Doctor Who: The Witchfinders, immediate comments

[auroracloud]

Okay, now that was a proper Doctor Who episode! I'm going to go into my thoughts on the series up to now in some other post (the previous episode is getting wiped from my personal canon, though), but even though I've enjoyed most of the episodes, and loved both Rosa and Demons in the Punjab, the series has been light on what constitutes a more typically good Doctor Who story. Rosa and Demons weren't exactly typical, though they were wonderful in their ways.

But this! We got an exciting, well-constructed plot, a solid historical with a sci-fi threat that worked and was an integral part of the plot, and a proper Doctor Who villain with excessive world-dominating, war-mongering plans and slimy creepy monsters. We got an alien mud zombie grandma with an axe!! If that isn't brilliant and Doctor Who, I don't know what is. We got lots of proper history and an actual British King who was, by the way, both brilliantly written and acted. We got the Doctor being properly Doctor! Now there's my Doctor, bringing down bigots and local tyrants, vanquishing bad guys with her intellect, bravery and hearts, and teaching a king a moral lesson too. I've loved Thirteen up to now, but there's no denying that there's been a disappointing lack of properly heroic moments where she saves the day and brings down evil regimes or conquer-happy bad guys, and now we got it, oh did we get it. This was so satisfying. We need more of this.

Also, brilliant use of the Doctor's current gender in a way that moved the plot in interesting directions, but didn't diminish her importance one bit. And we got her fuming properly at the way she's being treated differently now that she's female! I'm glad the new series hasn't made a point about her gender most of the time, but I'm also glad we're seeing an example of how it changes the way she's treated in a time period that's got attitude problems with women. The pacing and directing was excellent in the part where she was in danger of being killed as a witch - I was on the edge of my seat, so worried for her; the logical part of my brain that knew she's not going to die at this point had no chance of getting through to me.

Please, please have both Sallie Abrahamian and Joy Wilkinson back next series. Joy Wilkinson can write the whole next series if she wants as far as I'm concerned (well, maybe I'd recommend having Vinay Patel back for something because he obviously knows what he's doing, too), and Sallie Abrahamian needs to direct as many episodes as possible.

The history this depicts isn't my area of expertise, but it definitely convinced me and I feel sure Wilkinson did her research. For example the details on witch finding and witch trials went well beyond the "burn the witch at the stake" stereotypes. I know hardly anything about King James I/VI (we really didn't cover much British history at school, and I'm only slowly starting to look more into eras before the 19th century). But Liz Myles of the Verity! podcast seems happy with the history judging by her Twitter, and she's both a history geek and from Scotland, so I trust her on that one. Before this episode she talked (on her Twitter account and another podcast) about hoping they'd make him gay enough, and oh, this didn't disappoint. Him fancying Ryan and trying to flirt with him all the time was precious. Also, I really enjoyed the bit where he summarized what had happened to his parents and everyone who brought him up - though I don't know much about that history, it definitely left an impression, and also made me curious to learn more.

Loved Yaz connecting with the girl who'd just lost her grandmother. It seemed very in character with her, especially since she'd recently had momentous, harrowing experiences involving the history of her own grandmother. I've been hungry for more Yaz character moments, and this subplot served admirably well. And Willa was a lovely character altogether and I love how her story turned out.

More specifically about Yaz, the way she realized Willa was feeling physically ill because everyone had turned against her and that felt emotionally so awful she felt it in her body, and the way the same thing had happened to her when she was bullied at school... I cried at that point. Powerful scene and amazing acting from Mandip Gill. And though I love all the three companions (friends) and they're all superbly acted, this episode cemented Mandip as my favourite actor of them. (Yaz had already been cemented as my favourite character among them.)

Oh and by the way, most of the important characters in the story were women, and they were well-rounded characters and their lives didn't revolve around men. (And by the way, why is this still so unusual in stories?)

One question, though: why doesn't anyone use the TARDIS wardrobe anymore? Did it get lost in the redecoration? And why didn't anyone pick on their weird appearances before the King arrived? Maybe in the countryside they don't know if they're up on the latest fashions.

I suppose I could also nitpick about the fact that sometimes the modern characters were really speaking a bit too freely and carelessly around a 17th century British King, shouldn't he have found more of that disrespectful? But I don't feel like nitpicking, because I loved this episode to bits. So, uh, just saying that but not complaining about it.

Now I don't even mind I haven't been rewatching most of the episodes in this series. I'll just keep rewatching this one. The next one seems cool as well, I hope it turns out well!

Comments

[used_songs]

I loved this episode too. I almost didn't watch it because I wasn't in the mood for TV, but I went ahead and turned it on and it was wonderful! Re your "nitpicking" I think about stuff like that too. And also how no one ever tells the women off for wearing trousers. I guess I have a nitpicky history brain. But it didn't make me love it any less.

[auroracloud]

It might be my favourite of this series yet! Definitely among my very favourites, anyway. I hope the remaining ones will be as good!

I can definitely be very nitpicky about historical stuff when I go into that mindset, because I'm a big history geek. But on the other hand, my expectations for a Doctor Who episode are a bit different from my expectations for pure historical fiction. Since you're likely to have power-hungry mud-aliens or something at one point, I'm willing to let a few more details slide as well, as long as there's enough that works, and the spirit of the episode is true to what I think is the most important about the historical period.