A group of Republican politicians in Ohio recently made headlines for sponsoring a bill that would not only ban abortions, but also make the procedure punishable by life sentences in prison and even the death penalty. Many were quick to point out the irony of a group being “so pro-life they’ll kill ya.” That peace-minded religious doctrines have so often been used to justify hatred and violence is one of the biggest paradoxes of history. It’s also the idea at the heart of “The Witchfinders,” the first pre-20th century historical episode of the season. Like “Rosa” and “Demons Of The Punjab,” “The Witchfinders” has big, meaty questions on its mind. But it balances those headier ideas with more of a classic Doctor Who romp. Like “Kerblam!,” “The Witchfinders” blends the emerging voice of this new era of Doctor Who with something a touch more familiar. And while the episode doesn’t quite stick the landing, it still emerges as one of the strongest of the season.
Up until intergalactic mud monsters take over the third act, “The Witchfinders” plays like a British answer to The Crucible. While attempting to attend the coronation of Elizabeth I, the TARDIS team accidentally wind up in early 17th century Lancashire in the village of Bilehurst Cragg, where wealthy landowner Mistress Becka Savage (Downton Abbey’s Siobhan Finneran) is drowning her 36th witch. Ryan’s fear that the whole thing is “too dark” is soon assuaged by the appearance of high-profile guest star Alan Cumming as high-profile historical figure King James I. Cumming camps it up while joyously chewing the scenery, but adds a bit of gravitas to James’ obsession with rooting out witchcraft. Indeed, once they team up, Becka and James become an even more deadly pair, each relying on the other’s zealotry to justify their own actions.
“The Witchfinders” is at its strongest when it’s exploring how religion can be twisted to become a justification for violence in times of uncertainty and fear. (“Demons Of The Punjab” explored many of the same themes in a different religious/social context.) There’s a deep sense of paranoia that runs throughout the episode, conveyed in director Sallie Aprahamian’s low Dutch angles and murky color palette. The episode effectively captures the slippery slope of violent moral righteousness: Once you’ve murdered a couple dozen people under the auspices of doing God’s will, it’s hard to admit you may have made a mistake. So the only way forward is to double down, rope more people into your violent system, and do whatever you can to justify your twisted sense of morality—both to others and to yourself.
Of course, given that it’s about a witch-hunt, “The Witchfinders” isn’t just about religious fervor, it’s also about gender. This is the first episode to make the Doctor’s new gender a major plot point. Though Becka is willing (and relieved) to believe that the Doctor is a “Witchfinder General,” James refuses to accept that a woman could hold such a position of authority and instead defers to Graham’s presumed expertise. Becka quickly shuns her burgeoning allyship with the Doctor to defer to James instead. Writer Joy Wilkinson is very smart about painting patriarchy for what it is—a hierarchical system that places men above women, but which members of all genders participate in. After all, it’s Becka who leads the violent, misogynist witch-hunts that first draw James’ attention, and while she might be facing her own struggles as a rare 17th century female landholder, that doesn’t make her any less of a villain for her brutal murders.
Wilkinson also resists the urge to put in too many “rah-rah the Doctor cured sexism!” moments into the episode. Sexism is a system far too big for the Doctor to fix with a wry quip, and it would be pollyannaish to imply otherwise. But we do get to watch the Doctor figure out how to be a hero while dealing with the extra burden her gender places on her in this historical context. As she notes, “Honestly, if I was still a bloke, I could get on with my job and not have to waste time defending myself.” Wilkinson wisely balances the episode’s grim depiction of 17th century patriarchy by presenting the Doctor at her most heroic. Whether she’s diving into a lake to try to save a witch-hunt victim or freeing herself using underwater escape tricks she picked up from Houdini, the Doctor is refreshingly proactive in “The Witchfinders.” And save for a few nice moments with Yaz, the companions largely take a backseat in this episode as the Doctor is put front and center for once.
Aided by that extra screentime, this is easily Jodie Whittaker’s best performance yet in the role. She brings a fascinating mix of steeliness and empathy to the way the Doctor interacts with Becka and James. It helps that Whittaker gets excellent sparring partners in both Finneran and especially Cumming. The episode’s best scene features the Doctor and King James squaring off about their respective philosophies after the Doctor is accused of being a witch and left tied up before her “trial.” Both the Doctor and James have big questions about the nature of the universe, but whereas the Doctor is curious, empathetic, and able to admit when she’s wrong, James is inflexible in his religious fervor. That juxtaposition becomes its own powerful critique, even if James ultimately isn’t particularly punished for his role in the witch-hunts. (Cumming’s comedic turn softens the character enough to where you kind of buy that.) On the other hand, the Doctor’s icy judgment also feels like a punishment in its own right.
For the first two-thirds of its runtime, “The Witchfinders” is an excellent episode, one that blends real-world villainy with the horrifically creepy imagery of mud-filled corpses rising from the dead. That mostly continues through the (rather clunky) reveal that Becka first began her witch-hunt after being marked with what she thought was the sign of the devil. Her desire to prevent her own damnation (and protect her position in the community) quickly became a warped murder spree in God’s name. It’s good, chilling stuff, and then the episode goes ahead and tacks on a fairly lackluster sci-fi ending.
It turns out the mud monsters are an imprisoned warrior race known as the Morax, who broke free and infected Becka after she cut down the tree that served as their prison lock. The Morax stuff is pretty thematically detached from the witch-hunt stuff, and the creepy reanimated corpses get a lot less creepy once their queen takes over Becka’s body and starts monologuing about destroying the world. It’s clear the episode doesn’t really care about the Morax either. The Doctor just kind of defeats them with some hastily delivered technobabble about toxic smoke and repaired security systems. It’s too rushed to be interesting, while also eating up screentime that might’ve been better spent on the companions or local villager Willa (Tilly Steele), who barely feels like a character.
Yet despite those missteps, “The Witchfinders” succeeds far more than it fails. If it bites off a little more than it can chew, well, at least it offers a lot to think about. Though it’s set further back in time than “Rosa” or “Demons Of The Punjab,” “The Witchfinders” is every bit as relevant. Doctor Who has often delivered broad messages about standing up to bullies, but this episode is pointed about explicitly defining a bully as anyone who uses their religion to hurt rather than help. It’s hard to think of anything more timely than that.
Stray observations
- I really liked the Doctor explaining “talking’s brilliant” in response to Becka’s claim that the ducking stool was invented to silence “foolish women who talk to much.” You don’t often get a big hero moment based around the importance of communication, but, really, what could be more important?
- This is one of the very few Doctor Who episodes to be both written and directed by women.
- This season features a bit of inconsistency in terms of which bits of history the Doctor is willing to change and which she isn’t, but I also feel like that’s par for the course with Doctor Who in general.
- Okay, but the name Mistress Savage is a little on the nose, right?
- Wikipedia pages to check out after tonight’s episode include the one on the real-life Pendle Hill witch trials, and, of course, the colorful, complicated life of King James VI and I.
- Graham really rocked that pilgrim hat.
207 Comments
it’s really disheartening that the non-Chibnall episodes have been really great. The past three weeks have felt more like Doctor Who than anything preceding them.It’s also troubling that the companions are at their best when the story isn’t focusing on them. Which kinda sucks.
I think Graham’s been good on his own but Ryan and Yasmin have been hit or miss.
He’s been hogging all the meaty companion bits.
I personally find Ryan to be the weak link. I don’t think he’s particularly interesting. He was in the premiere, but since then, not so much. If it were just Graham and Yaz, I think they’d be better. I’m not opposed to 3 companions. I’m just not thrilled with Ryan.
