A pretty excellent historical that easily could be one of the Doctor's best were it not for the somewhat awkward content around the Doctor being missing for one of the episodes. It is understandable given the brutal production scheduling of this era, but the effect on The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve exists just the same.

Still, it is an interesting story with good actors, and the lack of Hartnell does allow Steven's character to shine a little bit. There is some very dark and ponderous material to this story that I really appreciate. It is probably one of my more favourite of First Doctor stories I have encountered so far. I thought the historical content was really well done (especially the costumes and sets) while I also was really moved by the final episode, which really pushed Doctor Who in this darker direction.

It's an interesting time period of the show where they were really experimenting with this more brutal and harsh content the classic series would never really revisit, but I don't think it was ever a bad take on Doctor Who. It's serious and ponderous, but most importantly, stories like Massacre really worked, in my opinion, and stand out nicely. Even Dodo's appearance at the end works well at blunting the severity of the story a bit, which I think works well to wrap things up on an at least somewhat helpful not. A good ending to a good story, one sadly underrated, likely due to the lost episodes.