The Massacre by: John Lucarotti

 

The Massacre was written by: John Lucarotti, based on his story of the same name.  It was the 125^th story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

On television, The Massacre was rewritten several times by Donald Tosh at the behest of producer John Wiles.  This was largely due to production difficulties: there were uncertainties whether William Hartnell could adequately perform the double role of the Doctor and the Abbot of Amboise as well as if the production team could feasibly film the episodes within the typical 90 minute recording blocks.  Hartnell was also given a week off for the second episode of the serial and the initial plans to introduce new companion Anne Chaplet fell through as Wiles and Tosh believed she would have the same issues as Katarina, both characters out of the long distant past.  Tosh would be credited on the fourth installment as cowriter, being responsible for a full-scale rewrite of the entire serial and leaving his position as story editor during production.  When it came to novelizing the story in 1987, John Lucarotti made the decision to go back to the original scripts instead of following the televised story.

 

In using the original scripts, The Massacre immediately improves by involving the Doctor far more actively in events.  Lucarotti enhances the mystery of whether the Abbot and the Doctor are the same person by resolving it earlier.  While the Abbot and the Doctor do not share scenes, the Doctor does impersonate the Abbot to actively attempt to save people.  Lucarotti’s other Doctor Who scripts played up the Doctor as a trickster figure, something that was lacking in the televised version of The Massacre, and reading the novelization makes you feel its absence.  If given this material to work with William Hartnell would have excelled in accentuating how different the Doctor and the Abbot are.  This does mean that the final scenes in the TARDIS are absent, the Doctor does save people, so Steven does not have nearly as much anger, but it’s a clear decision from Lucarotti that understands the character motivations for leaving.  It denies the novelization of one of Hartnell’s best speeches but in its place the story is overall stronger.

 

There’s a sense that Lucarotti is using The Massacre to comment on The Aztecs.  The Aztecs is a story that writes into stone that “You can’t rewrite history, not one line.” and on television The Massacre draws its drama from the Doctor following that to the letter.  The novelization takes almost a delight in making the Doctor an active participant in rewriting history, not so much that the grand scheme of things changes, but enough that the massacre of the Huguenots is less deadly.  It’s still a tragedy, there is still a massacre that in the novelization Lucarotti leaves to the reader to fully embrace the horror of the situation, but the Doctor saves people.  He also comes dangerously close to breaking the laws of time, Lucarotti writing this book from a perspective where Doctor Who has just broadcast its 23^rd season all about the Doctor being put on trial for doing just that.  He even includes a framing device of the Time Lords extracting the Doctor from his timeline to question the events of the story.  It’s an odd framing story, Lucarotti clearly likes the idea of the Time Lords but hasn’t actually seen The War Games or The Trial of a Time Lord, yet it works for the novel.  It’s a literary device to portray the Doctor as an underdog.

 

Overall, The Massacre as a novel ends up becoming one of the strongest examples of how to novelize a story.  Some of it might be the fact that the television story is the story hit most hard by the junkings, no episodes or telesnaps or clips exist and the soundtrack is a poor quality, and reading the novelization is a more consistent exploration of the historic setting and one with a better grasp on the characters.  Lucarotti has always had a unique voice for Doctor Who but The Massacre is his masterpiece.  9/10.