How wasn’t this a Halloween episode?
In both its title and content, “The Witchfinders” immediately conjures the absurdity of Monty Python and the Holy Grail or (for me) the “Witchsmeller Pursuivant” episode of Blackadder. We’re not attuned to taking witch hunting seriously, but very quickly this episode upends that. It very vividly emphasizes that this practice was real and barbaric and motivated out of a misplaced sense of religious righteousness. And once again it’s a topic Doctor Who really hasn’t touched on before. Witches have shown up in one way or another in stories like “The Daemons” and “The Shakespeare Code”, but this is the first time witch trials have been properly addressed and the episodes’ handling of it does not disappoint.
The TARDIS en route to the coronation of Elizabeth I ends up in seventeenth century Lancashire, where a local landowner is having near weekly witch duckings for the village. After failing to save one victim the Doctor sets herself up as the Witchfinder General, learning more about this cruel Lady Savage and trying to figure out if there really is a supernatural force at work in the area, just as King James I himself arrives to assist in the witch hunt.
I love the atmosphere of gothic historical stories like this that deal in the supernatural against an eerie environment. “The Witchfinders” nails that tone and visual ambience for the most part. The fog of Lancashire, bare woods and moors aren’t quite as effective as the autumn colours and winds of New England, but they work as well as can be here, and nonetheless evoke a somewhat spooky mood. The episode creates some striking imagery too, like in Savage cutting down a creepy tree on a hill. Sallie Aprahamian is credited director and she does a great job with the actors, but also the shooting and editing of the world around them and knows where to set the focus for maximum effect. There are more low shots and Dutch angles in this episode than is customary for Doctor Who and I really like the sense of uncertainty they create.
The well-written script from Joy Wilkinson is also superb, presenting a really engaging story and theme that keeps you invested even through the slow scenes. It keeps you a little unsure whether real witches are actually going to show up, in the form of Savage or Willa (whose grandmother was the last victim), or even King James, who enters the story with suspicion. Luckily this doesn’t turn out to be the case and it would have soured the moral centre to have Savage and others like her proven right. And all along you’re waiting for the most obvious plot point, and when the Doctor finally is accused of being a witch it fits in perfectly. It’s a classic case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and being the kind of person the Doctor is, that it actually makes sense she would come across as a “servant of Satan” in this time period.
This may be Jodie Whittaker’s best showcase yet; it certainly paints a greater picture of this Doctor than we’ve seen previously. Once again, her warning about not interfering is directly contradicted by her own actions, and while in “Demons of the Punjab” it was partly brushed off as a joke, here it definitely plants a root of her character. The First Doctor never would have tried to save Willa’s Nan. He even gave Barbara Wright a great speech about not trying to change historical injustices in “The Aztecs”. But the Thirteenth Doctor has now in effect become Barbara Wright, essentially saying “screw the timeline, I’m not going to let an innocent woman die”. The fact that she died nonetheless doesn’t change the nobility of the Doctor here, perhaps a careless, clumsy nobility, but a nobility nonetheless and it sets this Doctor apart. It certainly has been a while since we’ve seen this particular kind of impulsive attitude from the Time Lord. Whittaker is outstanding all through the episode, her passion and fury at what’s being done showing through. And the episode is thoroughly hers.
When she’s captured as a witch she has a conversation with King James, curious about her and seeing himself as the great enemy of Satan, and it’s the greatest dialogue of the show -in part because Whittaker and Alan Cumming are the two strongest performers, but also because it delves into some notable aspects of both characters. The Doctor’s confrontational attitude resurfaces when she goads the King “it must be comfortable, hiding behind a title”, not expecting him to respond “just as you hide behind ‘Doctor’ perhaps”. James is unaware of course how much truth is in that rebuttal and it’s a great reminder of really who the Doctor is. Their exchange also brings up his own troubled past, referenced earlier in a conversation with Ryan, that seamlessly manages to both exposit history to viewers and probe a little of the drama that existed in James’ life. The episode depicts him as not just an exuberant, confident, possibly bisexual King, but a man still recovering from feeling abandoned by his mother. The Doctor proceeds to espouse the importance of empathy by connecting it to the simple definitions of good and evil human nature wants to believe in, but aren’t true. James doesn’t quite listen though, however the audience does, and it’s a new favourite Thirteenth Doctor speech for me.
Alan Cumming’s King James is excellent. We were definitely in for something unusual from the start given Cumming’s performance history, but his theatrical, slightly egomaniacal take on the character is actually quite enjoyable. He doesn’t turn King James into a joke though the way Joanna Page did for Elizabeth I in “The Day of the Doctor”. As mentioned, the real drama inherent in his history forms an important backbone of his character, including too the fact he’s escaped death multiple times (the Gunpowder Plot being directly alluded to), which gives him his faith in being a protected warrior of God. He’s by far the most nuanced variation of a historical figure Doctor Who has given us since Vincent Van Gogh.
