22: The Massacre of St. Bartholemew's Eve

Before Watching

Throughout my formative Who-watching years , from the Jon Pertwee era right up until the end of the Tom Baker era, it was pretty much a given that the Doctor only had one companion. Yes, he had the backup of the UNIT lot in Jon’s time, and for a few stories he had Harry Sullivan at the start of Tom’s tenure – but the most part he was with just Liz Shaw – just Jo Grant – just Sarah Jane Smith – just Leela – just Romana (don’t let’s get into how much of a companion K9 was just right now). So it’s with some surprise that I come to realize that as far as I can tell, this is the first story where the Doctor has just the one companion – Steven. Katarina, who only came aboard in The Myth Makers, bit the dust last time out, leaving just Steven. Thinking about it – I’m pretty sure that this will be the only Hartnell story where he has only one companion for its whole duration. I know that Dodo Chaplet rears her homely head right at the end, but that’s after the ‘story’ part of the story is over. Steven leaves at the end of the Savages, but Ben and Polly (we’ll get to them afterwards) are there right throughout The War Machines, and stay right through into Patrick Troughton’s tenure.

As for this story – well, I’ll be honest and say that I’m not looking forward to it. Our last venture into historical France, The Reign of Terror failed to interest me much, and so I’m pretty sure that my candle will remain unlit through this one.

After Watching

One of the first nice surprises about the first episode was the presence of Eric Thompson as Gaston. Nowadays probably best known as the father of double Oscar winner Emma Thompson, Eric Thompson was asked by the BBC to take the tapes of a French programme for young children, called Le Ménage Enchanté – and translate it into English and record the voices for it. The thing was, Eric Thompson didn’t actually speak French. So what he did was to rewrite each episode based on what he saw on screen, and what he created was a thing of great wit and charm, which appealed to adults to an extent as well as the kids it was written for. He also created one of the great characters of kids TV in Dougal. He wrote several books of stories based on the characters, and these were witty and funny and just beautifully written.

To this story, then. The TARDIS has indeed landed in France again, several centuries earlier than in the Reign of Terror. The real life Massacre of St. Bartholemew’s Eve happened in 1572. This is not a period of French history that most viewers would have known a great deal about. Basically, it was a time of great religious upheaval. It was a rather complicated period to try to explain in a few lines, but we’ll try. At the time of the story, the Huguenots – French Calvinist Protestants – were fighting for greater power and acceptance of their religion. They had already been subjected to one terrible massacre at Vassy ten years earlier. Their great hope lay in the fact that the heir to the French throne, Henri de Navarre, was protestant himself. In 1572 the reactionary Catholic, the Duc de Guise, had his supporters murdered the Admiral de Coligny, who had the ear of the King, Charles IX. This began 5 days of Catholic violence against Huguenots, in which perhaps as many as 10,000 were killed. This was known as the St. Bartholemew’s Day Massacre.

When the TARDIS lands, and the Doctor works out where and when they are, he decides to go off on a jolly to visit the scientist Preslin – Elvis Preslin?  - and so he tells Steven all of this as they are sitting in a tavern, and warns him to stay out of trouble. Hello pot – this is the kettle, ringing to tell you that you’re black. Of course, the tavern does happen to be a hot bed of Huguenot intrigue, as Steven falls in with the patently good and earnest David Weston as Nicholas Muss, and the hotheaded Eric Thompson as Gaston de Lerans. They accept Steven into their company and as they are toddling off home, they rescue a frightened servant girl, Anne Chaplet, who tells them she worked for the Abbot of Amboise, and overheard plotting for another massacre like that of Vassy.

There’s an interesting directorial choice here. The decision was made to have Anne say her lines in a ‘peasant’ accent. The trouble is, the more she speaks, especially in the second episode, the more her delivery reminds me of Pam Ayres.

The second pleasant surprise of the first episode was seeing that Preslin was played by Eric Chitty. People of my vintage will remember Eric Chitty as Smithy in the sitcom Please Sir, but for classic era Doctor Who fans he will always be Co ordinator Engin in my all time favourite story “The Deadly Assassin”.

The Doctor fades out of this story about halfway through episode one , but William Hartnell has to play two roles in the story as it turns out. The big cliffhanger at the end of the first episode is that the evil Abbot of Amboise, the architect of the massacre to come, is in fact a dead ringer for the Doctor, and played by Hartnell as well.

