WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:12.760 brightly full of laughter. 00:12.760 --> 00:35.160 Well, the massacre started as a story that I wanted and Johnny Wiles wanted to do. 00:35.160 --> 00:45.240 After that John Luca Ratti had presented us with about two ideas, one of which he was 00:45.240 --> 00:54.160 very keen on, which was to do with Eric the Red, the Viking, but seemed to involve 90% 00:54.160 --> 01:02.880 of the thing going to be shot at sea, which was quite difficult to recreate in the studio 01:02.880 --> 01:06.720 from the riverside. 01:06.720 --> 01:16.200 So we offered him the idea that he should do St Bartholomew's Massacre. 01:16.200 --> 01:21.000 He took it away and he delivered some scripts which really were just not what we were looking 01:21.000 --> 01:22.000 for. 01:22.000 --> 01:29.880 So we had long, serious arguments, but as he had been commissioned to write three stories, 01:29.880 --> 01:37.560 of which this was the third, we had to accept it, which meant that we then could not commission 01:37.560 --> 01:41.800 somebody else to rewrite it. 01:41.800 --> 01:49.040 So I rewrote it, which was always the simple way out. 01:49.040 --> 01:55.280 On these I spent a little time in the British Museums doing some research, but knew a certain 01:55.280 --> 02:05.680 amount about it anyway from what I had read previously and my own historical background. 02:05.680 --> 02:12.320 And that is how the Massacre came about. 02:12.320 --> 02:27.360 The story, quite simply, is the Doctor and Stephen land in Paris just before St Bartholomew's 02:27.360 --> 02:35.080 Massacre, unaware of what is about to happen, unaware of the date. 02:35.080 --> 02:43.520 The Doctor knows he's in the middle of the 15th century, there's a very particular apothecary 02:43.520 --> 02:46.400 he wishes to see, so off he goes. 02:46.400 --> 02:58.640 He goes to see him, Stephen gets embroiled in the Catholic and Protestant troubles that 02:58.640 --> 03:05.960 were rife in Paris at the time. 03:05.960 --> 03:13.400 It's enormous potential, it always did have enormous potential for a bit of swashbuckling 03:13.400 --> 03:22.440 and a bit of general menace, because the figure of Catherine de' Medici is wonderful. 03:22.440 --> 03:32.920 She is about the most sinister weaver ever in France and she meddled all the time. 03:32.920 --> 03:40.480 If you read any French history you'll discover she was one of the great meddling women of 03:40.480 --> 03:41.480 history. 03:41.480 --> 03:51.600 A beautiful play by Dero Joan Young, who was at the time known primarily for her great 03:51.600 --> 03:52.600 work in radio. 03:52.600 --> 04:00.800 She was one of the great radio actresses, but she agreed to come and play Catherine 04:00.800 --> 04:04.720 for us quite splendidly. 04:04.720 --> 04:09.520 We knew that Bill Hartnell was going to have to retire. 04:09.520 --> 04:12.920 He was finding, in a sense, it more and more difficult. 04:12.920 --> 04:24.320 He was also getting, at times, bored. 04:24.320 --> 04:28.640 It was, in a sense, time for him to move on. 04:28.640 --> 04:37.640 This was the first story where, in fact, we sent Bill off and he hardly features. 04:37.640 --> 04:42.920 He comes and plays another part, which gives him something else to do and gives a nice 04:42.920 --> 04:48.200 twist to the whole story. 04:48.200 --> 04:55.880 Bill played the abbot of Hormuz, the double, but he doesn't feature as actually as the 04:55.880 --> 05:04.000 Doctor, though of course Stephen thinks that the abbot of Hormuz is the Doctor. 05:04.000 --> 05:08.960 Bill, in fact, enjoyed it hugely because he was playing a different part. 05:08.960 --> 05:14.480 He was very much better, I think, as the abbot of Hormuz than he had been as Doctor Who himself 05:14.480 --> 05:17.480 for quite some time. 05:17.480 --> 05:24.880 However, he was full of menace and threats because he had been, and indeed was, a very, 05:24.880 --> 05:26.880 very fine actor. 