DOCTOR WHO (S11E8) “The Witchfinders”: Hunting Season Goes Awry

While in search of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth I, the TARDIS decides to take the Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) and her gang into the English past, where witch hunts were an everyday occurrence and women lived in constant fear of being accused.

Things are not as they appear as the Doctor delves deeper into understanding the lay of the land, while an otherworldly presence is found to have a hand in the increase in supposed witch deaths in the fictional Lancashire village of Bilehurst Cragg.

“The ceremony will begin”

Arriving in the small woodland community, Graham notes how their accents are northern, so they “must be close to home” while the Doctor enjoys some bobbing for apples. A town crier appears and tells them to attend the “ceremony”, and the atmosphere changes sharply from cheerful Sunday celebrations to a morbid and eerie ambiance.

The villagers walk in silence, like an impromptu funeral procession, some visibly upset and shaken, while the gang try to figure out what is about to happen. A witch trial is presented to them at the nearby pond, equipped with a dunking stool tree branch and a sobbing elderly woman.

Becka Savage (Siobhan Finneran), the local governess, bellows out “if you drown you are innocent, if you survive you will be hanged”. The Doctor fails to save the woman as she is dunked to her death while chained to the stool, much to her granddaughter Willa’s (Tilly Steele) dismay.

Moments later King James (Alan Cumming) makes his entrance, and makes time to mock the Doctor and flirt with Ryan (Tosin Cole). The TARDIS team split up to look for clues and attempt to prevent another literal witch hunt from further terrorizing the local community.

Which Witch is Which

While the corpse witches hunt down Becka, the Doctor takes a long time to suss out what the root of the problem is. As it transpires, a literal root was the problem’s origin, having infected Becka in her leg and caused an unknown ailment, causing her to go on a witch-killing binge.

Instead of the Doctor’s usual ingenuity in piecing together the cause for concern, she slips up and is sentenced to a dunking herself, accused by King James of being a witch. Ultimately the team rallies together and they prove that there are no witches, but an alien army attempting to destroy the planet. The Doctor becomes irate at the time of her arrest, blaming her female form, and criticising the gender hierarchy.

“Honestly, if I was still a bloke I could get on with the job and not have to waste time defending myself!”

While the Doctor as a woman is an exciting change-up to the long-running franchise, moments such as these remind us of the perils of womanhood in the past. With King James laughing at the Doctor thinking that she is the “witchfinder general”, the Doctor’s arrest and near-death experience underwater are clear indicators of the danger she could find herself in because she is no longer a man. Luckily for everyone involved, she trained with Houdini at some point and manages to wriggle free from the chains under the pond’s surface, preventing another alien invasion in the closing moment’s of the episode.

Conclusion

Episode 8 of Doctor Who takes us back in time to an era where women accused of witchcraft became victims of a grave injustice, and the Doctor’s team are visibly appalled by the attitudes towards women and healers in the past. Overall the episode lacked depth in terms of the Doctor’s companions, of whom we learned very little, and it neglected to address any wider story arc for the season.

The alien army invasion was successfully prevented and the Doctor is set to carry on for two more episodes, in which we will hopefully hear more of the “timeless child” mystery from “The Ghost Monument” as well as more on her fellow time-travelers.

Episode 9 “It Takes You Away” was broadcast on Sunday 4th December 2018 on BBC One.