Lady Savage is a really interesting character too, played with worthy malevolence by Siobhan Finneran. She’s the most evil character this series has had thus far, since she hasn’t just killed thirty-six witches (at which the Doctor doesn’t hesitate to venomously call her a murderer), but she’s done so knowing their innocence and purely as a means to save herself -Willa’s Nan died for only knowing the truth about her; which is that she’s been infected by a substance from the unsightly tree she cut down that’s taking over her body. The fact that she’s ignorant to what it really is makes her worse -she truly believes she’s being taken over by the Devil, yet is executing others for it. She also had all the local horses killed, so fuck her. Of course she’s not being possessed by evil, Doctor Who would never legitimize that. It’s just aliens.
Just like “Demons of the Punjab” the episode starts without needing any sci-fi element, but one soon enters into the equation. However it’s better integrated than in that episode and actually contributes heavily to direction of the story. The tree Lady Savage cut down was actually a prison for royalist war criminals of a species called the Morax. With its breach they’ve been able to possess her and the bodies of the people she’s executed resulting in a minor army of accused witch zombies (only on Doctor Who) who look genuinely disturbing, covered in mud, with glossy eyes and disgusting attributes. Their purpose to the story is twofold, in addition to emboldening the episodes’ tone. For one, to the witch hunters they seem like pretty damning evidence that the Doctor’s raised the dead (which I wouldn’t put it past her to do in the future). And of course the actual corrupting of Lady Savage adds to the vileness of her motivation. The final confrontation with these aliens is also pretty good, with the Doctor leading a charge with torches cut from the tree itself, the only witchcraft imagery construed in a positive light. It also allows for James to kill the Morax Queen, and Lady Savage in the process, with no remorse -once more proving to the Doctor an inability to truly empathize. He’s much kinder to her now though, conveniently promising to keep all of this secret as a debt to her for saving his life, but it’s not enough to earn the Doctors’ forgiveness.
I haven’t talked much about the companions, but Ryan, Yaz, and Graham each do get their own moments. Yaz is the first desiring to check in on Willa and be supportive for her, going to her house with the Doctor briefly. Through this part of the episode, the cruelty of witch trials is discussed through the eyes of the falsely accused. Graham is put in the position of Witchfinder General in a great plot development wherein the Doctor, who’d earlier used her psychic paper to convince Lady Savage of her credentials, once providing them to King James is rendered only an assistant. The psychic paper operates on the readers’ perspective and for James of course, he could never conceive a woman being in charge of witchfinding. And so Graham gets to go around wearing a fancy hat. Ryan’s main role concerns being the object of flirtation from James, which results in some good humour from their interactions..
In fact, Wilkinson injects a lot of really good humour into this otherwise fairly bleak story. There are a number of great one-liners once again from chief of sarcasm Graham; for instance following up the Doctor’s conclusion “Pendel Hill is a prison for an alien army” with “oh, well it’s obvious when you put it like that”, and subsequently quoting Pulp Fiction to King James who recognizes the passage from his own Bible. Cumming of course gets some good moments of comedy when he’s showing off his witch hunting weapons and questioning “why does the lassie speak of commerce?” when she uses the expressive of ‘buy’. Even Yaz gets a really great comical observation about the “bodies possessed by alien mud”.
The dealing with Christian subject matter in this episode was a bit surprising too, what with the Doctor’s constant discrediting of religious justification in witch hunting and even a moment where the Doctor seems to imply disbelief in the Devil makes one more intelligent. When Lady Savage invokes an Old Testament verse, the Doctor counters with the Golden Rule, referred to as “a twist in the sequel”. Obviously a lot of Christians wouldn’t condone the actions of their Jacobean forebears, but it’s still a little bold, especially considering the shows’ growing popularity in America, that the episode would be this brazenly critical of Christian doctrine not wholly unadhered to today. But it is honest and that’s what really matters.
I have to say “The Witchfinders” is the best episode of series eleven. It’s a really strong outing for the Doctor, facing compellingly loathsome villains in a story and atmosphere evocative of the best supernatural folk tales. It’s supremely well-written and directed, features the best guest performance from this show in a while, and manages to work in some nice criticism of religious self-righteousness and themes on empathy and prejudice. And it ends on an absolutely brilliant quote from Arthur C. Clarke that ties into the episode fittingly and proves a welcome tribute on its own. Next week, we’re going to Norway with the forebodingly titled “It Takes You Away”.
Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/jbosch/
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