05:26.880 --> 05:35.680 If you pick up Bill's performances in things like Brighton Rock, the Carol Reid film, it's 05:35.680 --> 05:44.000 wonderful, full of this real sinister power. 05:44.000 --> 05:54.000 He could deliver, Bill could deliver when he wanted and when he felt like. 05:54.000 --> 06:00.080 But I'm afraid we were aware that these moments were becoming rarer and rarer in the part 06:00.080 --> 06:02.160 of the Doctor. 06:02.160 --> 06:10.520 And so we were thinking of ways of trying to ease him out by sending him off. 06:10.520 --> 06:16.400 At least we showed that the Doctor could kind of go away, even though there was somebody 06:16.400 --> 06:19.680 who looked like the Doctor around. 06:19.680 --> 06:23.320 He wasn't the Doctor. 06:23.320 --> 06:30.360 This was one of the ways that we were going to kind of gently ease him out when, further 06:30.360 --> 06:40.440 on in the Celestial Toymaker, we vanish him away altogether into Campsie Abyssal. 06:40.440 --> 06:51.800 And so all these things had been shown before so that when he turns into Patrick Dracken, 06:51.800 --> 06:54.160 it isn't quite such a shock for the audience. 06:54.160 --> 07:00.160 They are aware that the Doctor is a very strange being and strange things happen. 07:00.160 --> 07:04.080 And he transmutes into somebody else. 07:04.080 --> 07:09.480 This had been sort of laid as a kind of ground plan. 07:09.480 --> 07:14.800 And this is the very first early step in doing that. 07:14.800 --> 07:19.800 If the tapes were still in existence, you would see there was no writing credit at all 07:19.800 --> 07:24.680 until we get to Episode Four, by which time the powers that be had suddenly noticed that 07:24.680 --> 07:29.640 Doctor Who was going out without, and it all was then explained to them. 07:29.640 --> 07:31.520 And they say, but you can't go that writing credit. 07:31.520 --> 07:32.520 There can't be a writing credit. 07:32.520 --> 07:37.400 So my name was put on it. 07:37.400 --> 07:50.240 The, although we were contractually, initially obliged to put John LeCroy, he had insisted 07:50.240 --> 07:52.080 on having his name taken off. 07:52.080 --> 07:58.800 He took it off the screen, but it was one of those occasions where it is left on the 07:58.800 --> 08:06.000 camera script purely and simply because in those days, if they were referring to overseas 08:06.000 --> 08:10.960 sales or anything else, they frequently went back to the front page of the council to see 08:10.960 --> 08:13.760 who needed to be paid, who needed and didn't, and that. 08:13.760 --> 08:18.600 And all those sorts of residuals. 08:18.600 --> 08:22.080 If his name had been taken off that, he would have lost all his residuals, which would have 08:22.080 --> 08:24.760 made him even crosser. 08:24.760 --> 08:34.920 The dialogue always was, if there was a change, the dialogue that had been altered would be 08:34.920 --> 08:39.520 altered on the final camera script. 08:39.520 --> 08:43.600 Because when you were selling abroad, and certainly if it has to be translated or anything 08:43.600 --> 08:48.400 else, they had to know precisely what people are saying. 08:48.400 --> 08:55.320 So that it A, can be translated accurately, and B, if they're dubbing it, they know it's 08:55.320 --> 08:57.360 to do with mouths and movements and all that. 08:57.360 --> 08:59.360 Or certainly in those days, it's much simpler now. 08:59.360 --> 09:02.840 I mean, technically, all sorts of things can be achieved now. 09:02.840 --> 09:17.800 And of course, as Bill возмож Cou sinít was going, I was the leader of the group. 09:17.800 --> 09:32.560 One of the guys who used to be the face of the hill won a big band purse an he started 09:32.560 --> 09:36.200 And we seem to her, but it should never have happened. 