Doctor Who Review: The Witchfinders (Season 11 Episode 8)
It’s time for a witch trial! (Or is it an alien mud invasion?) Doctor Who Season 11 Episode 8 “The Witchfinders” goes back to the past again with a premise we all know very well and finally gives us a premise that only this Doctor could have faced.
Doctor Who has done several historical episodes this year, but this time there was a very classic premise of witch trials, which always seem to play well despite how overwrought the concept seems to get.
I was a child that was obsessed with witchcraft and witch trials. I watched Sabrina the Teenage Witch and read books about Salem, and I am currently listening to Aaron Mahnke’s Unobscured podcast which delves into the Salem Witch Trials.
I’ve probably seen a lot of incarnations of this type of storyline. “The Witchfinders” does give us an interesting premise incorporating King James into the mix, but it also feels like it should have been placed earlier in the series.
“The Witchfinders” feels like the kind of story a lot of fans were waiting for. Early Season 11 episodes of Doctor Who seemed content to continue with business as usual, not addressing that anything was different.
We started to see a little more acknowledgment around Doctor Who Season 11 Episode 6, “Demons of the Punjab,” but really nothing more than off-hand observations. While “The Witchfinders” could have continued that trend, the second The Doctor was accused of witchcraft, the story turned into one that could have been used to unpack the time lord gender shift.
The new era of Doctor Who hasn’t done a witch trial before, but considering the amount of hysteria it feels like it would be a dangerous place for the Doctor to park her Tardis and go around waving her sonic screwdriver.
It’s even more precarious when the Doctor is demoted from Witchfinder to Witchfinder’s Assistant. When she’s accused by Becka Savage and King James she makes another comment that seems offhand about her changing gender:
DOCTOR: Honestly, if I was still a bloke I could get on with the job and not have to waste time defending myself.
Most of the victims of witch trials were women, but not all of them. Part of me wonders how this episode would have played out if any previous incarnation had landed in Bilehurst Cragg, would he have been accused of witchcraft as well?
I am not sure it would have carried the same weight, but Jodie Whittaker’s performance as she goes to the chair is amazing–and her offhand comment about Houdini when she emerges from the water is just the right amount of humor. Bet the townsfolk of Bilehurst Cragg hadn’t seen that happen before.
We have two more episodes before the Thirteenth Doctor’s first outing is up, and we are still getting episodes that mostly standalone. No “Big Bad” has surfaced as it has in previous incarnations, and it’s starting to feel a little laborious keeping up with the three new companions.
I am really hoping that the audience will have something to latch onto once the season ends. These last eight episodes feel like a lot of build-up, and while I am enjoying the performances, I miss the larger mystery that used to exist as an undercurrent to the action of the week.
Stray Thoughts:
- Morax, rhymes with Lorax, was that a coincidence? There is a tree involved.
- The lock on the Morax prison is a tree, it’s actually perfect because this was Amish folklore. There’s an episode of a show called Amish Haunting called “Cry Baby Bridge/The Witch’s Tree” and it describes a “witch” being put through a trial and a tree being put over her grave to bind her spirit to it.
- In such a serious episode, the running gag and campy line of “It’s not witchcraft, it’s an alien mud invasion,” is hilarious. Witchcraft sounds crazy enough to 21st Century viewers until you describe what is actually happening.
- The Doctor’s excitement at bobbing for apples is pure joy and exactly the kind of adorable Doctor hijinx that I needed on a Sunday night.
What did you think of this episode of Doctor Who? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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Doctor Who airs Sundays at 8/7c on BBC America.
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Lauren Busser
Lauren Busser is an Associate Editor at Tell-Tale TV. She is a writer of fiction and nonfiction whose work has appeared in Bitch Media, Popshot Quarterly, Brain Mill Press Voices, and The Hartford Courant.