brightly full of laughter.
Well, the massacre started as a story that I wanted and Johnny Wiles wanted to do.
After that John Luca Ratti had presented us with about two ideas, one of which he was
very keen on, which was to do with Eric the Red, the Viking, but seemed to involve 90%
of the thing going to be shot at sea, which was quite difficult to recreate in the studio
from the riverside.
So we offered him the idea that he should do St Bartholomew's Massacre.
He took it away and he delivered some scripts which really were just not what we were looking
for.
So we had long, serious arguments, but as he had been commissioned to write three stories,
of which this was the third, we had to accept it, which meant that we then could not commission
somebody else to rewrite it.
So I rewrote it, which was always the simple way out.
On these I spent a little time in the British Museums doing some research, but knew a certain
amount about it anyway from what I had read previously and my own historical background.
And that is how the Massacre came about.
The story, quite simply, is the Doctor and Stephen land in Paris just before St Bartholomew's
Massacre, unaware of what is about to happen, unaware of the date.
The Doctor knows he's in the middle of the 15th century, there's a very particular apothecary
he wishes to see, so off he goes.
He goes to see him, Stephen gets embroiled in the Catholic and Protestant troubles that
were rife in Paris at the time.
It's enormous potential, it always did have enormous potential for a bit of swashbuckling
and a bit of general menace, because the figure of Catherine de' Medici is wonderful.
She is about the most sinister weaver ever in France and she meddled all the time.
If you read any French history you'll discover she was one of the great meddling women of
history.
A beautiful play by Dero Joan Young, who was at the time known primarily for her great
work in radio.
She was one of the great radio actresses, but she agreed to come and play Catherine
for us quite splendidly.
We knew that Bill Hartnell was going to have to retire.
He was finding, in a sense, it more and more difficult.
He was also getting, at times, bored.
It was, in a sense, time for him to move on.
This was the first story where, in fact, we sent Bill off and he hardly features.
He comes and plays another part, which gives him something else to do and gives a nice
twist to the whole story.
Bill played the abbot of Hormuz, the double, but he doesn't feature as actually as the
Doctor, though of course Stephen thinks that the abbot of Hormuz is the Doctor.
Bill, in fact, enjoyed it hugely because he was playing a different part.
He was very much better, I think, as the abbot of Hormuz than he had been as Doctor Who himself
for quite some time.
However, he was full of menace and threats because he had been, and indeed was, a very,
very fine actor.
If you pick up Bill's performances in things like Brighton Rock, the Carol Reid film, it's
wonderful, full of this real sinister power.
He could deliver, Bill could deliver when he wanted and when he felt like.
But I'm afraid we were aware that these moments were becoming rarer and rarer in the part
of the Doctor.
And so we were thinking of ways of trying to ease him out by sending him off.
At least we showed that the Doctor could kind of go away, even though there was somebody
who looked like the Doctor around.
He wasn't the Doctor.
This was one of the ways that we were going to kind of gently ease him out when, further
on in the Celestial Toymaker, we vanish him away altogether into Campsie Abyssal.
And so all these things had been shown before so that when he turns into Patrick Dracken,
it isn't quite such a shock for the audience.
They are aware that the Doctor is a very strange being and strange things happen.
And he transmutes into somebody else.
This had been sort of laid as a kind of ground plan.
And this is the very first early step in doing that.
If the tapes were still in existence, you would see there was no writing credit at all
until we get to Episode Four, by which time the powers that be had suddenly noticed that
Doctor Who was going out without, and it all was then explained to them.
And they say, but you can't go that writing credit.
There can't be a writing credit.
So my name was put on it.
The, although we were contractually, initially obliged to put John LeCroy, he had insisted
on having his name taken off.
He took it off the screen, but it was one of those occasions where it is left on the
camera script purely and simply because in those days, if they were referring to overseas
sales or anything else, they frequently went back to the front page of the council to see
who needed to be paid, who needed and didn't, and that.
And all those sorts of residuals.
If his name had been taken off that, he would have lost all his residuals, which would have
made him even crosser.
The dialogue always was, if there was a change, the dialogue that had been altered would be
altered on the final camera script.
Because when you were selling abroad, and certainly if it has to be translated or anything
else, they had to know precisely what people are saying.
So that it A, can be translated accurately, and B, if they're dubbing it, they know it's
to do with mouths and movements and all that.
Or certainly in those days, it's much simpler now.
I mean, technically, all sorts of things can be achieved now.
And of course, as Bill возмож Cou sinít was going, I was the leader of the group.
One of the guys who used to be the face of the hill won a big band purse an he started
And we seem to her, but it should never have happened.
It's what is known as breaking the fourth wall.
You mustn't do that.
Don't you remember the police station at Christmas?
So it was, yes.
Here's a toast to happy Christmas to all of us.
So do you, Doctor.
Incidentally, a happy Christmas to all of you at home.
There is a myth, though it was current at the time,
that the Barlow master, the 12-part Barlow,
was forced upon Johnny Wilds and I
because Verity agreed to do it.
But I gather she only agreed to do it
because she knew that Sidney Newman's mother or mother-in-law
thought it would be a wonderful idea.
And this had been passed on.
And we were numbered with it.
Whether we liked it or not, we had to do a 12-part.
This meant we had to get Terry Nation, who
was heavily involved in writing a thing called
The Baron, which was being shot in America.
He was involved in both the production side as well as
the writing side of that.