09:36.200 --> 09:38.320 It's what is known as breaking the fourth wall. 09:38.320 --> 09:40.520 You mustn't do that. 09:40.520 --> 09:42.720 Don't you remember the police station at Christmas? 09:42.720 --> 09:43.800 So it was, yes. 09:43.800 --> 09:46.440 Here's a toast to happy Christmas to all of us. 09:46.440 --> 09:48.760 So do you, Doctor. 09:48.760 --> 09:53.000 Incidentally, a happy Christmas to all of you at home. 09:53.000 --> 10:00.680 There is a myth, though it was current at the time, 10:00.680 --> 10:04.520 that the Barlow master, the 12-part Barlow, 10:04.520 --> 10:07.160 was forced upon Johnny Wilds and I 10:07.160 --> 10:11.320 because Verity agreed to do it. 10:11.320 --> 10:13.680 But I gather she only agreed to do it 10:13.680 --> 10:23.920 because she knew that Sidney Newman's mother or mother-in-law 10:23.920 --> 10:28.080 thought it would be a wonderful idea. 10:28.080 --> 10:29.520 And this had been passed on. 10:29.520 --> 10:31.560 And we were numbered with it. 10:31.560 --> 10:35.120 Whether we liked it or not, we had to do a 12-part. 10:35.120 --> 10:37.480 This meant we had to get Terry Nation, who 10:37.480 --> 10:40.480 was heavily involved in writing a thing called 10:40.480 --> 10:42.880 The Baron, which was being shot in America. 10:45.760 --> 10:49.160 He was involved in both the production side as well as 10:49.160 --> 10:52.560 the writing side of that. 10:52.560 --> 10:55.560 And the last thing he wanted was to have 10:55.560 --> 10:58.120 to be heavily involved in a Dalek again, 10:58.120 --> 11:01.280 because he had only recently done one. 11:01.280 --> 11:03.800 However, he did it. 11:03.800 --> 11:09.720 And he came up with a sort of very slight thread 11:09.720 --> 11:16.880 that was to run through all 12 episodes, the second sex 11:16.880 --> 11:20.680 of which would be written by Dennis Spooner, 11:20.680 --> 11:22.000 my predecessor as editor. 11:24.520 --> 11:27.640 And Terry was agreeable to this. 11:27.640 --> 11:32.720 It meant he only had to write six scripts. 11:32.720 --> 11:37.480 And time went on and time went on. 11:37.480 --> 11:39.520 And Terry would not. 11:39.520 --> 11:40.440 He said, yes, yes, yes. 11:40.440 --> 11:43.000 I'm very busy, but I'm dealing with it. 11:43.000 --> 11:45.280 I'm dealing with it. 11:45.280 --> 11:51.000 And eventually, we were but a week and a bit away 11:51.000 --> 11:56.640 from filming for the all first six episodes. 11:56.640 --> 12:00.120 And I spoke to him on the phone. 12:00.120 --> 12:04.400 And he said, I will deliver them to you, to your flat 12:04.400 --> 12:08.040 in Bloomsbury, if that's where I live, tonight. 12:08.040 --> 12:09.880 Because I'm catching a plane, and I've 12:09.880 --> 12:11.800 got to be in New York tomorrow morning. 12:11.800 --> 12:12.300 Fine. 12:12.300 --> 12:13.960 I said, OK, OK. 12:13.960 --> 12:15.960 God's sake, let me have them before you 12:15.960 --> 12:18.680 go to America tonight. 12:18.680 --> 12:23.360 And the doorbell duly rang that evening. 12:23.360 --> 12:26.080 I dashed downstairs and opened the door. 12:26.080 --> 12:27.840 And there he stood with me hand in hand. 12:27.840 --> 12:29.040 There's the script, he said. 12:29.040 --> 12:30.880 I must go. 12:30.880 --> 12:36.240 And dashed downstairs into his taxi, off, gone. 12:36.240 --> 12:40.080 And it was really quite a thin envelope. 12:40.080 --> 12:41.040 But I took it upstairs. 12:41.040 --> 12:44.520 It ran till about 24, 25 pages. 12:44.520 --> 12:47.400 And considering it was supposed to be six episodes, 12:47.400 --> 12:49.320 I thought, help. 12:49.320 --> 12:52.480 We are, as they say, in trouble. 12:52.480 --> 12:58.320 I rang Johnny Wiles, who, I'm afraid, said, it's your fault 12:58.320 --> 13:04.320 you didn't write him hard enough to get them delivered sooner. 