“Even after all this time he cannot understand” 

Un autre épisode endommagé, qui avec son Docteur seul et amer conclut enfin un cycle atrocement sanglant. Mais pour le coup c’est vraiment la performance finale de William Hartnell qui porte son intrigue. 

En effet c’est un récit de comment l’Histoire broie des vies et les gens sont impuissants. Mais le pauvre Steven est tellement passif et réduit à un cache-cache fastidieux dans Paris qu’il se noie juste dans un ensemble de scènes historiques aléatoires. 

En fait les deux grands récits de The Massacre se parasitent l’un l’autre, et Steven est tout le temps coincé entre les deux. 

Mais si c’est déjà très révélateur d’une époque qui ne sait plus ce qu’elle veut dire, c’est aussi représentatif d’un personnage qui n’en a jamais été un.

“Kings are recognised only by the power they wield.”

Seems I might be alone in this, but it’s really not for me this one. A dark, gritty and rather depressing set of episodes set in 1500s France. It’s bleak and really delves into the political standings of the era, and while I feel I have learned something of the time period, I found the story itself to be incredible boring.

Perhaps not helped by the entire story being missing, with only the reconstruction to view. It’s a lot of dialogue, a lot of slow paced scenes, and a whole host of characters that I found rather hard to keep up with it all.

Peter Purves does a good job, being the main focus of the story around the other cast side characters. While Hartnell’s role as the Abbot is a fun idea, but doesn’t really actually mean much to the story, and without being able to see the performance, it’s hard to gauge really what was different here. Though, the ending with Hartnell’s little speech is brilliant, and warm.

I can see why people enjoy this, but just didn’t really work for me. Too slow, and really not what I look for in compelling Doctor Who episodes.

The Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve: 7.4/10 - This serial was very fun, albeit slightly confusing. I thought part one was a great set up with the characters all being interesting. Part two and onwards felt packed full of different characters and I sometimes couldn’t tell who was on which side as the backgrounds all seemed very similar which made it feel like it was the same set over and over. Steven was definitely the highlight here with he and Anne being a great partnership. The Doctor being absent for the majority of the serial felt right for this story and paved the way for Steven to become more independent. The Abbot of Amboise was a character that didn’t have much to do and that I wish got more screen time.

I found Massacre a little pedestrian in the most part, pure historicals are often not quite as fun as a standard story. I'm always amazed how many Doctor Who plots revolve around the Doctor having a doppelganger or the Doctor disguising himself in some way.

The last 10 minutes of this story beat the rest in terms of quality easily. Just as you think Steven is about to storm out in a fit of moral outrage, a new character joins the team. We were made to think about the consequences of death encountered on The Doctor's travels, the responsibilities of time travelers and look back nostalgically at The Doctor's former companions.

I am starting to feel a bit sorry for Hartnell when he misremembers Susan as "Sue" and has his same old problem with Chesterton/"Chetterton".

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.