The Sea Beggar (The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve Episode 2)

The one where Steven falls out of favour with both the Catholics and the Protestants...

I've got to seriously question the Doctor Who production team for scheduling a story which features two characters played by William Hartnell, and then let their star go on holiday for a week right in the middle of it all! It doesn't make sense, and might well be indicative of the turmoil going on behind the scenes at this time. Hartnell and producer John Wiles were not getting on at all, and the star's health was beginning to fail him more and more. Maybe Hartnell deserved a week off after the exhausting slog that was The Daleks' Master Plan, but all the same - why make a story which would potentially feature more Hartnell rather than less?

In the event, of course, The Massacre features an awful lot less of William Hartnell than the average story, which is bizarre when you consider he's supposed to be playing both the Doctor and the Abbot of Amboise. The Doctor disappears midway through War of God, and the Abbot only appears in episode 2 in a pre-filmed reprise from episode 1. It's laughable, really... Some might say the production team were being edgy and taking risks. I just think it smacks of ineptitude.

John Lucarotti - one of Doctor Who's finest writers of the early years - was unhappy with the final drafts written by script editor Donald Tosh. Lucarotti wanted the story to feature much more Doctor and much more Abbot, to play to the whole doppelganger subplot, but with Hartnell taking a week off slap-bang in the middle of the production schedule, Tosh had no option but to pare back the involvement of both characters. This diminishes the impact of the whole "Doctor's double" idea, rendering it much weaker than it should have been.

I'm moaning, I know. Why moan about somebody not appearing in an episode I can't see anyway? But it really rankles with me that they came up with this corking idea, and then threw it away by not investing in the idea properly.

As things stand, Peter Purves carries the weight of the episode as Steven rambles from scene to scene, set to set, searching desperately for the Doctor and managing to get nowhere fast. He even manages to alienate the only sympathisers he has by identifying the Doctor as the Abbot - enemy of the Huguenots! So now he's not trusted by either the Catholics or the Protestants, and Steven really doesn't help matters by running away from his friend Nicholas.

It's nice for a companion to be at the forefront of a story for once, but there's simply not enough for Steven to do for it to really impress. Steven isn't really involved with the political machinations going on between the guest cast, he's simply moving between camps willy-nilly. While Steven wanders the streets of Paris either trying to find the Doctor or avoid the curfew, the real story is going on elsewhere, in other scenes. There's a lovely scene set in the Louvre where various characters conspire in shadowy corners, and this is where the real meat of the tale is. It's all two-faced politicking and plotting assassinations - who is the "sea beggar", who's due to be killed tomorrow? It's not terribly engaging, but at least it's a story. And Steven plays little part in it, little more than the absent Doctor does!

I find it terribly frustrating. It's like one of those classic costume dramas that the BBC used to shell like peas back in the 1960s, but which has had Steven Taylor hastily, but only superficially, written into it. I get the feeling that all of this would be happening anyway whether the TARDIS had landed there or not. The same might be said for other Doctor Who historicals, but at least the cast gets involved in some way in events in The Aztecs, The Reign of Terror and The Crusade.

It's all very ponderous and talky. Even the sword fight between Steven and Gaston is a half-hearted damp squib which fizzles out before it's even begun. No wonder the viewing figures plummeted during this serial (the recent high of The Abandoned Planet's 9.8m tumbled to just 6.0m for The Sea Beggar - and it would get worse before it got better). And the cliffhanger has to be one of the most underwhelming to date: the sea beggar is revealed to be the Admiral de Coligny. Oh... OK... Wow-wee!

First broadcast: February 12th 1966

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Every actor - without exception - is putting in a fabulous performance, especially the wonderful Andre Morell and Leonard Sachs (big names for the time too).
The Bad: There's Steven. And then there's the rest of the story. And as for the missing Hartnell...
Overall score for episode: ★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

NEXT TIME: Priest of Death...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: War of God (episode 1); Priest of Death (episode 3); Bell of Doom (episode 4)

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site: http://doctorwhocastandcrew.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/the-massacre-of-st-bartholomews-eve.html

The soundtrack to The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve is available on CD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Massacre-Peter-Purves/dp/0563552611