Review of The Witchfinders
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.
In a way, this is the episode I’ve been waiting for since Whittaker was announced. Although she’s been so on screen for a couple of months now, this time the Doctor was finally “a woman.”
Up until now, she’s been able to do her usual trick of swanning in, acting like she owns the place, and being taken seriously. In fact, even when the TARDIS Team first arrived in Bilehurst Cragg, she flashed her psychic paper and was immediately accepted as an authority. But enter King James, and suddenly she is demoted from Witchfinder General to a “wee lassie”—and I loved it.
Not that I loved the Doctor being devalued; that part was, as always, difficult to watch. But I loved it because it was real. “Honestly,” the Doctor herself complained, “if I was still a bloke, I could get on with the job and not have to waste time defending myself!” Welcome to the club, Doctor.
Unless I’m completely forgetting something, this is the first time the Doctor’s plans have been so thoroughly befouled by her apparent gender. That’s part of what has made this series work so well for me, actually. I wanted her still to be “the Doctor,” to be able to step into any room and have people follow her obviously knowledgeable lead, but I also wanted her to come across this exact issue—the ever-present patriarchal bullshit that every femme-presenting person in our society has to deal with.
Joy Wilkinson’s script (as well as Sallie Aprahamian’s direction and Whittaker’s portrayal—quite the trifecta) has walked that line perfectly for me (plus, she got in a crack about the gendered history of pockets!). Even the fact that the story revolved around witch trials—”to silence foolish women who talk too much”—added to the Doctor’s newfound understanding of her gender presentation.
Bringing in King James himself allowed not only an opportunity to force the Doctor to confront these issues directly, but also a chance for the show once again to return to its roots and serve as a tool for teaching history. Just as with the other historicals this series, this one piqued my interest in the veracity of certain details. For example, somehow I’d never put the King James of Bible fame together with the monarch ruling at the time of the Gunpowder Plot. (Watch out; you might learn something by watching Doctor Who!)
The thing that sent me scrambling to Google, though, was the king’s introductory scene. After dismissing the Doctor’s importance, he turned to Ryan, asking, “And what is your field of expertise, my Nubian prince?” Though neither Ryan nor my 12-year-old daughters ever reacted to what seemed to me (and, based on his “you’re so clueless!” expressions, to Graham) obvious overtures, I got curious.
Apparently, historians disagree about the nature of King James’s relationships with his “favorites.” Wilkinson’s script leaves room for such disagreements to continue; those like my kids who are probably still too young to notice, those who are asexual and/or sex repulsed and don’t care to read such things into interpersonal interactions, or those who simply find the idea of a man (a king, no less!) being attracted to other men distasteful can continue to say there was nothing there. But others can look at it and agree that the modern label “bisexual” probably would have fit King James.
Once the science fiction element came in, though I was less interested. (I was about to say that I’m an old stick-in-the-mud about historicals no longer being “pure,” but then realized that would be too nearly a pun in this context.) As otherworldly tie-ins to actual historical events go, you could do worse than making an isolated hill into an alien prison (“Ah, well—it’s obvious when you put it like that!”), and Wilkinson meshed it well with the witch trials. However, the Morax themselves felt fairly generic and non-threatening to me. Perhaps I’m just jaded.
I still find the TARDIS Team delightful, though. Yaz took the personal route, trying to learn what she could from Willa and offering her a sense of solidarity; Ryan fumbled through his favor with the king, and was the first to figure out that the only reason a ducking would happen again now was if the Doctor herself was the victim; and Graham made use of his privilege as an older, white dude and Witchfinder General to elevate the others from their positions as his presumed “underlings” and to try to rescue the Doctor from the ducking.
The strength of this TARDIS crew—and the “very flat team structure”—is a large part of what has made this series so enjoyable for me. Even in the moments when I get a little weary of the overt messaging, it comes so naturally from these characters that I don’t mind. Besides, during times like ours, it’s important not to let the darkness overwhelm us. Sometimes it’s good to be reminded that “there are more powerful people here than kings and queens. There’s us.”
Come to think of it, most of the alien adversaries this season have been pretty unmemorable. The giant spiders were cool. Other than that I find myself having a hard time remembering them.
Giving Daleks and Cybermen and other familiar villains a break is all well and good. But you really do need something interesting to replace them with.
I AM enjoying The Doctor and the companions. The interpersonal relationships between them are nice and all 4 of them have a fun, family vibe together.
None of the creatures have been real stand-outs, I agree. I’ve been glad to get a breather from the usual suspects, but yeah—I don’t envision anyone playing “Stenza” or “Pting” on the playground…
BTW, I like the new picture of Jodie Whitaker up with the rest of the portraits. It’s very nice. But what’s with the hopscotch placement of the pictures?
If by “hopscotch placement” you mean three rows of three and then two rows of two, I decided that looked better than four rows of three and one lonely Doctor at the bottom. 🙂
I don’t see three rows of three and two rows of two. I see a row of two, a row of one, a row of two, a row of one, a row of two, a row of one and two rows of two.