Trivia / Doctor Who S3 E5 "The Massacre"

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• Acting for Two: William Hartnell plays both the Doctor and the Abbot of Amboise.
• Creator Backlash: John Lucarotti was so unhappy working with Tosh and Wiles (the former rewriting his material) that he had his name taken off. Because none of the episodes surviving though, there is some debate about whether or not he was actually credited; Tosh claims the episodes had no writing credit, but it seems he may have been credited on Episode 4 at least as Tosh received co-writer's credit on that.
• Creator's Favourite Episode: Peter Purves named this as his favourite story.
• First Appearance: Of Dodo.
• Missing Episode: One of only three stories (the others being "Marco Polo" and "Mission to the Unknown") for which not a single frame of footage survives. No telesnaps, no clips, no photos other than publicity photos. Even the novelisation is In Name Only because it's based on earlier drafts of the script. There's not even a single picture of Hartnell as the Abbot of Amboise, so we have no idea what his costume looked like. Reconstructions of the serial consequently have to photoshop stills from other serials into a loose approximation of what the footage might have looked like.
• What Could Have Been:
  • John Lucarotti had several idea for a new historical serial. He conceived ideas such as the Doctor arriving at the 1857 Indian Rebellion, or helping Leif Erikson and the Vikings travel to Newfoundland. Both were rejected by the new team of John Wiles and Donald Tosh, who wanted the series to be more dramatic. Lucarotti ended up working with Tosh on a more suitable storyline.
  • Anne was written at first to be a companion, before realizing she would fall into the same trap as Katarina by being useless outside her time period.
  • Ian and Barbara were to cameo at the serial’s end, just missing the TARDIS’ disappearing.
• Working Title: The War of God.

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