13:04.320 --> 13:07.320 And I thought, I don't like this. 13:07.320 --> 13:11.000 Anyway, it came down to one thing. 13:11.000 --> 13:16.360 I had to write them, or at least take his thread 13:16.360 --> 13:19.800 and write the first six episodes. 13:19.800 --> 13:23.640 Fortunately, Dennis had taken his thread long since the bit 13:23.640 --> 13:27.880 that he was due to do and had been asking me, 13:27.880 --> 13:32.600 when am I going to see what I do as the very beginning of mine 13:32.600 --> 13:35.640 and so as to get the links right? 13:35.640 --> 13:38.200 And I said, I have no idea. 13:38.200 --> 13:43.600 But now I was the one who was going to have to provide Dennis 13:43.600 --> 13:46.240 with his links. 13:46.240 --> 13:49.000 And so I contacted Dennis and said, what was he doing 13:49.000 --> 13:54.880 at the beginning of his episode one, which was episode seven? 13:54.880 --> 13:58.960 And he said, well, I was going to do this. 13:58.960 --> 14:01.760 I said, fine, right. 14:01.760 --> 14:02.960 You stick with that. 14:02.960 --> 14:04.640 I'll head towards that. 14:04.640 --> 14:07.160 And that is roughly what happened. 14:07.160 --> 14:17.120 I then wrote to Dennis's, up to Dennis's scripts. 14:17.120 --> 14:21.960 There is one ironic and really absurd story 14:21.960 --> 14:32.040 that made the BBC insiders rock with happy laughter 14:32.040 --> 14:35.160 was that in those days, there was a program called 14:35.160 --> 14:37.320 Late Night Lineup. 14:37.320 --> 14:40.280 And they used to do interviews about television and everything 14:40.280 --> 14:41.200 else. 14:41.200 --> 14:48.200 And Verity Lambert and a very eminent television critic 14:48.200 --> 14:54.080 discussed the new mammoth 12-part Doctor Who. 14:54.080 --> 14:58.080 And at some point in the discussion, 14:58.080 --> 15:03.200 it came out that Terry had done this. 15:03.200 --> 15:08.960 And they spoke at great length about Terry's writing 15:08.960 --> 15:10.400 and his skills. 15:10.400 --> 15:14.640 And they said, you could always tell a Terry Nation script 15:14.640 --> 15:19.120 because he is the only poet of science fiction. 15:19.120 --> 15:20.920 I was greeted the next morning by being 15:20.920 --> 15:25.600 hailed as the only poet of science fiction. 15:25.600 --> 15:29.360 Still working at the BBC. 15:29.360 --> 15:32.960 But because Terry hadn't written a word of it. 15:32.960 --> 15:35.400 But still, there we go. 15:35.400 --> 15:39.240 Malick Jones as a character is mine, 15:39.240 --> 15:40.840 even though his name is not. 15:40.840 --> 15:42.400 It isn't a my kind of name. 15:42.400 --> 15:44.440 I'm sure Terry came up with the name. 15:44.440 --> 15:46.640 But yes, I mean, he was mentioned 15:46.640 --> 15:51.400 because he is sort of the head of the galaxy. 15:51.400 --> 15:55.600 But more than a mention, I don't think he had a line of dialogue. 15:55.600 --> 15:58.480 Because there were only about eight lines of dialogue 15:58.480 --> 16:02.000 in the entire 26 pages. 16:02.000 --> 16:04.280 Most of it was descriptions of people dashing about 16:04.280 --> 16:07.520 from one planet to another in yet another spaceship 16:07.520 --> 16:13.240 or whatever, looking for this substance 16:13.240 --> 16:19.360 that the Daleks needed, which the Doctor had. 16:19.360 --> 16:27.720 And so it was just a glorious chase for six solid episodes. 16:27.720 --> 16:29.240 One really had to fill it out. 16:29.240 --> 16:33.600 So the thing that you people work all this time 16:33.600 --> 16:37.240 to recreate what at the time was struck us 16:37.240 --> 16:41.080 as enormously ephemeral, here it is, 16:41.080 --> 16:45.160 you know, 40 years later or whatever. 16:45.160 --> 16:47.960 And people are still interested. 