Graham is excellent, and as much as I like Yaz and Ryan, I could do without them. Graham also provides such a fantastic reversed Companion-Doctor dynamic with the older actor and younger actress.
My biggest gripe with Yaz has been that she seems to have completely forgotten she was a cop.
It has been basically all but been dropped at this point.
Of the three companions, she seems like the least developed overall. It’s not the actor’s fault. I rather wish there was just the Graham-Ryan companion plotline.
My biggest gripe with Taz has been that she seems to have completely forgotten she was a cop.
The other writers even seem to have a better understanding of Chibnall’s vision than Chibnall. This was the definitive performance for 13, giving her plenty of Doctor-ey moments while blending in some new character elements, and it was the best episode for the three companions. Ryan made a friend, Yaz behaved like a police officer, and Graham got a cool hat.Chibnalls decision to write half a season by himself looks increasingly inexplicable. Glad it’s improving though.
The biggest reason would’ve honestly been the same reason RTD wrote 8 episodes of his first season, and Moffat wrote 6 in his first season: they need to set the tone and give the other writers a reference point to go off. Which is also why I think Chibnall’s scripts were also so front-loaded this season.Next season he’s going to almost certainly cut down the amount of episodes he writes by himself, or at least balance them out abit more in the season as the groundwork has already been laid for other writers.(And not to take anything away from the other writers, but we don’t actually know how much Chibnall may have contributed as showrunner to episodes he doesn’t have credit on. Both RTD and Moffat have talked about how frustrating it can be to have fans online complain about their work, hold a up some dialogue or storybeats in another writers script as an example of why RTD/ Moffat is ill suited to be in charge of the show, and the writing they’re holding up is in fact something they added to the script as showrunner.)
It’s true and there’s no way of knowing who wrote what, but the writing has felt very different in recent weeks.
He may not be around much longer though. Apparently chibnall is not happy behind the scenes and already wants out.
not to take anything away from the other writers, but we don’t actually know how much Chibnall may have contributed as showrunner to episodes he doesn’t have credit onAt the very least, we can presume that he’s fine-tuning the scripts. In part to comport with his interpretation of the characters and the uniiverse, in part to work within the season as a whole (spreading around moments to the various companions, etc). I think we have to give the showrunner a lot of credit when a script works, just as we will give him the blame when one doesn’t.
I don’t see why we have to give Chibnall credit for episodes for which he’s not credited if he hasn’t proven he can write an above-average episode, or at least some above-average dialogue. And so far, as far as I’m concerned, he has NOT proven that. RTD and Moffat proved they could do it; Chibnall hasn’t. When the episodes *not* credited to him all have a distinctly different flavor and tone (not to mention more coherency, etc. etc. etc. etc.) than the ones credited to him, then he gets no recognition for the former, as far as I’m concerned. He should go back to writing overrated crime dramas full of red herrings and classed up by great actors who are slumming, and the BBC should hire Jamie Mathieson to run DW, stat.
I don’t see why we have to give Chibnall credit for episodes for which he’s not credited if he hasn’t proven he can write an above-average episode, or at least some above-average dialogue.Because he’s the showrunner. He’s the story editor. He selects the writers, works with the writers, and often takes a final pass at each script. Even Neil Gaiman had his scripts worked on by Moffat. When the scripts are good, it’s in part because the showrunner has helped make them good.Even if you think he’s not a good writer, that doesn’t mean he’s not a good re-writer or a good editor. And considering that Chibnall’s stamp is by necessity on every script, that means he gets some of the credit when things work.
I’d like to see Chibnall bring back Jamie Mathieson, and maybe some other writers from the Moffat era (Harness? Dollard? I’d be interested to see what Gatiss would do with the 13th Doctor, even, though not super hopeful it’d be great.)
in fairness, he wasn’t supposed to write The Tsuranga whatever until fairly late, when the original writer (who’s still credited with creating the Pting) had time commitments and had to drop out. which kind of explains why that episode was really bad and makes Chib’s ratio of guest writers look pretty decent – 60% of episodes being by guest writers would have been the highest for the first season with any showrunner, to my recollection
He’s writing episode 10 as well so that’s 55% altogether. Moffatt wrote 6/13ths of s5.
I thought all of the companions and the doctor had good individual bits in this, AND they worked the best they have so far as a unit (with as Graham said a quite flat organizational structure).
I’d love it if Chibnall delegated all the writing to others. As a showrunner, he’s clearly terrific at bringing in talented people but aside from the season premiere his own scripts have been dismal.
Chibnall really needs to step back and just write the season’s bookend stories. Doctor Who realllly needs to go back to the Classic Era’s model of hiring an executive producer and a story editor for the show. This new era would be considerably less awkward if you had an experienced writer, like Jamie Mathieson or Toby Whithouse editing the stories. So much of what ails S11 is simply that Chibnall is a terrible story editor.Whenever there’s been a division of responsibilities, thinking of the Hinchcliffe/Holmes era, the show is always at its strongest.
I still blame the decision to bring in 3 companions at the same time as a new Doctor for Jodie not being able to showcase herself early on. It looks like Chibnall has a very distinct vision of what his Doctor Who ought to be (preachy and dramatic) and it basically ignores all the other possibilities of the format.
Hopefully the rumor is only half-true: That he’s leaving next year.Less Chibnall, more Jodie!
^THIS. Equally as sad, this is almost exactly what I predicted would happen with Chibnall behind the wheel. Really hope the rumors are true and he exits next season. Sucks that Jodie is super loyal to him and will leave when he does – because when she’s allowed to shine, she is a great Doctor – but it’s a small price to pay to get my smart, fun, bonkers sci-fi back
it’s really disheartening that the non-Chibnall episodes have been really great.I think this is overblown. Chibnall’s the showrunner, and his fingerprints are almost certainly all over these episodes.
yeah but the core tone and the plotting are all directly credited to the respective writers. If his fingerprints are so embedded into them, he’d have a co-writing credit like he did with Rosa.
it’s really disheartening that the non-Chibnall episodes have been really great.Eh, that really doesn’t bother me. Some showrunners are better at supervising, better at editing and refining the scripts of others (and we can be pretty sure Chibnall is doing that) than working with material entirely their own.If Chibnall continues to give us stories like this and “Demons of the Punjab”, I won’t care if he also writes a couple of less-stellar scripts every season.
Yeah, the episode would probably be stronger if it didn’t linger too much on the aliens at the end- the whole part where Becca’s exposed is great and I think they should have found a way to wrap it up there. That said, I enjoyed all of it pretty much. I’ve liked Whittaker from moment one obviously, but this was probably her strongest showcase.
I think the scenes just between her and Cumming were some of her strongest since she took up the role.
I really, really liked the doctor not forgiving James at the end. Persecuting “witches” is not cool!
I was expecting her to tell the companions that James had, in lunging at the Morax queen, contracted a disease himself and would not therefore live past the mid-1620s. Would have been an interesting callback to the royal family as haemophiliacs/werewolves in Tooth and Claw, and would have increased this episode’s flavour of The Unquiet Dead, which ended with the Doctor telling their companion about Dickens’ imminent death..
I kind of enjoyed the unexpected turn to sci-fi wackiness at the end for the sheer nostalgia of it—it felt like an episode ending from the Tenth Doctor’s early days—but it was definitely an awkward step down from the more interpersonal drama. Thirteen’s speech to James I was fantastic, we were about due for one of those classic Doctor-y monologues.