And the last thing he wanted was to have
to be heavily involved in a Dalek again,
because he had only recently done one.
However, he did it.
And he came up with a sort of very slight thread
that was to run through all 12 episodes, the second sex
of which would be written by Dennis Spooner,
my predecessor as editor.
And Terry was agreeable to this.
It meant he only had to write six scripts.
And time went on and time went on.
And Terry would not.
He said, yes, yes, yes.
I'm very busy, but I'm dealing with it.
I'm dealing with it.
And eventually, we were but a week and a bit away
from filming for the all first six episodes.
And I spoke to him on the phone.
And he said, I will deliver them to you, to your flat
in Bloomsbury, if that's where I live, tonight.
Because I'm catching a plane, and I've
got to be in New York tomorrow morning.
Fine.
I said, OK, OK.
God's sake, let me have them before you
go to America tonight.
And the doorbell duly rang that evening.
I dashed downstairs and opened the door.
And there he stood with me hand in hand.
There's the script, he said.
I must go.
And dashed downstairs into his taxi, off, gone.
And it was really quite a thin envelope.
But I took it upstairs.
It ran till about 24, 25 pages.
And considering it was supposed to be six episodes,
I thought, help.
We are, as they say, in trouble.
I rang Johnny Wiles, who, I'm afraid, said, it's your fault
you didn't write him hard enough to get them delivered sooner.
And I thought, I don't like this.
Anyway, it came down to one thing.
I had to write them, or at least take his thread
and write the first six episodes.
Fortunately, Dennis had taken his thread long since the bit
that he was due to do and had been asking me,
when am I going to see what I do as the very beginning of mine
and so as to get the links right?
And I said, I have no idea.
But now I was the one who was going to have to provide Dennis
with his links.
And so I contacted Dennis and said, what was he doing
at the beginning of his episode one, which was episode seven?
And he said, well, I was going to do this.
I said, fine, right.
You stick with that.
I'll head towards that.
And that is roughly what happened.
I then wrote to Dennis's, up to Dennis's scripts.
There is one ironic and really absurd story
that made the BBC insiders rock with happy laughter
was that in those days, there was a program called
Late Night Lineup.
And they used to do interviews about television and everything
else.
And Verity Lambert and a very eminent television critic
discussed the new mammoth 12-part Doctor Who.
And at some point in the discussion,
it came out that Terry had done this.
And they spoke at great length about Terry's writing
and his skills.
And they said, you could always tell a Terry Nation script
because he is the only poet of science fiction.
I was greeted the next morning by being
hailed as the only poet of science fiction.
Still working at the BBC.
But because Terry hadn't written a word of it.
But still, there we go.
Malick Jones as a character is mine,
even though his name is not.
It isn't a my kind of name.
I'm sure Terry came up with the name.
But yes, I mean, he was mentioned
because he is sort of the head of the galaxy.
But more than a mention, I don't think he had a line of dialogue.
Because there were only about eight lines of dialogue
in the entire 26 pages.
Most of it was descriptions of people dashing about
from one planet to another in yet another spaceship
or whatever, looking for this substance
that the Daleks needed, which the Doctor had.
And so it was just a glorious chase for six solid episodes.
One really had to fill it out.
So the thing that you people work all this time
to recreate what at the time was struck us
as enormously ephemeral, here it is,
you know, 40 years later or whatever.
And people are still interested.
It is both deeply flattering and deeply puzzling to me.
That except, except, except the good storytelling.
And I think the early days of Doctor Who had a lot,
very good storytelling in it.
Will always, it will survive.
But it is nice to know that one, all those years ago,
worked on something, however neurotically at times,
and sort of stressed at times, that has survived
and is being recreated.
And in your case, being recreated with amazing faithfulness.
It is, whether somebody coming to it for the first time
will get the same as somebody who, I mean, I saw it,
I wrote it, I was there.
And yet it always was like seeing the stories again.
Not quite, obviously, but almost.
And the stories come across strongly.
And it, in fact, this very style of telling the story,
of giving the story and making it work,
almost makes the point of how strong the stories are,
that they can take that kind of rather simple
and yet complex treatment.
I mean complex in the author, in actually going back and recreating.
What comes up on the screen is inherently something
that is basically much simpler than the original.
But this is, I think, staggering.
And I suppose in a quaint way, deeply flattering.
There we are. I'll take some of the glory.
The one time I was working, about ten years ago,
and I'd been helping some boys out with a history project
that they were involved in.
And after it was all over, they'd had a certain success with it,
and they came back to say, you know, how it had gone,
and they'd won a prize or something, an award of some kind,
because of it, and they came back to show me this thing,
and to thank me, which was very kind.
And after it was all over, one of them shyly said,
excuse me, may we ask you a question?
I suppose you've been asking me questions for months.
Yes, go ahead.
He said, just tell me, are you the Donald Tosh?
And I said, fine, no. I said, I'm the only one.
And he says, yes, but are you the Donald Tosh
who edited Doctor Who?
And I looked at them, and the oldest was 17,
and I thought, I was doing Doctor Who
probably before your parents were born.
And so, there's a sort of strange, odd...
I don't quite know how to explain it,
but very few people, I mean, they really have to,
because I suppose I wasn't all that young,
but I wasn't all that old when I edited Doctor Who.
And so, here it is, you know, 40 years later,
still capturing the imagination.
The flattering thing is that everyone looks back
on those early years as the golden years,
but Doctor Who, and that is what I would like to think they were.