Doctor Who Series 11 Episode Review

The Witchfinders - Review

Warning: Major Spoilers

It's hardly controversial to say that, this year, Doctor Who's historical episodes have been the most successful. And it wouldn't be controversial to say The Witchfinders continues this trend. But with a crucial difference. In not treading on the culturally sensitive grounds of very recent history, this episode affords itself two qualities this series has found in shorter supply; fun and camp. Not that the drowning of women is exactly a laughing or a mincing matter, but I have been waiting weeks for a romp like this.

Guest writer Joy Wilkinson (best known for the BBC Dickens adaptation Nick Nickelby) makes her Who debut with a trip to 17th-century Lancashire, and the era's notorious witch trials. In the town of Bilehurst Cragg, formidable landowner Becka Savage is presiding over another witch-dunking in her continued and determined attempts to banish Satan. It's one of the most bitingly secular messages Doctor Who has shown us.

After witnessing a witch trial first hand, The Doctor once again breaks a rule of hers by interfering with past events. She tries to save the grandmother of villager Willa, but it is too late. For her gran has already been subtly converted by the Morax.

Once again, I feel as if this episode, like Rosa, could've benefited from the removal of the monsters, as it would've been a lot more interesting and bold for them to just have Mistress Savage and King James I be the villains.

Ashen, with muck oozing down their faces, the zombies look like something from an x-rated Japanese horror movie such as The Grudge or Ring. Which is obviously a welcome change after a rather preachy season of Doctor Who. It's just a fortnight, after all, since we were asked to consider that the internecine violence that erupted during Indian partition was on balance a negative development.

Nonetheless, for all the families watching, Japanese-horror style zombies are probably too much of a terrifying thing. Why, it needs to be asked, was writer Joy Wilkinson given a green light to serve up full-fat nightmare fuel on a Sunday evening pre-watershed?

Still, the shivers are in service of a cracking story. Alan Cumming turns up as a dandy-ish King James I (at one point it seems his moustache is about to literally start twirling and lift him off the ground). He's in town to assist godfearing Becka Savage (Happy Valley's Siobhan Finneran) with her black magic crackdown and quickly rumbles that the Doctor isn't, as she claims, a Witchfinder General.

Actually, James assumes Graham (Bradley Walsh) is the boss witchfinder, the Doctor his assistant (what with her being female and everything). But the newcomers' story crumbles quite rapidly anyway and it's the Doctor who finds herself taking a dip in order to ascertain her witchiness.

However, death by drowning is the least of her worries (she slips her chains and swims to safety). The mud-monsters, it turns out, are elite alien soldiers, imprisoned on Earth for millennia previously.

The charm holding them in place is broken when Becka cuts down a magical tree – for which her reward is extraterrestrial infection. The orgy of witch killing is her way of covering up for the fact she is being consumed by forces beyond her understanding – and also a flailing attempt to drive out what she assumes to be the devil inside.

Yet the jig is revealed to be up when the mud-demon possesses her completely and (very considerately) explains that, with the guardian tree gone, his big bad boss is about to return. Enter the Doctor, who uses charmed wood from the tree to seal the gate and scatter the monsters – with amused assistance from King James.

The blend of chills and whimsy – Cumming licks, chews and devours the scenery whole – is surprisingly effective and the mud-zombies looming in the murk are genuinely unsettling. Which is good news for horror diehards, less so for all those tuning in with their children. "The Witchfinders" undoubtedly casts a spell, but family fare it is not.

Come back next week for Episode 9, It Takes You Away!

Bye!