The Doctor and Martha meet William Shakespeare and trio of nasty witches. Does this, the series’ most expensive episode mean we’ll be treated to two “Love & Monsters” type episodes to pay for it?

Synopsis

The Doctor takes Martha to 1599 to take in a show at the newly-built Globe Theatre.

At the end of the show Shakespeare suddenly announces the first public performance of Loves Labour’s Wonne, the infamous lost play of Shakespeare. He is being “magically” manipulated by Lilith, one of three witch-like creatures called Carrionites. The Doctor does not know this, but cannot resist the mystery of the play and goes to meet Shakespeare and stay for the show.

While visiting with Shakespeare, the Master of the Revels arrives demanding that Shakespeare should have registered the play with his office before it could be publicly performed. Shakespeare has not actually completed the play and tells him that he will register it in the morning. Unsatisfied, the bureaucrat declares that Love’s Labour’s Wonne will never be performed.

The Carrionites cast a spell and drown the bureaucrat while he is walking down the street. The Doctor and Martha witness the death but are unable to save him.

During the night, as Shakespeare finishes the play, Lilith enchants him and directs him to write the final part of the play. The landlady sees Lilith and is frightened to death. Her scream brings the Doctor and Martha. As they arrive Martha sees a witch fly off on a broomstick.

The next day, the Doctor is fascinated by the odd, 14-sided design of the Globe Theatre. Shakespeare explains that the architect went mad after construction was completed, babbling about witches. They travel to Bedlam to visit with him and the Doctor is able to elicit enough information to determine that the witches dictated the design to the architect. One of the arrives and kills the architect. She’s about to kill the Doctor but he calls her by name and she disappears. The Doctor explains that words have power in their technology and that they plan to use the play and the Globe Theatre to break their people out of eternal imprisonment.

Shakespeare goes to to stop the play while the Doctor and Martha go to confront the Carrionites in their home in All Hallows Street.

Martha tries to subdue Lilith by “naming” her, but it fails. Lilith in turns renders Martha unconscious. She then attacks the Doctor and stops his heart. Meanwhile Shakespeare is stopped from halting the play. (Or is that “halted from stopping the play?”)

Lilith did not realize that the Doctor has two hearts and only stopped one. Martha awakens and helps the Doctor start the heart.

The play has opened the portal and the Carrionites are coming through. The Doctor tells Shakespeare that he must use words to expel them. He extemporizes and does a fair job but is stuck for the last word. Martha, with a little help from JK Rowling, provides the final word, sending all the Carrionites and the play back into the portal.

The next day, Queen Elizabeth arrives and recognizes the Doctor (who has not met her yet) and orders that he be beheaded. He and Martha just barely escape.

Analysis

From a plot standpoint, this story was fine. Nothing special.

But, all the while, I couldn’t help thinking that the writer might get a little too fond of Shakespeare. (The man, not his works.) The adulation expressed by both the Doctor and, more importantly, by the turns of the plot which require Shakespeare to be a genius beyond compare are just too much.

Shakespeare was a great writer. If one actually bothers to read Shakespeare, it doesn’t take a high-school English literature teacher ramming the commentary down your throat to see that Shakespeare had a uncanny ability to write about the human condition. (Unless you believe the Earl of Oxford wrote them instead.) Nonetheless, there’s nothing to attribute great, spontaneous, blinding genius in the man. Certainly not the the type that would be immune to psychic paper or be able, in 1599, to grasp and work out that Martha is from the future and the Doctor is an alien. The constant adulation of Shakespeare detracts from the story and yet, at the same time, it is critical to the story because it is his genius with words that is the catalyst of the plot.

I find that strikes an unpleasant balance. The notion of Shakespeare’s writing accidentally opened the void and let the first three Carrionites is ludicrous and if the point is that it is his genius alone that can release the rest, why then does Lilith have to write the actual words that accomplishes the task? How, with no real concept of what he’s done, can Shakespeare start to close the void and how is is possible that Martha can fling a bit of JK Rowling in at the end to finish the job?

The fuzzy thinking involved in this idea is exemplified in an interview with Russell T. Davies when he explains what a great idea it is to have aliens who use words to do amazing things “…just like we use numbers.” I can just picture engineers somewhere at a research & development facility reading off a big string of numbers to create a new form of savory snack food.

The second thing that really failed for me were the locations.

An important aspect of film and television is that the money you spend ends up on the screen. Anything that does not end up showing in the final product is wasted – although I’m sure there are film caterers and publicity people that would disagree. If you’re remaking “Scott of the Antartic” you don’t have to go to the South Pole to convincingly film the tale. This episode of Doctor Who is apparently their most expensive ever, largely because they went on location to Warwick and the actual Globe Theatre. Being able to film there is a positive coup for the production team in terms of prestige, but was it worth it?

In watching the episode it never once occurred to me that the sets were anything other than sets on a studio somewhere. The inside of a large wooden theatre, heavily augmented with CGI audiences looked exactly like the inside of a studio set heavily augmented with CGI audiences.

Similarly, even the cast and crew commented that the streets Warwick were amazing because they looked just like a set. To me, that’s not a glowing recommendation for a location shoot. If it doesn’t look better than a set, why bother?

It seems that great expense was added to this production for a dubious amount of verisimilitude. That’s money they could have spent better elsewhere.

Martha continues to shine as a new companion. She asks questions and that puts her in the top tier rank of companions.

Remember back in the Masque of Mandragora when Sarah Jane, under the influence of alien mind control, asks the Doctor how she can understand 15th century Italian? Doctor Who had been running 13 years at that point and Sarah Jane had been traveling with the Doctor about 4 years and it was the first time anybody bothered to ask an obvious question about the improbabilities of life with the Doctor. Martha’s already asked more questions than the rest of the companions put together. I’m still hoping she’ll keep the writers on their toes, although it didn’t help much with this episode.

How about these questions as an example? “Why, Doctor, why does ‘the naming’ only work once? I didn’t name them before, and no one named that particular Carrionite. Why did it work when you did it then? Surely you weren’t the first to ever name a Carrionite. Why, Doctor, why?”

I think she should get with the program and change her clothes, though. I somehow doubt she could have passed quite so unmolested in Tudor times.

The Shakespeare Code
by Gareth Roberts
starring David Tennant as the Doctor
and Freema Agyeman as Martha

Next week: We go back to New Earth yet again… With all of time and space to roam in, can’t they find someplace new?

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