It actually reminded me a lot of some of the Third Doctor storylines: a fairly mundane setting where something weird is clearly happening, which eventually gets revealed as some random alien enemy.
I had an annoying contrarian reaction to this episode. I didn’t hate it or anything but I didn’t like it very much and would put a lot of this season’s episodes above it. I guess this is a suspension of disbelief sort of thing but for some reason it really annoys me when the Doctor and companions encounter a very primitive, backward society and for the most the people there believe them and trust them. In this episode in essence they’re encountering a brutal, ultra-superstitious, ultra-misogynist Christian theocracy. They’re trying to say something about patriarchy I guess but having the doctor at this point looking like a human women who’s telling them that everything they’re doing is wrong and attacking their religious beliefs and on top of that somehow surviving the witch testing mechanism which means you’re definitely a witch would’ve resulted in a brutal lynching I’m sure. This is a society which has so normalized “witch trials” that they’re basically a fun Sunday picnic. Our multi-ethnic heroes showing up out of nowhere to tell people everything they’re doing is wrong would’ve been about as well received as northern civil rights activists in the Jim Crow South. And as if this isn’t enough they actually argue with and scoff at the actual fucking king of England which I imagine would’ve been unthinkable.I imagine I’m going to get lots of comments like this must be the first episode of Doctor Who I’ve ever seen etc. and yeah I get it but I still feel like they could’ve had a similarly structured episode that made similar thematic points and not strained credulity to this extent. And yes I get it’s a show about a time and space traveling box but it seems like the historical eps still should meet a certain standard
I get this critique, but I thought they justified it in the characterization. Madame Savage wanted to believe the Doctor was the Witchfinder General because she’s a woman who is in a unique position of power in her society, while King James was portrayed at being vaguely amused and patronizing at everyone when they challenged him, until things got more serious, at which point he tried to kill them.
The alien mud monster stuff really should have been cut down. Not only did it feel tacked on, but you can tell that it left little time for anything else to breath. In particular, the two dunking scenes were way too fast paced. It seemed like the woman at the beginning drowned the moment she hit the water, and the companions somehow teleported, completely dry, to the other side of the river.
They crossed a bridge. Ryan, I believe, called and pointed to it before they went over. But, yeah, it was pretty rushed. I guess the old woman didn’t even try to hold her breath or anything.
My take is that since Doctor Who is a family show, they didn’t want to dwell on the brutality of the violence too much. I noticed that they only mentioned the burning of witches once, and that was after Becka had been possessed by the Morax queen; blowing up an evil alien is a fantasy situation, unlike setting an actual human being on fire.
I don’t think there was historically a lot of burning of witches by the point in history we’re at. I think more was “tests” where not being a witch meant you died and hanging. The Doctor was also pretty against burn the Morax queen. She tries to stop him.
People convicted of witchcraft in Britain (including the colonies) were hanged, yes — burnings tended to be restricted to heretics (although the practice was dying out by the early seventeenth century) and women convicted of treason, since the punishment prescribed for men was considered indecent thanks to all the nudity involved. They did burn supposed witches on the Continent, though.The immersion test for witch trials is period-accurate, although it wasn’t conducted exactly as the episode shows; they would just tie you up and throw you in to see if you floated — James VI/I’s Daemonologie actually discusses it (the idea was that water is a pure element and would reject a witch). The ducking stool was a real thing, but it was used for public humiliation (of unruly women, as Becka says in the episode) rather than to inflict serious physical damage.
Jodie Whittaker and Alan Cumming were both terrific in this, but I feel like the end was a muddled, rushed mess that ended up dragging the whole thing down a notch. Like the reviewer says, it’s really uninteresting to watch once the Morax show up, as if the writer felt like she had to squeeze some traditional Doctor Who into the last ten minutes. That’s simply not enough time to properly introduce a new villain, figure out what they’re up to and how to stop them, put an end to their wicked plan, and wrap things up, so we just get a big exposition dump followed by a hasty series of poorly explained events, and then it’s over.
One of my favorite Doctor Who novels is The Witch Hunters, a historical adventure that sees the First Doctor, Ian, Barbara, and Susan swept up in the Salem witch panic. It’s a really good probing of the psychology of that insanity, and I hoped that’s what we’d get with this episode. Instead I feel like we got what ended up being a pretty average story, spiced up by some good performances. Perhaps I was let down by my own expectations, given how great were the last two stories set in the past.
That’s a terrific book – a historical done right.
After a run of episodes where the monster was NOT in fact, The Monster, it was nice to get an episode where the monster IS The Monster (with a side of ‘humans are also monsters sometimes’).
I think the reveal of the monsters being monster kind of ruined the humans are monsters part though.
Old news, the average high school kid is aware humans are potential monsters.
Both were true? The monsters were bad, but the humans still killed 35 people that had done nothing wrong and that Mistress Savage /knew/ had done nothing wrong.
Yeah but she didn’t get any real comeuppance for it, that instead got overtaken by the Morrax’s last minute reveal.
Yeah but she didn’t get any real comeuppance for it, that instead got overtaken by the Morrax’s last minute reveal.
Death from internal takeover by mud monster and then set on fire seems like some comeuppance to me.It seems James I and Willa were the ones that were meant to get more of the lessons, tbh.
Madame Savage was infected/possessed by the mud aliens before she started on her killing spree.
it still works considering Becka still led the witch hunt and murder of all 3o-some-odd women in the village. Her fear made her a monster long before the Morax completely took hold of her.
Yeah, it says something about this new season when the show’s ‘twist’ is that the evil alien monster is actually an evil alien monster.
I feel like they really couldn’t decide how to treat James. You obviously don’t hire Cumming unless you want the character to have a certain baseline kookiness and likability and he (and Whittaker) nailed the more serious beats. But they really couldn’t decide how culpable or villainous they wanted him to be and that, combined with too much of the mud monsters, muddled the ending.
He was fun but he could have been easily removed or replaced by an another character and it wouldn’t have mattered.
The TARDIS Eruditorum review wisely points out that although James wasn’t needed for the plot, he *was* needed for the tone of the episode. He keeps it from being too monochromatic and… muddy.
I appreciated that they walked the line. It would have been easy to make him a mustache twirling villain, but I thought they humanized him well in some ways even if he couldn’t see his wrong doing.
I did find it weird how they presented King James as an Ineffective Comedic Antagonist. It’s also interesting how they paired him with Ryan considerin’ how one of their first impulses when facing an alien was to shoot it. (Ryan in episode 2 with the robots and King James with the way he dealt with Wes Craven’s Swamp Thing in this episode.)
They went a little Queen Victoria with King James
This episode was good right up until the bit with the mud aliens and their generic evil plot. They basically ruined what was a good call out of Becka’s (And James to a lesser degrees) killing of the villagers to cover up her own crimes and it was ruined by bullshit.Also Alan Cumming is great and Alan Cumming as King James VI was great, and man James had an interesting life in the worst way possible huh?
Episode was pretty good until the terrible ending. The first half had a very strong Trek vibe to it, feels like someone at the BBC saw the script and said “Toss in the wacky monsters”.
The moment where King James refused to take The Doctor seriously because of her gender seemed like squandered potential. Obviously the show can’t change who King James was in real life, but there’s a reason sci-fi tends to tread in allegory rather than history.
Sure they can. For instance the King who wrote “ most miracles now-a-days prove but illusions, and ye may see by this how wary judges should be in trusting accusations” seems quite different than the King shown in this episode.
