The Making of The Massacre
By Dean Rose

The introduction to the tape, by actor David Weston (Nicholas Muss) was actually the first thing that we filmed long before production began on the reconstruciton and was actually one of the first celebrity introductions that we filmed. Derek and I met up with Mr Weston in September 1999 at the National Theatre in London (where he was performing at the time) and we filmed the introduction in one of the rehearsal rooms. David did not have very strong memories of The Massacre, but he did remember a few of the actors involved. He related to us that after filming he had gone to the BBC Club and had picked up a copy of the Times to check out the latest football results. Later he heard a very angry Andre Morell complaining that somebody had been reading his paper! David read a few sequences to camera for us and another factual section, which we used as a voice over.

As another extra to the tape Derek and I met up with and interviewed Donald Tosh, story editor for Doctor Who from The Time Meddler to The Massacre and co-writer of The Massacre. Donald had very good memories of the story and revealed to us that in fact he wrote almost all of it. He and producer John Wiles had suggested the original storyline to writer John Lucarotti, but the script he handed over was far from what they had wanted. As story editor, Donald Tosh had to re-write the script himself. Lucarotti was furious over the changes that had been made to the script and demanded that his name be removed from the opening credits. When the first episode was transmitted, the officials at the BBC realised that the story was going out without a writer's credit and told the Doctor Who production office that it must have one. But episodes two and three had already been recorded by this time, so Donald Tosh's name was added to the writer's caption for episode four.

And Finally…

The reconstruction of The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve was completed in September 2001. All in all it has taken over two years to complete, with much of this time taken up researching the actors and source material. We have really gone out of our way to make sure that the reconstruction is as close as possible to the original transmission, paying particular attention to casting and story details. We hope you enjoy the reconstruction.