The Massacre

5TH FEBRUARY 1966 - 26TH FEBRUARY 1966

(4 EPISODES)

  1. WAR OF GOD      2. THE SEA BEGGAR

3. PRIEST OF DEATH      4. BELL OF DOOM

I always wondered why The Massacre was chosen to launch the BBC Radio Collection’s range of surviving soundtracks. Completely dependent on the purely visual ploy of the Doctor and the Abbot of Amboise being almost physically identical, it doesn’t seem an obvious choice. Then again, few serials are quite as lost as The Massacre is – it is currently one of just three serials that we can only enjoy through sound and sound alone. Not a single second of footage survived the fires.

John Lucarotti and Donald Tosh’s script tells an interesting tale set around a historical event that many people - myself included - know precious little about. The format of the serial is similarly refreshing as for most of the story we do not see the Doctor at all; the tale is told instead from the viewpoint of his companion, Steven. It seems fitting, then, that after doing such a sterling job of carrying the narrative single-handedly the first time around, Peter Purves returns here to provide the linking narration. It is through Steven’s dialogue and Purves’s narration that we learn that the Abbot is the Doctor’s double, but like Steven we have no idea whether the Doctor has disguised himself the Abbot or has a doppelganger. Needless to say, on television this would have been a tantalising gimmick, and thanks to Purves’s quite excellent narration it can at least be understood and followed in this medium.

The final episode of the serial is the most powerful of the four by far. “Bell of Doom” mirrors the events of the earlier historical, The Aztecs, as the Doctor’s companion wants to change history and is far from happy about being told that he can’t. Steven believes that his friend (and the story’s makeshift second companion) Anne Chaplet will have been killed in the massacre, and blames the Doctor for not trying to save her, resulting in his impromptu decision to leave the TARDIS at the story’s end. As Steven disembarks in Wimbledon Common, we are treated to a rare and beautiful Bill Hartnell soliloquy that highlights the tragic side of the Doctor’s character – none of his travelling companions, not even his “little Susan” could understand him, and now, like them, Steven has left him too. The Doctor is so forlorn that he even contemplates returning to his unspecified home planet, before the elegant introspection is shattered by the ham-fisted Dodo Chaplet bursting into the TARDIS looking for a policeman, Steven hot on her heels. It seems that Anne Chaplet may have survived after all…

I can’t credit the BBC enough for taking the time and care not only to dust down this lost soundtrack, but to make it palatable through linking narration. Unfortunately though, unlike premeditated audio drama, there is simply not enough here to give the real flavour of the piece. On the strength of what survives, The Massacre might be something of a silent classic, but it’s also the serial that begat Dodo, and in its current form it just doesn’t have enough positives to make up for that.

Copyright © E.G. Wolverson 2006

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