Cumming really didn’t do it for me. There’s a certain point where actors ham up their accents a bit too much that it becomes irritating and hard to focus on the scene at hand. Not that I begrudge them for having fun pissing about at work, mind.
I dunno, I found his hammy nature laugh out loud funny whenever his attention was turned to Ryan. He clearly had some desire to know him better. (And who could blame the old king!)
It was one of the best performances in the history of Doctor Who. Do internet commentators role dice to figure out what they’re going to complain about?
Dice? I got a coin I flip. Heads, I give my honest personal opinion; tails, I give unwarranted superlative praise on performances that just didn’t land. We’re not so different, you and I.
Cumming is hit or miss for me but I enjoyed this bit of scenery chewing considerably.
I found it odd, that given the flamboyancy of his accent, that he didn’t just use his native Scottish accent, since James I was notably THE FIRST SCOTTISH KING OF ENGLAND.
The aristocracy, and especially royalty, would have had distinct accents from commoners, even more so than today. As it was Cummings sounded like very refined Edinburgh to me, which is probably as close as anyone knows to the real James I / VI.
Francis Bacon wrote in 1603 that King James’s “speech is swift and cursory, and in the full dialect of his country.” There are also historical notes of the day (or just after his reign) that infer he was taken less seriously in England due to his heavy accent. There are notes to his “dribbling speech” or sounding like his tongue was too big for his mouth.
They are the Morax, they speak for the trees!
The treeeeeees, they are ussssssss.
Because the trees are keeping Satan at bay and when you cut them down-evil gets loose. It’s almost Tolkien if you ignore the evil aliens bit.
That line was cut by Seuss’ editor.
I was just slightly overexcited by the fact that I can see Pendle Hill from my desk. Imagining it’s full of alien mud monsters might make my work day go a little quicker.
Yeah, Alan Cumming but I could not keep my eyes out of Siobhan Finneran. In a small role that could be hammed to the skies she looked frightening and pitiful. Also: those eyes.
I’m assuming the perception filter from the TARDIS is working overtime since the Doctor and Yaz would have been immediately shunned and persecuted for their “indecent” clothing. Also, the sight of Ryan would have been shocking in rural 17th century England. It’s like when no one commented on Amy’s miniskirt in the Old West episode.
The assumption with seeing a black man might be that he was a slave/servant for someone of means (if you wanted a general dogsbody, you’d recruit a local). That might actually help the perception of the group as exotic, wealthy experts in a subject no-one else understands.Also, witchfinders were terrifying people who could pick on almost anyone with no provocation. If people believe you are one, no common person is going to question the oddballs you are hanging around with. They would certainly question that a friendly woman appeared to be giving the orders though, which the show handled well, I thought.The clothing perception seems to depend on whether the actors want to dress up or not. There have certainly been historical episodes where they wore costumes/disguises (like the Orient Express one with 12/Clara) and others where they didn’t but no-one noticed unless it was a plot point. Same thing would apply in futuristic episodes where the Doctor wears a frock coat and the inhabitants are wearing space suits.
Just want to point that that while there were not many, there were Black people in Britain (and America, for that matter) in the 17th Century who were not servants or slaves… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_British#17th_and_18th_centuries
Indeed, there certainly were. I suspect they might be slightly less unusual in or around northern port cities like Liverpool at the time. In the arse end of Lancashire, less so.
I live in a village in rural Devon. I have NEVER seen anyone who isn’t white in my village. I’ve lived here for 53 years. This in the 21st century. So imagine what it would have been like 400 years ago when there were so far, far fewer black and SE Asian people in the UK – the main waves of immigration have all taken part in the last 80 years. Those that were here in the past stayed mainly in urban areas, just as today.
It’s literally stated in The Shakespeare Code that Martha should just walk around like she knows what she’s doing and no one will notice her clothes or skin color.Othello was also a thing and the Moors were well known and exoticized by some.
There were enough free black people in early modern England that Elizabeth I tried to expel them, or at least considered it — there exists a draft proclamation dated 1601 that orders them to be deported, on the grounds that they were supposedly taking jobs from English people, because nothing ever changes in this stupid world. It was never actually done, though. More generally, there’s some good information here.
Othello was already a thing by the time period they are visiting. The Moors were a group that many people were familiar with. They had contact with African peoples. James even refers to Ryan as his “Nubian prince.” They may well have looked down on him, but they wouldn’t have been shocked that he existed. It was also established in The Shakespeare Code and in Thin Ice that the Doctor’s approach is just act like you fit in and it’s fine.
Whittaker is such an amazing Doctor. I was looking forward to her from the start but she is gold in the role.
“While attempting to attend the coronation of Elizabeth I”a.k.a. #10’s spouse. Man, that could get awkward. (I get the feeling 10 and 13 would get along really well, actually I figure 10 would crush on 13 pretty hard.)
I really want a 10/13 meet up. I think he’d be so excited to find out he’ll become a woman.
A team-up to solve crimes in a coastal town in Dorset might be good.
“Not to kill her, but to fill her.”“You’re not filling me.”“Your king shall be filled with our king, and we shall be freed to fill all of you.”
Um, phrasing?I thought it was a solid episode, and it was probably Whittaker’s strongest performance in the role so far. The ending wasn’t perfect, but I didn’t think it was as disappointing as the ending of last week’s episode.
My favorite part was King James crush on Ryan. So far we’ve been running around the universe pretending that Ryan isn’t gorgeous. King Jame’s excellent taste in men is his only redeeming feature. It’s also a nice way to undermine a man associated with the current arbitrary version of Christianity that led to the torture, murder, suffering, and subjugation of millions of innocent gay people over hundreds of years.
James referring to Ryan as a “Nubian prince” was delightful, as was how much the obvious crush amused Graham. I though Ryan handled it pretty maturely too, he tried not to lead James on more than was necessary, and not to be overly freaked out by it.
I mean, King James was banging dudes, and he only commissioned the King James Bible to distract the church.
He did not! He commissioned the King James Bible in order to establish a translation that was in keeping with Anglican beliefs about the church hierarchy and provide a counterweight to the popular and very Puritan-leaning Geneva translation! Then he banged dudes in his spare time!
Hey, sometimes people do things for more than one reason.
Are you suggesting that a thing can be two things???
not when you use the word only.
I’m interested by this apparent folk history that connects the King James Bible to James’s sexuality! Where did it come from?
Some crazy asshole has been screaming – elsewhere – that the show is canceled. They’re crazy, right?
Yeah, crazy. Looks like the ratings for the season as a whole are up by 40% compared to last season.
Not crazy – just pushing an agenda to anyone who’ll listen.
The rating had a drop from episode one. But nothing has been announced. The rumors were that this may be the only season for the writer an main actor.
Almost every show has a ratings drop after the premiere though. I have seen the rumours that Chibnall may be quitting, and that Whitaker may be quitting, but you get those exact same rumours every single year.
We can only hope, this season has been more miss than hit.
Series 12 has started production so that strongly suggests neither of them are quitting.
The rating had a drop from episode one, but is 2-3 million viewers ahead of the last series for each episode. It is holding steady at 7+ million viewers ahead of last series average of 5. It is still ranks high in its timeslot. It has a 95% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. More than anything, it was confirmed by the BBC on November 17 at their would be a series 12 and it already entered production: https://www.starburstmagazine.com/doctor-bbc-confirm-series-12-broadcast-2019
I don’t trust rotten tomatoes, it is just a collection of reviewers most of which don’t go past a few episodes or just go the way the wind blows. They praised Black Panther for being the Marvel movie that all others should be held up to, when it was so mediocre and forgettable I would place it in the same rank as the first Thor movie.we can only hope that they will sharpen up the writing and the interest will remain after the novelty wears off. Otherwise I will probably drop the show until they change show-runners. The writing is clumsy and they could loose two of the companions.
