13.8: The Witchfinders

In which Alan Cumming has a lot of fun.

Broadcast: November 2018

Watched: July 2022

“These are hard times for women – if we’re not being drowned, we’re being patronised to death.” Alternatively: “Together we shall save the souls of my people from Satan, even if it means killing them all.”

This is the one this season that everyone says is great, and I just... don’t enjoy it? I can see it’s well done, it can see it has all the elements of a decent Doctor Who story, and it just doesn’t click for me. This is annoying as there are loads of fun things in it:

• It’s possibly the only one this season that even tries to do anything with the Doctor’s new gender? It’s a bit half-hearted, but the Doctor's frustration as Graham is assumed to be in charge (“It's a very flat team structure”) is nicely played, and the idea her wisdom works against her, as Willa’s grandmother’s did, is a nice link to the episode theme. Okay, it also highlights the extent to which the series decided to Not Go There, but at least it Sort Of Went Near To There, Once.

• The guest cast are brilliant. Obviously Alan Cumming playing James as outrageously gay, flirting with Ryan. (“And what is your area of expertise? Torture...?”) But Siobhan Finneran is terrific in a much less showy role.

• It’s generally well put together. The music is great, especially during the scene where they duck the Doctor. Also, there are loads of claustrophobic close-ups, during the confrontation where the witch hunters are trying to get Willa to speak out about the Doctor. It’s a good production.

So why don’t I like it?

• You can feel the budget squeaking. The opening scene is meant to look like a party, but it’s nothing compared to Thin Ice the previous year, it’s just some people in a wood. Also: “Horses are banned in Bilehurst…” – are they, how convenient.

• At one point the Doctor sends Yaz off on her own in a landscape where women are being murdered. What? Also, how exactly does Yaz get into the local manor house to find the others unobserved? At a point when suspicious behaviour by women gets you killed?

• There’s an awful lack of energy in the denouement, possibly because it’s really only the denouement to the last five minutes of the plot (the alien bit, which resolved the rest of the plot by happening at all). So it’s not clear for most of its run time what the story actually is? Talking of which:

• For most of the runtime this is about anti-witch hysteria... then it turns out there really are monsters taking over the women of the village. There’s a handwave “Oh it’s aliens not witches, and Becca the witch hunter is one of them” but ... I'm not sure it actually hangs together. As with so much Chibnall-era stuff it feels thematically incoherent, like the different bits of the plot aren’t talking to each other.

• Or maybe I just can't bear the 17th century, that might also be it.

Other things

• Everything about this production feels like a chilly November day, even though I watched it in June... That’s sort of impressive.

• Graham in a hat. Cool.

• The reanimated corpse makeup is absolutely horrible.

• Oooh, Yaz backstory time! She was bullied. So, there you go

• Jodie being unable to just stand by and watch the deep unfairness of the trial by water is one of her most Doctor-ish moments yet... The fact the victim dies anyway feels like an awkward character note.