Black Archive, and it's been exciting to go back to his first work for the series, and read such a thorough history of a story I love.

[Tony · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're a fan of Doctor Who and you like getting deep behind the creation of individual stories then Obverse Books' 'Black Archive' series is for you. And this, about the William Hartnell story 'The Massacre', is particularly fine.

Stonkingly well-researched and delightfully written I recommend this highly. It covers not just the creation of the story as a Doctor Who production (and the complications of that) but also the real historical events behind the story. It obviously can't be an in-depth historical analysis of a key event in the French Wars of Religion but it can tell you enough to help contextualise the fictional version.

I fear reading this - and Matthew Kilburn's one on 'The Time Warrior' - will mean the Black Archives are something I may end up collecting all of them.

[Johanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

A ton of information about a missing Doctor Who story from the Hartnell run. I found the later chapters (and the appendices) more interesting than the former, as the topics of "who wrote what" and the history of the companion changes were more relevant to my interests than deep dives into the real history and religious implications of the event, but it's all necessary to understand these episodes. Fascinating read.

[Chris Griffin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting read, and actually quite different from other articles about the making of this serial.

[Geoff · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The Doctor and the Abbot are both real within the fiction. But on a metafictional level they are both the same person, in that they are both played by William Hartnell. It is not stretching the point to see the duplication of characters played by William Hartnell as serving the duality of Christian religion with which the serial concerns itself.

"Both the Huguenot and Catholic figures spend ‘The Sea Beggar’ and ‘Priest of Death’ seeking the Abbot; the former because they believe he’s the Doctor, and the latter because they lack faith in his abilities despite knowing him to be the Abbot. Throughout the televised story Steven struggles to reach the Abbot, believing him to be the Doctor and thus his salvation. His attempts to assert a personal relationship with this figure are wholly unsuccessful and very nearly get him killed. They do, or so it appears to Steven for nearly 24 anguished hours, get the Doctor killed.

"Then, just when Steven is in absolute despair, the Doctor reappears. He is not dead. He was never dead. Steven was wrong. The Doctor was never a false Abbot. The Abbot was a false Doctor of Steven’s own making. For Steven, the Doctor’s reappearance is a resurrection. Until the old man walks into Preslin’s shop, he is wholly convinced that the Doctor is dead and believes that he has seen his brutalised corpse.

"Resurrection is the central mystery of all variations of Christianity. And The Massacre is a story explicitly concerned with variations in Christianity, which ends with the Doctor’s apparent resurrection three days after the audience last saw him, and which begins with Steven being turned away from an Inn.

"Just putting that out there."

-James Cooray Smith, The Massacre