For Doctor Who, they go episode by episode. So the conceit that they are only going for a few episodes is incorrect. They have on average 11 reviews for each episode. You don’t have to agree with those reviews, but to claim they aren’t watching it is untrue. Disagreeing with a reviewer and their review being “untrustworthy” is not quite the same thing.
Well you got me on that one.Ultimately that doesn’t change my opinion and I wouldn’t use them as a resource, they heap praise on bad movies and tv shows before. I have been a long time Who fan and I wasn’t opposed to a female Dr. But this has to be the weakest season so far of the new series. I am perfectly willing to lay it all on Chibnall and have hope for a second season without his involvement. If it stays the same I will probably just drop it until they get a new show-runner.
If you mean you don’t trust Rotten Tomatoes to be a good barometer of what critics and audiences think is quality entertainment, you’re wrong. The Black Panther example is the worst you could possibly pick, as it is a beloved movie among fans and critics alike.If you mean you don’t trust it to match up to your own unique and contrarian opinions, that’s fine, but I’m not even sure what makes that worth saying.
Well, not really, there have been many successful movies that have terrible ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and critics often score things differently than the audience does. This has also gone the other direction with many questioning ratings on some well rated films and suggesting it was more about marketing. Which is why there is often an audience score and a critics score. So either it is gauging movies based off of out of vogue structural elements and buzz-worthy factors or it is ineffective at accurately gauging entertainment value and random.My beliefs in this are neither unique and only contrary to those who disagree with me. In the same way musical genres are to the people who dislike them. I made sure to avoid opening day and watch the movie after the buzz had faded. I am not a loner in my opinion by a long-shot. It was an OK movie that was well marketed and hyped.But you are entitled to your opinions, superficial though they may be.
Series 12 has already been confirmed and they confirmed that Chibnall and Whitaker will be in it. There are some rumors floating around that S12 will be the last for them, but they don’t seem to be substantiated by anyone credible so I’d take it with a grain of salt. The season has been a big ratings success after the Capaldi era had some disappointing viewership drops so my guess is BBC will do whatever they can to keep them around.
Maybe he will step back to a more administrative role as opposed to a creative one.Capaldi’s run was a bit of a disappointment considering what they had to work with. But the first and third season had solid story-lines it was the second season that felt recycled.
Again, his ratings are among the best the show has seen and the reviews are strong. While I can understand individuals not like his approach (I didn’t particularly like RTD), I don’t think the data is going to suggest anything to the BBC that they should encourage him to step back.I do think there’s a good chance that he will write fewer episodes if only because that has been the pattern for all showrunners since 2005.
While I’m actually enjoying the season quite a bit, I do wonder if the Sunday timeslot is boosting ratings. It could also just be fresh blood, the interest in Whitaker, diverse faces, but I’m like “Mmmaybe Sundays were the way to go.” Because this season has some higher live + 5 ratings than any of the seasons excluding the specials
Possibly they are Russian troops trying to undermine Western civilization.
I don’t think Cumming even asked to be paid for this episode. “I get to wear a large hat, fake beard and have as much scenery as I can eat? I’ll be there in five minutes!”
“Do I also get to imply that James I is gay? Good. I’ll bring the donuts.”
To be fair, that’s not completely ahistorical.
Many historians have theorized that James was possibly bisexual. At the very least he had some close, rather physical relationships with a handful of male “favorites”
There was a rumor, it was started by one person and it’s largely unproven and unpopular with historians. The main elements being that he was friends with younger male members of the court and used flowery language. However flowery language was the royal fashion at the time and his aloofness could easily be due to his difficult childhood.
Or, “protectors”, as he HEAVILY implied with Ryan and Alphonso?
Theorised? 😂
Yeah I think King James’ own actions in real life are what heavily implied he was gay or bisexual, having male partners, openly declaring his love for them, giving them increasingly larger titles and spending all his private time with them and so on…
Exchanging letters where they addressed each other as “dear dad and husband”/“sweet child and wife”…Seriously, you’ll be fairly hard-pressed to find scholars of the period who don’t think James was, in modern terms,* gay or bisexual — I mean, no, you can’t conclusively prove two men 400 years ago did or didn’t have sex, but the letters James and the Duke of Buckingham wrote to each other are suggestive in a way that isn’t covered by “oh, male friendship was more expressive in those days.” I mean, to a point, yes, but not to “the bed’s head could not be found betwixt the master and his dog” levels.*I don’t want to suggest that sexual orientation didn’t exist before we invented it, but sexual identity was very much an undeveloped concept in the early seventeenth century, and it was assumed that same-sex attraction was something everyone (or at least all men) were capable of — this is one reason English Puritans were opposed to the theater, for instance. However, it’s pretty safe to conclude from the evidence we do have that James’s closest relationships were with men, and that his relationship with his wife was cordial but businesslike.
Didn’t he commission the King James Bible basically as a way to get the Church off his back about his relationships?There’s also this:I, James, am neither a god nor an angel, but a man
like any other. Therefore I act like a man and confess to loving those
dear to me more than other men. You may be sure that I love the Earl of
Buckingham more than anyone else, and more than you who are here
assembled. I wish to speak in my own behalf and not to have it thought
to be a defect, for Jesus Christ did the same, and therefore I cannot be
blamed. Christ had John, and I have George.
No, he commissioned the King James Bible because the popular Geneva translation was very Puritan-leaning, and the Anglican hierarchy was very important to his conception of kingship (he very famously said “no bishop, no king”) — the Church of Scotland had been very keen on abolishing the episcopate, and James, who felt that this was a serious threat to royal power, took his concerns with him when he became king of England. The Authorized Version (which is the “official” name for the KJV) was the result of the 1604 Hampton Court Conference, which was an important series of meetings about various controversies in the Church of England mostly centering around whether it was too Catholic-flavored and whether making it more Puritanical might not be a better idea (James was firmly of the opinion that it would not, although the hopes of English Catholics that he might be more tolerant towards them than his predecessor were dashed when a few of them tried to blow him up). There isn’t really a lot to suggest that James’s sexuality was a point of conflict with the church; the Anglican bishops saw him as an ally, while the Scottish Presbyterians had conflicts with him because he was pro-bishop.
(…this post has absolutely nothing to do with Doctor Who, but whatever)
didn’t he have an entire estate built just so he and his Duke lover can canoodle in its halls?
I understand we have no way of knowing but is that how British royalty really spoke back then? Because Cumming’s accent in this was insane. Funnily enough, it sounded like the most peasant-y dialect of my own language, I couldn’t stop laughing.
His accent was insane, I agree, but I also appreciated that it was a choice. I don’t think it was his inability to do a different accent. I’m imagining that he was like I can’t go full Scottish or full English. Let me go for this madness.
If you found his accent a bit mad, I’d recommend The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie with Maggie Smith for a comparison. It’s a posh Edinburgh or Kelvinside accent, not so common any more but weel kent in my youth. Cummings’ was mixed with a bit more English, though.
I am very much a fan of that movie and its accents 🙂
This episode was….gloriously awful? Yeah I think that’s about the right description. A gloriously awful episode of Doctor Who.And honestly I thought Alan Cumming was one of the awful parts. He took the campiness too far and at no point ever came across with the right gravitas for a king.