16:47.960 --> 16:53.680 It is both deeply flattering and deeply puzzling to me. 16:53.680 --> 16:59.000 That except, except, except the good storytelling. 16:59.000 --> 17:02.600 And I think the early days of Doctor Who had a lot, 17:02.600 --> 17:05.520 very good storytelling in it. 17:05.520 --> 17:08.680 Will always, it will survive. 17:08.680 --> 17:15.560 But it is nice to know that one, all those years ago, 17:15.560 --> 17:22.400 worked on something, however neurotically at times, 17:22.400 --> 17:28.640 and sort of stressed at times, that has survived 17:28.640 --> 17:30.960 and is being recreated. 17:30.960 --> 17:38.080 And in your case, being recreated with amazing faithfulness. 17:38.080 --> 17:45.080 It is, whether somebody coming to it for the first time 17:45.080 --> 17:49.560 will get the same as somebody who, I mean, I saw it, 17:49.560 --> 17:54.760 I wrote it, I was there. 17:54.760 --> 18:03.720 And yet it always was like seeing the stories again. 18:03.720 --> 18:07.760 Not quite, obviously, but almost. 18:07.760 --> 18:11.360 And the stories come across strongly. 18:11.360 --> 18:16.680 And it, in fact, this very style of telling the story, 18:16.680 --> 18:22.760 of giving the story and making it work, 18:22.760 --> 18:25.560 almost makes the point of how strong the stories are, 18:25.560 --> 18:32.560 that they can take that kind of rather simple 18:32.560 --> 18:37.320 and yet complex treatment. 18:37.320 --> 18:42.560 I mean complex in the author, in actually going back and recreating. 18:42.560 --> 18:46.440 What comes up on the screen is inherently something 18:46.440 --> 18:51.080 that is basically much simpler than the original. 18:51.080 --> 18:57.760 But this is, I think, staggering. 18:57.760 --> 19:02.920 And I suppose in a quaint way, deeply flattering. 19:02.920 --> 19:05.560 There we are. I'll take some of the glory. 19:05.560 --> 19:12.680 The one time I was working, about ten years ago, 19:12.680 --> 19:19.080 and I'd been helping some boys out with a history project 19:19.080 --> 19:21.360 that they were involved in. 19:21.360 --> 19:26.080 And after it was all over, they'd had a certain success with it, 19:26.080 --> 19:30.280 and they came back to say, you know, how it had gone, 19:30.280 --> 19:33.680 and they'd won a prize or something, an award of some kind, 19:33.680 --> 19:35.880 because of it, and they came back to show me this thing, 19:35.880 --> 19:38.880 and to thank me, which was very kind. 19:38.880 --> 19:42.080 And after it was all over, one of them shyly said, 19:42.080 --> 19:44.960 excuse me, may we ask you a question? 19:44.960 --> 19:47.080 I suppose you've been asking me questions for months. 19:47.080 --> 19:49.080 Yes, go ahead. 19:49.080 --> 19:55.280 He said, just tell me, are you the Donald Tosh? 19:55.280 --> 19:58.680 And I said, fine, no. I said, I'm the only one. 19:58.680 --> 20:05.480 And he says, yes, but are you the Donald Tosh 20:05.480 --> 20:08.680 who edited Doctor Who? 20:08.680 --> 20:17.080 And I looked at them, and the oldest was 17, 20:17.080 --> 20:21.480 and I thought, I was doing Doctor Who 20:21.480 --> 20:27.280 probably before your parents were born. 20:27.280 --> 20:34.080 And so, there's a sort of strange, odd... 20:34.080 --> 20:36.680 I don't quite know how to explain it, 20:36.680 --> 20:40.080 but very few people, I mean, they really have to, 20:40.080 --> 20:43.880 because I suppose I wasn't all that young, 20:43.880 --> 20:47.680 but I wasn't all that old when I edited Doctor Who. 20:47.680 --> 20:55.080 And so, here it is, you know, 40 years later, 20:55.080 --> 21:01.280 still capturing the imagination. 21:01.280 --> 21:03.480 The flattering thing is that everyone looks back 21:03.480 --> 21:05.680 on those early years as the golden years, 21:05.680 --> 21:10.080 but Doctor Who, and that is what I would like to think they were.