Episode two focused largely on the baddies’ attempts to get Anne back, even though half the time they are also saying that she isn’t important. Hmm. It’s a completely Doctorless episode, and so Steven has to take the centre stage a lot, and fair play to good old Peter Purves, he has a pretty good lash at it as well. He is with his Huguenot mates when he sees the Abbot of Amboise, whom he immediately identifies as the Doctor. Made aware of his mistake he gets Nicholas to take him to Preslin’s, where a dotty old bag tells him that Preslin has been in prison for the last two years. Huh? Steven gives an angry Nicholas the slip, then later overhears the Catholic baddies discussing plans to murder the Sea Beggar. He tries to tell the Huguenots, but Gaston is having none of it, and even draws on Steven, who saves himself by not fighting. Hmm. Gaston won’t listen to him, and sends him away. Again, we got a nicely different type of cliffhanger in this episode, which ends with the Admiral Coligny revealing that his championing of a treaty with the Dutch against Spain has earned him the nickname of the Sea Beggar. Oooh!

I was really enjoying this story, and hoping that episode three would be as good as the first two, and . . . it was! What I think happened is that the production team made a tense, well written political drama, and I found that I was being drawn into the goings on in and outside the royal court. In fact, Steven’s actions came to be something of a diversion, and I almost wished he’d just let the story get on with it. I don’t know if it does help to already know something about the background leading up to the massacre, for example,  I was a little confused when Coligny survived the assassination attempt, since Coligny’s assassination was actually the catalyst for the atrocities that followed. Here might be the time to mention the number of other good actors who turn in fine performances – Leonard Sachs and Andre Morell to name but two. As the episode worked its way to a conclusion though, I did wonder where it was going to go. After all the massacre did actually happen, and nothing Steven or the Doctor could do would prevent it. You can see the swerve the story is taking, though, with the killing of the abbot, and Steven’s fear that he is going to be stranded .

Episode 4 was rather strange – not bad, and not unenjoyable, but strange. In fact it was very enjoyable, but it was remarkable how quickly the story leaves behind the political drama. The Doctor suddenly reappears, and refuses to explain his absence other than the fact he has been held up. I can’t help thinking that William Hartnell has been rather shabbily treated in this story – all in all he must have been absent for over 2 episodes’ length. Yes, he got to do the cameo as the Abbot, but it’s not the same as having a sizable amount to do as the Doctor. He always rose to the occasion when he was given a script as good as this one as well. He hasn’t been back 5 minutes when he’s reaffirming the Aztecs doctrine – namely that you can’t change History, not one line of it. Oh yeah? Why did you spend so much energy thwarting the Monk, then? Why not just sit back and wait for it all to go pear shaped? It’s not the only throwback to an earlier series in this episode either. The Doctor’s haste to get to the TARDIS and get out is very familiar, and some of his former harshness seems rather evident in the way that he insists that Anne Chaplet should go to her auntie, rather than accompanying them. Mind you, considering what happened to his last two female assistants I suppose you can’t blame him. To lose one companion may be looked on as misfortune, but to lose two . . .

Whether you liked or disliked this episode  (I loved it ) there’s no way that you could call it boring. Following their departure we’re treated to a montage of woodcuts showing the horrors of the massacre. That’s something different. Then Steven, disgusted with the Doctor’s attitude to Anne, insists on jumping ship at the next stop. This happens to be Wimbledon Common. Steven hops out, and the Doctor leaves the door open, and then embarks upon a short but mesmerizing monologue about his former companions. Hartnell at his absolute best, showing everyone what they’d been missing during the story. A young dark haired woman with a (vague) resemblance to Susan runs in. The suspicion that she may not be the sharpest knife in the cutlery drawer is raised by the fact that she doesn’t seem to notice that the inside is bigger than the outside. Hmm. She is none other than Dodo Chaplet, possibly a descendant of Anne Chaplet, who may have survived the massacre after all. She hasn’t got Anne’s French/mummerset accent though. Dodo is determinedly Mancunian. Well, we’ll see how long she keeps that up.

Make no bones – that was great. Seriously, Doctor Who at its best

What have we learned?

Apparently you can’t change time again (but you can)