Doctor Who Is NEW!: The Witchfinders

So we're up to week eight of Doctor Who Series 11. 

This week finds the Doctor and her friends materializing in 1600's England swept up in witch hunt hysteria.  

Could the Doctor face a special level of danger? A strangely garbed woman who possess incredible knowledge and a strange silver magic wand might be regarded as a witch. 

We'll find out more after the break. 

Look out for spoilers.  

The Witchfinders

by Joy Wilkinson

The Doctor and crew find themselves in Lancashire in the 1600's where a woman named Becka Savage with a mad on against Satan and witches in Bilehurst Cragg has just sent a 36th woman to her death on accusations of witchcraft.  Any efforts by the Doctor to bring some sanity to the proceesings in Bilehurst Cragg while stopping more women from being chained to a log and drowned in a lake are curtailed by the arrival of King James I who has an even bigger mad on for rooting out Satan and witches. 

There is some weird stuff going down as dead bodies are rising up out of the ground animated my mud. Alien mud, it seems. 

But it looks like witchcraft to Becka Savage and King James I and guess who get accused of being a witch? Yep, the Doctor. She gets chained to a log and dunked under water. 
Don't worry, the Doctor's fine. She's well versed in holding her breath a long time and knowing how to get out of chains thanks to a long, wet weekend she once spent with Harry Houdini.  

it seems the weird stuff going down with the mud zombies involves alien criminals being held in prison inside Pendle Hill near Bilehurst Cragg. And thanks to Becka Savage, they have a chance to escape their prison and take over the Earth.  The Morax are filled with anger and hate so this isn't going to be pretty. 

The Doctor finagles the Morax back into their prison inside the hill, saving the people of Bilehurst Cragg and the whole planet for that matter.  

In a rarity for this season, we have aliens in an episode of Doctor Who that are the actual menace. Yes, we are once more seeing that humans are very capable of creating their own suffering but it is good to see the Doctor being able to take a big honking swing against the backside of an alien threat, something that has been in short supply this season. 

For the first time this season and since the Doctor regenerated into a female form, sexism hinders the Doctor's efforts to solve a problem. She even comments at one point, "If I was still a bloke, I could focus on solving the real problem instead of having to defend myself."  

While the Doctor's psychic paper convinces Becka Savage that the Doctor is a witchfinder, King James I only allows himself to see the Doctor as a witchfinder's assistant. King James assumes Graham is the true witchfinder in charge.  

Team TARDIS is a bit sidelined in this episode. Still, we see Yaz's immediate emathy for the granddaughter of the last victim of Savage's witch hunt. This continues to be Yaz's go to move in any situation, finding the innocent who needs help and comfort.  

King James keeps putting the moves on Ryan. Despite overseeing a Bible translation that is decidedly anti-homosexual, James himself reportedly had at male lovers in his lifetime.  





There is a lot of expositorial info dumps in the last quarter of the episode as the Morax gets identified and what exactly their role is.  

The horrific appearance of the Morax mud zombies are quite scary. With Alan Cummings portrayal of King James I as an over the top dandy and basically devours all of the scenery, The Witchfinders is an entertaining episode. It might lack something in depth or nuance but sometimes, you just need a story with scares and laughs.