A thing to love about The Massacre, or at least about one version of The Massacre that you can see: Here's William Hartnell about to be killed.
Yes, the full media player window. Yes, it's important.
(Or maybe it's a picture of William Hartnell from some different story, reacting to something else. Reconstructions).
The plot to assassinate The Sea Beggar has gone wrong.
TAVANNES: So, the Sea Beggar lives. You have failed! Call the guards! It is strange, Father Abbot, that since you came everything which had been so carefully planned has gone wrong.
(Colbert returns with the guards.)
TAVANNES: This man is a traitor to the Queen. Kill him. You heard my order, kill him!
And, as far as we can tell, the Abbot, who may be the Doctor, doesn't protest. Here the limitations of the reconstruction really help. This stony-faced non-reaction ratchets up the tension, making this scene both convincing and terrifying.
The scene’s worth digging into a little deeper, because it may be the key to unlock the intertwined mysteries of The Massacre. There are a lot of mysteries here:
- Why is the Abbot a double for the Doctor?
- Are we, the audience, meant to think he’s actually the Doctor or not?
- If he isn’t, what’s the Doctor doing during the middle two episodes?
- How can Dodo and Anne having the same surname have any significance whatsoever?
- If the whole point is that we don’t know the massacre is coming, why is it called The Massacre?
- Why doesn’t the Doctor intervene, even to save one person? Why is he so insistent that you can’t change history, even in his great monologue at the end when there’s no-one to listen? What are we meant to think of him, in a show that’s been moving to reconfigure him as a hero who makes things better?
And this last question can’t be waved away by saying that on general principle the Doctor thinks you can’t mess with history. Remember, at the end of the last story he used a TIME DESTRUCTOR. As
strange_complex says, “There are only so many times that debate can come up while the Doctor is simultaneously becoming more and more of a hero-figure in the space-travel stories, without the tension between the two approaches becoming unsustainable.”
Outside the series, it’s clear why these questions arise: the development of the script was a mess, Donald Tosh was clear about what to move away from but didn’t have time to get it to where he wanted, and the production team was about to undergo a complete overhaul. John Lucarotti wanted the Huguenots to use the Doctor to try to discredit the Abbot (as still happens in the novelization, see
nwhyte’s review
here), and the last fossil of that plot where the Abbot is accused of treachery is so strong that it ends up surviving into today’s Scene We Love. It is strange, Father Abbot, that since you came everything which had been so carefully planned has gone wrong.
But it’s also hard to see how you do a mistaken-identity plot like that without having it turn into a romp, and a romp would be inappropriate for the material. This is a classic recipe for ending up with a script that’s full of the best ideas available, but doesn’t quite know what its core is, and that’s what we appear to have.
Within the series, however, there’s an interpretation that I think makes it all hang together: the Doctor is the Abbot, and the Doctor does die.
Here’s what happened. The Doctor has defeated the Daleks with the Time Destructor. It was at a great cost, but he did it. After running from
his past mistakes for so long, he’s beginning to stop thinking of himself as a fugitive and to start thinking of himself as a hero. Maybe he can make things better after all.
The Massacre of St Bartholemew is an appropriate test case: an event terrible enough that he can improve things even if he doesn’t prevent the event altogether, but also one that Steven doesn’t know about, so a change won’t affect him (remember my theory that history doesn’t matter, what matters is history you know). For it to work, Steven must not know what the Doctor’s up to, so he slips away. Frustrating for us who have Steven as our viewpoint character, of course, that the narrative focus has to stay with Steven as he’s the stable point, but there you go.
On his own and unobserved, the Doctor can try to act. The real Abbot is waylaid on his way to Paris. The Doctor gambles everything on the hope that preventing the assassination, one tiny change that a real historical person could have made, will avert the massacre. And he manages to prevent the assassination, but for some reason the force of existing history is too strong. It is strange, Father Abbot, that since you came everything which had been so carefully planned has gone wrong. He is revealed as a traitor. He is killed and his body dumped in the streets. His death, blamed on the Huguenots, replaces the assassination as the catalyst for the killing of the next days. He is blasted back to Preslin’s shop. The timelines judder back together.
My dear Steven, history sometimes gives us a terrible shock, and that is because we don't quite fully understand. Why should we? After all, we're all too small to realise its final pattern. Therefore, don't try and judge it from where you stand. I was right to do as I did. Yes, that I firmly believe... Even after all this time, he cannot understand. I dare not change the course of history... None of them could understand. Not even my little Susan.
If you believe my take above, this otherwise bafflingly opaque monologue (“I was right to do as I did” in a story where we've barely seen the Doctor do anything; all the references to the companions not being able to understand history as if that had been an important theme anywhere other than in The Aztecs) makes sense: the Doctor has tried to change history, been rebuffed, and is now on his own and ready to give up.
(We also explain the mystery of the story's name: yes, Steven doesn't know about the Massacre, but the subtext of the entire story is the Doctor's attempt to prevent it. And we get thematic unity: the Doctor's plotting in private mirrors the plots and counterplots onstage. Clearly, no writer thought that this was what was going on in the story, but from now on this is my canon).
And then history throws him a bone: a girl with the same name, a lifeline of hope that he made a small difference and got away with it. A girl who won't be missed, who looks just like Susan. Surnames aren't matrilineal? Doesn't matter here; if history's sending you a message, it will use whatever channel it can.
There is hope. You can make a difference. Some things are permitted. Onwards.