The Massacre Of St. Bartholomew's Eve represents an important milestone in my Doctor Who marathon. It's the first four-parter I watched over the course of a single day(minus my DVDs). I don't know if it's because of the excitement of not having to hear the name "Mavic Chen" again or because I wanted to get it over with or because the story was great. But I suspect the last one.
In many ways, The Massacre is almost a sequel to The Reign Of Terror. Both take place in historical Paris, both keep the Doctor away from the plot, both feature dark periods in French history, both are complex, grim stories that are immersed in inevitability. Heck, both have the heroes dress up for the occasion whereas in other historicals, they don't seem to care(The Romans is an exception).
But where The Reign Of Terror fails, The Massacre succeeds. For one, the pacing is alright(there aren't any unnecessary extra episodes). Despite the type of story, the focus is undeniably on a character we know and care about: Steven Taylor. With good actors playing better-written roles, we grow to care and understand about the situation much more(especially me, who has no clue about this period). Nicholas, Gaston, the Admiral and Anne all had easily identifiable personalities that allowed us to get a grip on the story.
I'm not gonna lie and say I followed it through. I didn't. I have no idea whom half of the villain characters were(the Queen Mother's lackeys) or their motivations and plans in this. I couldn't follow why they thought the Abbot screwed things up. But I did follow what they wanted at the time of their wanting it and that's all that really mattered, in the end.
The eponymous Massacre itself was both breathtaking, utterly depressing and like the previous story, just something you wanted the characters to get out of as soon as possible and move on to a lighter thing. Despite the scale of the story being far smaller than The Daleks' Master Plan, the death-count was far higher and it mattered more. Or should I say, added another list of names?
As for the characters, I shall start with Steven this time. For starters, this is the first story of Classic Who to have a single companion traveling with the Doctor. In the context of this story, it works very well. There's a sense of loneliness about them now, two wanderers caught up in the tide. Three companions or even two companions would be enough to keep each other company, but ONE Doctor and ONE companion in the Hartnell era... just imagine it.
But to shake things up even more, the Doctor disappears after Episode 1, leaving Steven all alone in the streets to worry about Protestants and Catholics lynching him. Just by his very presence, he's caused a turmoil(and he can't hide in the TARDIS, because the Doctor has the only key and unknownst to Steven, there's that melt-if-tried-by-an-alien lock system).
Lost in history(remember, he's from the future), Steven has nothing to follow, but his morals which lead him to save Anne Chaplet, a servant girl who helps him hide out.
Meanwhile, there's an Abbot running around who looks and sounds exactly like the Doctor. I would say this is an incredibly pointless plot twist, but it only adds to the confusion and feeling of paranoia in this story so it works quite well. Steven is also led to believe the Doctor's dead and waaaay before Rose with her mum, boyfriend, goodbye speech, TARDIS/safety, he has to confront spending the rest of his life with nothing, but Anne, the wildly wrong time period and the constant threat of the religious fanatics.
But of course the Doctor returns(and suspiciously says nothing about his activities over the last few days) and after discovering the date, immediately drags Steven back to the TARDIS and in the complete reversal of The Fires Of Pompeii, leaves Anne to her fate, afraid of a change in history.
Oh, wait, I was talking about characters.
Well, Anne is lovely. I liked her connection with Steven and her loyalty to his cause(despite being just as confused as him) was admirable. Much better than the deus ex machina that is Dodo.
Hartnell didn't do much to differ from his normal performance when playing the Abbot(just a little bit more would've been better), but that's completely made up by his final speech where he ponders his newly found loneliness and even considers returning to Gallifrey(I bet half of you never knew that!)
Great speech. But of course it's ruined by Steven's immediate return to the TARDIS, for no real reason and then the realization that Dodo might be Anne's descendant. It's a cop-out if I ever saw one.
Speaking of the Doctor/Steven stand-off, what made it great is that you can understand and sympathize with both viewpoints. The Doctor's insistence on not altering history isn't wrong, because IF Anne did survive and her descendants endured and shaped future events, that whole thing could have gone sky high had the Doctor saved her.
On the other hand, saving her from the Protestants wouldn't have been wrong either, because being able to save 1 life from 10 000, when given the chance is something the Doctor will stand for in future incarnations.
As a final note, I will say this... if I could show any Doctor Who story to Steven Moffat(whom, if I haven't said it before, I do appreciate as show-runner) it is this, because it is pretty much the antithesis of every mistake he's done.
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