I love 13, but this is going to be the worst new Doctor Who season by far. Most episodes look like RTD’s discarded scripts.
Let’s not be hasty now, Matt Smith’s final season didn’t have a single good episode in it, although I guess “Cold War” and“Hide” were okay.
I have a soft spot for “Cold War” because of gratuitous David Warner and Clara looked so adorable in a Soviet naval uniform.
Series 7 was seriously awful. It felt like they focused all of their energy on the upcoming 50th and forgot to put effort into any of the episodes.
Am I the only one who thinks Season 8 was the worst? It felt, to me, like the writers actively hated the characters that year.
I think the problem was that Moffatt wrote himself into a corner with Season 6’s ending. He was attempting a story arc that would stretch over the 11th Doctor’s whole tenure, but he didn’t know how long that tenure would last because that was up to Matt Smith. Which meant he basically had to make filler seasons full of inconsequential episodes because none of that “fall of the 11th” crap could happen until Smith actually left the role. Consequently season 7 is full of episodes which feel like they’re just there to fill space (and also “Hide,” which is actually a brilliant story and deserved better company) and have barely a good idea between them, capped off by perhaps the worst season finale Doctor Who has ever done.
And then of course, it turned out Smith basically was just sticking around so he could be the 50th anniversary Doctor (not that I blame him, who would pass that up?) and he announced his departure shortly after the special wrapped. So Moffat had to shoehorn all his plans for 11’s “fall” into a single episode, which turned out to be a confused and overstuffed mess.
Part of the reason why Capaldi’s era was so great by comparison is because Moffat had the good sense to not attempt anything like that again.
I’m a little surprised that with the trajectory of the show being what it is now that they don’t do a multi-year contract. Or at least what would be equivalent to a hold. I would think similar to The Crown, they would be like “We’re contracting you for 2 series at a time.” That way you would be able to build to an arc cleanly if you wanted to. I mean I’m okay with some self-contained bits, but I think it might help the cadence of the show if the writers know they have at least 2 years with a given cast.
I’m not too clear on the specifics but apparently it’s extremely difficult to do that in the UK, contractually speaking. Keep in mind that The Crown is one of the most expensive TV shows ever made. The BBC doesn’t have those geysers of Netflix money.
And also because Capaldi wasn’t actively flirting with Hollywood.
IDK, I loved 9, but there are some big ol’ clunkers in the initial series as well. I actually have been fine with this season. I wouldn’t call it the worst. But I would say it’s more “fine” than “Great.”
I agree that there’s a lot of crap in previous seasons (some of which Chibnall wrote). I think the thing that disappoints me most is that I really wanted the first season with the first female Doctor to be fucking amazing so that all the misogynists have no excuse. Also, because she deserves better. Jodie Whitaker really is a great Doctor, but I feel like the stories and scripts she’s getting for her first outing just aren’t doing the best job of highlighting that. Makes me sad.
I’d put it above Series 2, Series 6, and Series 7 for sure. Honestly I’d put it about on par with Capaldi’s first year. Not everything works and there’s no real classics (yet), but I dig the vibe and it’s pleasantly consistent overall.
12 drives up to a 12th century crowd in a Chieftain tank jamming on an electric guitar and no one bats an eye.13 pulls out a sonic once in the 17th century and it’s “Drown the witch!”.Thanks, patriarchy.
I’d argue that the 12th Century “Dark Ages” and the 17th Century prudishness have very different relationships with superstition, magic and witchcraft. They basically think 12 was a wizard. They just thought that was cool. If he’d done the same thing in the 17th Century, he’d have gotten a less warm reception.
Oh good. “Religion is bad!” is on the soapbox this week.Sigh. I cant wait for Chibnall to move on and we can get back to a quirky and fun show.
“Religion is bad” isn’t the lesson at all. “Religion can be perverted to support an agenda” is the lesson.
I was a little startled that the Doctor was so confident that Satan didn’t exist considering she met him that one time. His mindless body was chained in a big pit in a black hole. Rose blasted him into space. It seemed pretty memorable to me, but I guess some things don’t stick after thirteen hundred years.
Wasn’t the Doctor pretty firm in that episode that it was NOT Satan?
Of course, how silly of me. Satan is a myth. This was just a malevolent creature from outside our universe who had been imprisoned since the beginning of time which corrupted individuals and was set on escaping so as to make war upon God.(At the time, I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t some Wizard of Oz thing, or a space probe that had collided with Satan, or some such stock sci-fi cop-out. That two-parter is probably a big part of why I respect Doctor Who’s endless audacity. It’s all made-up anyway, why not swing for the fences?)
I’ve always found Doctor Who to be pretty preachy. Don’t think it’s any moreso nowadays
Oh, the show has always done societal commentary. Lots and lots and lots of social commentary. The Sunmakers exists because Bob Holmes was pissed at the tax man. Planet of Giants and The Green Death are about environmentalism and pollution. Vengeance on Varos was pushing back against the Video Nasty hysteria. The Daleks are “Nazis are bad”. The Cybermen are “science and medicine without morality”. And on and on and on.Whats different in the current season is that the producers are putting Message first and Entertaining Story second instead of the other way around.
Can I humbly submit a suggestion to the show? Namely – Chibnall seems to know how to produce a TV show. Let him do that. That is no small job – recruiting writers, actors and herding a group of cats to a set to create a TV show is as much an art as writing it. So let him do that and let others write the show…Honestly, I find Chibnall-penned episodes to be… adequate. Maybe above-adequate. But the last coupe seeks of others writing has shown that Chibnall just shouldn’t be writing the show. So let Chibnall do what he seems to do best – running the show – and let others do the writing.
yep, I agree. let him make the decisions on casting, visual effects, which countries to film in etc, those have all been totally spot on this season, but for god’s sake lock him out of the room with the typewriter in it
And that isn’t denigrating Chibnalls talents – running a show is a complex business and he does that with a real flair and talent. Probably better than Moffat did, to be honest. Maybe even better than RTD since he’s doing a lot more on-location stuff and that adds to the complexity of the task.It’s just in the actual writing that he tends to falter. I am sure he adds a few remarks to the scripts and such, and so let him do that stuff.
honestly your point about Moffat and RTD hit on something I was thinking about the last few weeks, which is that we’ve essentially done a complete 180 in terms of where the showrunner’s talents are. RTD and especially Moff were both fantastic writers who weren’t necessarily the best at running the show, which is understandable because they were both clearly chosen for the role due to the quality of their scripts, but in the end the job comes down to a lot more things than that (making decisions, editing others’ scripts, writing the overall season arc etc.) that they weren’t necessarily the strongest at. I do think Moff got a lot better in Capaldi’s era, when you had Mathieson, Dollard and Talalay all becoming regulars and the visuals of the show got really strong. but we’ve finally got Chibnall, whose strength as a showrunner is pretty obvious from this season and from Broadchurch, but who just can’t really hold a candle to his two predecessors as far as pure script quality goes. it’s a very, very interesting decision and it’s changed the show in a lot of ways
I 100% agree with everything you say here. As occasionally dissatisfied as I had been with Moffat’s work, I did find his episodes still pretty good (if not great). But his showrunning just kind of fell apart. While I was looking forward to Whitaker this season, I was a little nervous about Chibnall. Probably the best I can say for his prior work on the show is “meh,” so I haven’t exactly been enthused by the number of episodes he’s written (or with them in general). But Broadchurch was a really great show. I had really been hoping he’d prove more of a competent showrunner and would take more of a backseat on the episode writing. And thus, I haven’t exactly been crazy about the new season on the whole, though I do love Whitaker, as expected.
