The Doctor and crew land in Manchester, on the 16th of August, 1819. The city is chugging through the Industrial Revolution, but it has left factories across the city unsafe. Hoping to improve working conditions and their wages, ordinary workers take to St Peter's Field in the centre of the city to hold a protest in the form of a jamboree, but the city officials aren't having any of it. The TARDIS has crash-landed right in the middle of one of the darkest chapters of Manchester's history: The Peterloo Massacre.
For more general information about the Real Life disaster, see The Other Wiki's article here
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Tropes
- Arc Words: "This is just like Waterloo!", said several times by members of the military who fought there and long to be back in a battlefield, no matter who they're actually fighting. Hence the name of the event being a portmanteau of St. Peter's Field and Waterloo.
- Berserk Button: The unfolding story utterly disgusts all three of the TARDIS crew and they say so to the locals. Tegan due to the blatant exploitation of poorer people by the rich, Nyssa due to her friend's son getting killed by her former boss, and the Doctor due to the horrible justification the military had for attacking their own civilians.
- Beware the Nice Ones: As mentioned above, the events of the massacre make all the main cast angrier than usual, but Hurley's trampling Kathy and her baby really pushes Nyssa over the edge.The Doctor: You call this victory?Hurley: Are you threatening me, sir?Nyssa: He isn't. But I might.
- Bittersweet Ending: 15 people still died and hundreds were injured, but the event soon led to safety reforms within factories across the United Kingdom.
- Call-Back: Tegan provides two, telling the Doctor that she was "away for a while", and seeing how the traumatic events of the story affected Tegan, Nyssa says that as time travellers visiting historical tragedies, they'll need "brave hearts".
- Call-Forward: The Doctor reminds his companions that they cannot avert the outcome of the tragedy, calling the massacre a "fixed point in time". It's a concept frequently referred to in the revived series, most notably in The Waters of Mars.
- Darker and Edgier: As the title indicates, this story is going to end badly. The day itself was one of the darkest in Manchester's and Britain's history.
- Death of a Child: Poor Peter.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Manchester's industrialists felt threatened when faced with people protesting peacefully for worker's rights and higher pay, so they chose to change the circumstances of the protest to kill as many as possible.
- Event Title: The Peterloo Massacre.
- Formula-Breaking Episode: Big Finish's first pure historical story in the style of similar First Doctor stories. Unlike previous Big Finish historical stories such as The Marian Conspiracy or Catch-1782, this story doesn't feature time travel elements at all.
- Gone Horribly Wrong: A peaceful protest turned violent when the city's industrialists and business people decided to stop the riots with their own armed militia.
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: Emphasised with a lack of alien threats in this story.
- Man Bites Man: Tegan resorts to biting Tommy Tyler when he won't let her go.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Hurley, when he realises the massacre he took part in got his maid's baby killed.
- Oop North: Some of the actors retain their northern accent.
- Save the Villain: The TARDIS crew race to Hurley Hall to prevent an enraged William Hurley from killing his father after what he did during the massacre.
- Shout-Out: The Doctor recited a bit from "The Masque of Anarchy" by Percy Bysshe Shelley when leaving Manchester via TARDIS.
- Spiritual Successor: To the First Doctor serial "The Massacre."
