Author Talk: John Lucarotti

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Inspired by the reboot of this thread theme, I thought I’d start one for John Lucarotti now that TV Club has watched all of his contributions to the show.

Obviously best known for writing historical epics, Lucarotti also contributed two stories to DWM and was the original writer for what eventually became The Ark in Space, with his original scripts being adapted by Big Finish for their Lost Stories range.

Also, famously, his novelisation of The Massacre is closer to his original intentions for the serial before it was rewritten somewhat by Donald Tosh.

What are people’s opinions of Lucarotti? Which do you think is his best story? Have you read his DWM short stories?

  • Marco Polo
  • The Aztecs
  • The Massacre
  • The Meeting
  • Who Discovered America
  • Marco Polo: the novelisation
  • The Aztecs: the novelisation
  • The Massacre: the novelisation
  • The Ark
0 voters
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The Ark is on Monday but almost all of his TV things.

I don’t usually pay attention to writers, but when I saw the list, I realised that I like all of his TV stories. I also think that the first two of his Target novels are great (I have not read The Massacre yet). Now I want to seek out his DWM work; apparently, I am a fan of his.

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Out of his stories, I’ve only seen The Aztecs, but it was absolutely phenomenal.

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Aha - different The Ark! I meant the BF Lost Story which is based on Lucarotti’s original pitch for the 4th Doctor story:

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Hate it when stories share the same name :joy:

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Has anyone heard The Ark? It came out around the same time as Genesis of Terror and I feel talk about it got a bit overwhelmed by the dissatisfaction over that release. Is it worth a listen?

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I remember listening to it, but I can’t remember much about it other than I found it pretty boring.

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The Meeting is a really cute little Brief Encounter. I like that one a lot!

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Lucarotti, the king of the pure historical, and as a fan of those, he’s one of my favorite classic writers. If you don’t like them though, he has little else to offer.

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Also. If anyone is interested in discussion of Doctor Who writers and the stories they wrote, Doctor Who: The Writers’ Room is an excellent podcast on the subject. They’ve done all the classic series (the episodes are mostly by writer), the first RTD years, and are currently on the Matt Smith era (modern Who they’re just pretty much going in order). Their 35th episode is on Lucarotti

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For me The Aztecs is one of the very best stories Doctor Who has ever done and is easily the best story, by a country mile, of Season 1.

But I really struggle with Marco Polo and The Massacre. I want to like them both but the both frustrate me as stories in ways which make it really difficult for me to get past. The ‘completely missing’ aspect certainly doesn’t help and I am sure that if I could see them it would help massively for me to reassess them but as it stands I just can’t enjoy them in the same way I enjoy The Aztecs.

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Truer words are rarely spoken, at least from you :wink:

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Looking at my spreadsheet here it seems of his 3 TV stories:
Raw scores /10: Polo 8, Aztecs 9, Massacre 8
Curved to percentile in ranking /10: Polo 7, Aztecs 9, Massacre 8
Unweighted averages /10: 8.33 raw, 8.00 curved
Weighted averages /10: 8.27 raw, 7.80 curved
All in all a very good showing

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That’s very statistical!

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A short biography of Lucarotti:

http://www.shannonsullivan.com/drwho/bio/john-lucarotti.html

The Missing Episodes podcast is also excellent for examining missing stories:


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Love him! While I haven’t gotten around to listen to “The Ark” (2023) or have read his Novelization for The Massacre and The Aztec, I do really like all of his televised Stories. Two of those (the Aztecs and the Massacre) come very highly (one of which I find is Hartnell’s best.
I do also really like The Meeting such a lovely creative Brief Encounter! Who Discovered America is interesting but rather limited for my taste, I am afraid.
While he mainly did Pure Historicals (with the Ark seeming to be an odd ones out), I must admit one pattern I quickly noticed with his Stories is how companion-focused they are. The Aztecs is very much Barbara’s Story, the Massacre is Steven’s Story. Even to a lesser extent, Polo does a lot with the Companions.
Easily one of my favorite Classic Writers!

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I’m fascinated by Lucarotti’s writing and scripts for Classic Who. I think it helps as I’m something of a History buff!

My favourite story of his is “The Aztecs”, but I tend to really like “Marco Polo” too.
I haven’t “seen” “The Massacre” since Christmas 2023, so I don’t remember quite a lot, but I remember really enjoying it.
I haven’t read any of his literature… Yet.

Anyway, he’s one of my favourite writers for the show: He truly is the King of the Pure Historicals.

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The Massacre is to me genuinely one of the greatest Who stories, it does so much in its run time and my favourite thing about Lucarotti is the way he deals with the historical context of his story - its masterful.

The actual Massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Day is so overlooked in history I was absolutely delighted to see there was a Who story about it, the focus on Steven makes this story even better as we see it through more relatable eyes than the Doctors. The only thing that lets this story down is the Abbot - just not done to perfection like other aspects of the story are.

Rant over - in short Go Watch/Listen to The Massacre, it’s amazing!!

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