I DO really wish they’d give us something that will allow us to finally get a handle on the relationship the Doctor has with her new companions. The fact that we have a new Doctor plus THREE new companions has short-changed the development of their characters and relationship dynamics. Is it weird that I feel like what we really need right now is a good, old-fashioned bottle episode featuring just the 4 of them so we can have some time just with them?
This is it exactly – I agree with your point about Capaldi, and that Moffat, while not a perfect showrunner, had some pretty amazing scripts, while Chibnall is pretty much a reverse. I kind of wish former showrunners came back to write episodes bc. a Moffat or RTD-penned Chibnall-era ep could be amazing.
I think a Moffat penned ep with the new cast would be loads of fun. Moffat lacked in the showrunning dept but wow could he write an excellent Dr Who story.
be fair to moffat though – Capaldi’s years were brilliant (no matter what crap people say about how his scripts were bad or something).
I liked Capaldi a lot. I would argue he was the best actor ever to take the role. Not my favorite but the best overall actor.But a lot of the stories on his tenure were less than great. Capaldi did wonders with what he was given to work with. But one of the creeping problems he had was stories that would start out strong but finish with a whimper.I am not sure where else to lay the blame than the writing in that respect. Moffat’s scripts seemed to be solid for him but the other people never really got Capaldi as well I think. And those years suffered for it.Basically I think Capaldi’s time will be remembered as only a lukewarm era for the show and I kinda feel bad for him… He had the capability of making those years into something extraordinary and was hamstrung.
well not for me. I really don’t get why everyone says he had bad stories. I can think of like 3 I didn’t enjoy that much, and I actually felt like if anything the writing was the best the show’s had before or since.
I am not sure if they were “Bad stories” or just “Mildly disappointing Stories” to be honest. Capaldi’s era never felt that impressive…Not taking anything at all away from Capaldi here. That guy is an incredible actor and I argue the best actor ever to portray the role. But he never had many stories that were in the “Outstanding” level.I can think of a few stories that I loved in his era. But That is what hits me… He ought to have had more than a few. It’s not like he was lacking for episodes and stories, after all. So we ought to be able to name at least a dozen “A” level stories for his three seasons and I doubt I could name more than maybe 3.
yeah I just felt the opposite. I hadn’t been that captivated by the writing for years until Capaldi’s era. It even felt more mature than RTD’s writing. I genuinely feel that there have only been a handful of Capaldi episodes that didn’t wow me, but it’s subjective I guess.
Kill the Moon (unpopular choice I know but I love that episode for the Clara-Doctor relationship and the ending), Flatline, Mummy on the Orient Express, Listen, The Magician’s Apprentice/Witch’s Familiar, basically all of series 9 except for Sleep No More, especially Face the Raven/Heaven Sent/Hell Bent, Extremis (but not the rest of the monk trilogy), World Enough and Time/The Doctor Falls, and Twice Upon a Time. Plus Last Christmas and Husbands of River Song (the latter less for the plot and more for the feels of the 12/River ending). All of those episodes plus probably a few more I’m forgetting were all standouts for me.
Oh and I forgot to add the series 8 finale Dark Water/Death in Heaven. absolutely marvelous.
I will say that while I loved Bill, series 10 didn’t have that many memorable episodes and felt kind of lame for Capaldi’s final season. But the previous two always felt like a golden age to me.
Series 10 just didn’t click. I did like the ideas in many of the episodes but it never jelled for me at all. It’s like Bill – on paper she was an interesting character but in practice… I liked her interaction with Capaldi but the stories taking place around that interaction just didn’t catch me at all.
No… For me Dark Water and it’s followup felt a bit too rote. Which is weird to say considering that it was zombies being made into cybermen by the Master (or Mistress depending on how we want to handle that). But it felt… I don’t know… Perfunctory is the word that comes to mind. To me at least.
To me, a lot of the episodes you mention were episodes I didn’t hate but would probably skip past if I were rewatching the show.Out of them, I’d say that Heaven Sent and Hellbent are about the only two I’d put on a personal list of episodes to watch again.
If you look at previous patterns, the showrunner has always written more episodes in their first series and fewer in the subsequent ones because the tone and characterization has been set. I would also theorize that the change over in the show was part of him writing the front of the series — There was probably a good amount of prep going on before the cast was in place, before exactly where the last series was going to shake out was public and so on. It may have meant that he and his producing team were prepping for a period of time on their own. Moffat, for example, also wrote the first 4 episodes of his first series. In the second series, this went down to the first 2, and in the third series down to just the initial opener with a big gap between his episodes. He wrote other episodes, but not so front loaded. RTD also wrote almost all of his first series, but I think some of that might also have been that it was a new thing and no one really knew how it was going to go, tbh.
Four of the first five (Third episode was Gatiss’s Victory of the Daleks)
Exactly! I’ve been saying this since the season started – I think Chibnall’s overall vision is great, his instincts for the basic feel of the show are also great, and he is nailing a more character-based approach. The only problem is that I don’t think he know how to write an episode well. So as long as he leaves that to other writers, but continues to oversee everything, I think the show will get a lot stronger.
This was one of those episodes where I wish there were no aliens. It would have been brilliant without them. Demons of the Punjab was the same way. Loving the new Doctor.
BIG missed opportunity in this one for the Doctor to say “I should like a hat like that”.
I think she was willing to change history because somebody else came along and tried to change history first. She was trying to fix history. It’s like how she made Graham stay on the bus during Rosa.Alan Cumming was phenomenal and hammy.But I agree that this episode took a major left turn in the rushed third act.
The first episode that really felt like a Dr Who episode. It still had flaws, and it isn’t as good as any of season 1 of Capaldi, where the biggest complaint was the quality of writing, but it had some of the magic that made Dr Who.It was unfortunately still taking the easy route and annoyingly preachy. I think everyone knows those were a messed up time and there have been plays and movies written about how the trials were just a distraction from neighbors turning on one another for petty reason, i.e. the Crucible. So that unfortunately held the episode back quite a bit.Bonus points for Alan Cummings, he’s always welcome in this type of show and was a welcome change of pace.The Doctor still doesn’t act like the Doctor. She acts like the preachy car mechanic and taxi driver that is taking the companions on the adventure. This is coming from someone that had no issues with the gender of the Dr, I just didn’t want the writing to suffer, it has. I like that they give the companions more to do. But it would help if more than one of them had personality. The stepfather is still the most interest one, the son being whiny and the cop being boring.Finally we have a bad alien. Not just one that is mis-understood, but one that is willfully and unquestionably dangerous.
Finally we have a bad alien. Not just one that is mis-understood, but one that is willfully and unquestionably dangerous.
Have we forgotten “Tim Shaw” and the Stenza already?
The boring, muddled, and rather disappointing first episode? I have been trying, but it hasn’t worked.
I don’t know if this is leading to something bigger, but there has been a recurring theme about war crimes and radical groups. Krasko was in jail for radical behavior. Charlie had been radicalized. The Stenza seem to defy intergalactic law. The aliens in Demons of the Punjab had committed war atrocities and were now atoning for it. The fact that the finale has the word “Battle” in the title, I wonder if this will tie back in along with the whole villains aren’t the villains. I feel like I keep saying this, but I really liked this episode and it might be my fave so far. I think the series is finding its voice well and Chibnall is showing he knows how to utilize other writers which should help moving forward.Alan Cumming was great. Yeah, he was devouring the scenery and so campy, but it was so perfect for the role and the episode, tbh. I do think the episode had a pretty high production value, but some of that might be because the majority was outside in a forest — cuts down on the amount of fabricated interiors/exteriors.
