The Original Doctor Who: The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve (Story 22, 1966)

The Doctor cannot seem to stay away from France. Early on in the series we discover that the French Revolution is one of his favorite time periods, whatever that might reveal about his personality. The Doctor, Susan, Ian and Barbara had a chance to experience it first-hand in the eighth story and first season finale, The Reign of Terror. Now those three companions are long gone and The Doctor and Steven have returned a few centuries before, in time for a relatively obscure historical event known as the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre.

The actual massacre occurred on August 23rd, 1572, the eve of the Feast Day of St. Bartholomew the Apostle. At this time, France was a hotbed of religious controversy frequently breaking down into outright violence. Shortly before, a peace treaty ended three years of civil war between French Catholics and the Huguenots, or French Calvinist Protestants. In 1571, Huguenot Admiral Gaspard de Coligny was readmitted to the French court to the outrage of Catholics. Furthermore the Queen Mother Catherine de' Medici conspired to keep the peace by marrying her daughter Margaret, sister to King Charles IX, to the Huguenot prince Henry of Navarre (future King Henry IV). The procession of Huguenots escorting the prince to stunchly Catholic Paris was a provocation that fundamentalist mobs could not ignore.

After the wedding of prince and princess, an attempt was made on de Coligny's life. No one is exactly sure who called the hit: the Cardinal of Lorraine, Duke of Alba, or Catherine de' Medici herself. Whoever it was, it created a crisis in Paris that culminated in the massacre. Huguenots demanded justice backed up by a camp of 4000 outside the gates of the city. In response, de Coligny home was raided and he was successfully murdered, his body thrown out a window. This set off the mob violence that lasted for three days and ended up with between 5000 and 30,000 Huguenot men, women and children dead. In the week following, the Crown paid workers to haul over 1000 bodies that had washed up on the banks of the Seine.

The Doctor and Steven were thrown into this sectarian mess only a few days before the massacre, during the attempted assassination of de Coligny. The advantage to script writers John Lucarotti and Donald Tosh was the obscurity of the event. Though it did much to solidify Protestant antipathy towards the Catholic Church and place the agenda of French national unity above Christian religious disunity, it was and remains a relatively unknown event. As a consequence, the viewer is swept along in a suspenseful, ever-escalating drama against which the time travellers are helpless.



The Massacre is one of the lost stories, preserved only in audio form narrated by Peter Purves. Because of this, one of the central conceits of the drama is also lost, being the identical resemblance of the Doctor to the Abbot of Amboise, retainer to the Cardinal of Lorraine. This puts Steven into a tough spot as he has fallen in with the Huguenots and must explain why his friend is supposedly masquerading as the sect's most furious opponent. Steven has also made the acquaintance of a Huguenot serving girl named Anne Chaplet. This connection infuriates Steven when the Doctor forces them to leave the scene of the massacre without her, effectively consigning her to death in the name of non-interference.

When they arrive in 1966 London, Steven reams out the Doctor's lack of compassion and storms out of the TARDIS, promising never to return. At this juncture we are treated to one of William Hartnell's greatest monologues, easily the equal to his farewell to Susan at the end of The Dalek Invasion of Earth.

Steven... Even after all this time, he cannot understand. I dare not change the course of history. Well, at least I taught him to take some precautions; he did remember to look at the scanner before he opened the doors. And now, they're all gone. All gone. None of them could understand. Not even my little Susan. Or Vicki. And as for Barbara and Chatterton - Chesterton - they were all too impatient to get back to their own time. And now, Steven. Perhaps I should go home. Back to my own planet. But I can't... I can't...

Hartnell is often accused of doddering to the point of incompetence, but this is grossly unfair. Though somewhat irascible himself, the Doctor was a character and within that character he could range from comedy to incredible pathos like this speech.

It's not quite over for him. Surprisingly, a young lady stumbles into the TARDIS looking for the phone and taking altogether too long to figure out that it's not actually a police box. Then Steven bursts back in, telling the Doctor that they have to leave, as two Bobbies are on their way over. With the flick of a switch, the two travellers have a new companion. Incredulous, Steven asks her name. It is Dodo Chaplet, possible descendant of Anne Chaplet (and, in the realms of fan speculation, the innuendo-laden descendant of Steven as well). An unfilmed scene would have also had Ian and Barbara catch a glimpse of the old blue phonebox dematerialize.