No mention of the hat tip to Arthur C. Clarke? Really? I only hope it’s because it was so obvious.
Yaz (paraphrasing): “Gah! They’re NOT! WITCHES! They’re just corpses reanimated by alien mud!”People can be so blind and stupid.
One of the great things about post-revival Doctor Who as been the story arcs – some over the course of a season and some running the entirety of a particular Doctor’s residence in the TARDIS. We’re eight episodes in with Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor and new showrunner Chibnall and I can’t really detect any kind of arc yet. It’s been entertaining, but so far doesn’t seem to have the depth of the Davies/Moffat eras.Alan Cumming can read the phone book and make it entertaining. He was simultaneously charming and scary as the zealous King James, and hilarious when he was flirting with Ryan. I hope that if there is some story arc hidden in the first season that we’ll see King James again.Finneran played a role very much like her role as O’Brien in Downton Abbey – delightfully evil while thinking she’s totally justified in her actions. Any actor will tell you the best parts are playing the bad guys. She nailed it.I agree the companions took a back seat in the action this time around. They came charging in like the cavalry when Graham realized the Doctor was about to get dunked, but other than that and Ryan’s interaction with the King, they just kind of milled about.Finally, I’m glad you mentioned the camera work. The angles and the washed out color when the mud-zombies definitely struck me as a rather effective homage to George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. Nicely done.
Allegedly, and this is mostly based on hearsay and rumors, BBC brass was hoping for a season of Doctor Who that was less heavily serialized because of the declining ratings. I think they’re hoping fans will be able to pop in and out again. I do think some of that is by design, but I’m holding out judgement. I have noticed some repetition in terms of people who were in jail, people who were marginalized and radicals that could show back up in the finale. That said, other than “Bad Wolf” as a set of words showing up in Series 1 of the revival and the Doctor talking about killing the Daleks, I don’t know that there was 100% a clear, serialized arc that was present before you got to the end. Once you got to the end, it was very Ohhhhh, that’s what all that was about. Series 2 with the Cybermen, other than having a cybermen episode earlier that setup the alternate realities, I don’t know that when watching it without knowing the end, I would see the arc. Saxon was just a repeated name. Moffat was really the one who serialized things again. I didn’t mind that, but there were much larger thru lines.
True. The Saxon/Yana/Master arc was very well buried until Dr. Yana opened the watch. The Bad Wolf arc was much more open, though we didn’t know who the Bad Wolf was until the finale.As for the BBC wanting to take a new approach, I can see that. It won’t be a total disappointment if they don’t tie everything up with a bow in the finale as long as the individual episodes are done well. There have been some really good stand alone episodes since New Who started, like Blink, The Girl int he Fireplace, and Love and Monsters.
The Bad Wolf arc was much more open, though we didn’t know who the Bad Wolf was until the finale.And oh, was that a disappointing reveal. Totally unearned by what came before it.I’d be happy if we never went down that kind of road again.
Yes, the deus ex machina was definitely in play on that one.
As much as I love this episode, and as many times as the Doctor has taken on problematic historical figures and found their redeeming qualities, King James is one who doesn’t have the redeeming qualities that past figures like Queen Victoria did. Fuck that guy. All in all, this only worked for me because they embraced King James’ long rumored homosexuality as well as the fact that Alan Cumming is the bestest.
Show, don’t tell. The recent two seasons of DW would benefit were they to follow this simple idea. Enough with the pointless exposition.
Alan Cumming was pretty great. Everybody’s clothes were pretty anachronistic for the time period. I don’t remember any past companions wearing obviously impossible clothing in the distant past.Also, did I hear that right that the tree-prison was supposed to have been put there billions of years ago? Back before there was anything that looked like a tree, or any land mass like Britain?
So, was King James I actually gay? Because that was vibe I was getting during his interactions with Ryan. I don’t remember anything about gay rumors from what I know about it. But, of course, all I really know about him was that he was King of England AND Scotland, he has his own version of the Bible, he was so into witchfinding that he wrote a book about, and that Shakespeare basically wrote Macbeth as an endorsement of his coronation as the English King.
He was! (Or possibly bisexual, but although he had a lot of kids and a generally decent relationship with his wife, his most emotionally intense relationships were all with men.) There’s some stuff about it upthread — he was pretty notorious for having a string of male favorites, which isn’t always a sexual thing in a royal-court context but it very likely was with James. The best-known one is probably George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham; some of their letters to each other have survived and they’re pretty suggestive (they address each other as “dear dad and husband” and “sweet child and wife,” for instance). But his close relationships with men had drawn a lot of comment and disapprobation since he was in his teens.
Also, “witchfinder general” has to be the most badass profession name in history.
I definitely agree. This was the most “Doctor Who”-like of the new season. There has been a problem keeping all the companions included while leaving little for The Doctor, but she was front and center.
After the big monster reveal with only 10 minutes left, I figured it’d be a surprise 2-parter, but they hastily wrapped it all quickly— very Doctor Who-like indeed.
(Also, the witch plot was a nice bookend after just finishing Sabrina.)
It helps if you don’t start your article being stupid. It’s not ironic to say you’re pro-life but support life sentences and death penalty for abortion if you believe abortion is murder.
If it’s a rule that, when traveling back in time, one shouldn’t “mess with the fundamental elements of history”, the same should be true of traveling into the future, since that’s the past somewhere else.
We should all just do nothing.
Since Big Finish has done 2 boxsets with Winston Churchill, would people listen to Alan Cumming in a King James: Witch-hunter box-set? I would (as long as they continue portraying him as an anti-villain)
i particularly loved how, when it suddenly took the wacky sci-fi turn and the Doctor explained what was going on, Graham spoke for us all and said something like, “OH! well, it makes so much more sense now that you explain it THAT WAY!” haha
It is, of course, a children’s show. That doesn’t mean to say that adults can’t watch it and love it, but remember it for what it is, when looking for deeper themes, and complaining about clunky parts. It is a children’s show with deeper themes, and a definite desire to scare, entertain and educate, and it succeeds superbly. As a 44 year old who grew up on it, missed it enough when it was gone to hire out on vhs (remember them?) the ones I hadn’t seen, I am loving this series, despite it’s lack of a big story arc. I think that the new doctor and team TARDIS are doing their job. I have had conversations with my two stepsons that I am so glad I have had,but would have never known how to approach, because of this series. And Jodie is in my top 5 Doctors already. This is a general comment after the 8 reviews, by the way,I look to AV Club for sense, in a world of disparate reviews.
The end of your third paragraph is also one of the central themes of Macbeth, a play written to be performed in front of and flatter King James. I suspect that to have been a deliberate choice by this episode’s writers.
Missing from Stray Observations (I thought): Graham’s comment about the group structure being somewhat flat. 🙂
Slightly disturbing to see one of the victims of the Pendle Witch Trials described on the disambiguation page of Wikipedia as “Alice Nutter (Witch)“ to differentiate her from “Alice Nutter (Writer)“.
I’ve never seen an entire episode of TV with such a self-satisfied smirk on its face.
Yes, James’s paranoia and zealotry are completely over the top, but if you had to grow up in the shark tank of Scottish court politics of the sixteenth century, had your mother snatched from you when you were an infant, *and* (presumably) had a recent credible attack on your life by some grumpy English Catholics who wanted to blow you and your government to kingdom come, you might become a little swivel-eyed, too.
James is inflexible in his religious fervor. A progressive?