Doctor Who Series 11 The Witchfinders Review

“Pendle Hill is a prison for intergalactic criminals!”

It was at that point I lost it, totally, and collapsed on the floor in hysterics.

Going into this one I had a very bad feeling it was going to turn out like Rosa. You see the Pendle Witch Trials were a nightmare. If anyone was even thought of being a “Witch” they were tried and quickly executed with very little defence. Superstition and fear ruled. People carved symbols to ward off the evil they were sure stalked the good folk of the villages.

The truth was a little more complicated. Put very simply Pendle was home to a number of small villages all of which had local healers. Often women, but not always, who knew how to cook certain herbs and other plants to fight infection and other such things. However, a good number of people didn’t understand diseases at the time, attributing them to demons in the blood rather than bacteria. The result was these healers were seen to be commanding the demons out of people.

If they could command them out, who’s to say they couldn’t command them in? As a result superstitious people began to fear the knowledge these people had. Blaming them for whatever bad luck befell a person or area. Naturally when someone fears something they don’t understand it’s easier to attack it that to try and learn.

Hence the hanging of witches.

This is a summary and leaves a lot of important detail out, which makes it a difficult topic to go into and explain in the confines of a 50-odd minute show. With no clear solution. In the case of Rosa they messed up historical accuracy in favour of delivering a heavy handed message. Given I actually live in Rawtenstall, a town not 15 minutes from Pendle, I feared that, once again, historical accuracy would be thrown by the wayside in favour of some sort of ham fisted lesson. Fortunately this didn’t happen and the Pendle Witches became a backdrop to a far more traditional Doctor Who story rather than the entire focus.

Well, when I say it didn’t happen, of course the Doctor was amongst those accused of witchcraft. The main proof was that she happened to be a woman and intelligent, but what are you going to do. The fact that it was the real bad guy that framed her and was desperate to shift the blame made it a little easier to swallow. This isn’t the first time the Doctor’s been put to trial, as it were, thanks to the real villain’s machinations. 

What didn’t make it easy was the fact that the hill shown wasn’t Pendle. Look Pendle is iconic, it’s a huge hill that pretty much dominates the landscape around here. It can be seen for miles, when it’s not covered in low cloud, and is part of a series of hills known as the Pennines. From the top you can see most of the villages scattered across Eastern Lancashire and all the way over to Yorkshire through the valleys. The little hillock we saw in the show was nothing like Pendle, it had none of the presence and none of the grandeur. None of the looming impact Pendle demands simply by being.

Hum. Is there a metaphor somewhere in that? Possibly.

But this is all nit-picking and my local knowledge. How does that effect the story? Was the story, divorced from all of that, any good?

Well I might be the only one that did, but I got a strong Scientology influence in the writing. For those that don’t know one of the tenet of Scientology suggests that millions upon billions of years ago Earth was used as a dumping ground for alien convicts. Where they were all blown up in ancient volcanoes while the planet was still cooling down. Now Pendle certainly was never a volcano, but you can see the similarities in the story. The idea that somehow the remains of these dead aliens can infect the living is another part of Scientology.

Just to clarify, this is all complete nonsense and far more in keeping with a bog (heh!) standard Doctor Who plot than any sort of belief that people apparently take seriously, but each to their own I guess.

Some things flat out just didn't work. For example Mistress Savage. Just the name. It was so blunt and in your face it made you want to scream. King James's camp-ness was played so over the top you expected him to start waving a lace handkerchief on occasion and the handful of mud zombies weren't exactly original either.

I do have a few other questions about the story though, for example there is a bit where the Doctor states that she doesn’t believe in Satan. Which is a fair comment, except the Tenth Doctor actually came face to face with the creature that claimed to inspire the Devil in the first place. The Doctor has also infamously battled creatures that were the embodiment of pure evil. Most noticeably the Black Guardian and Fenric.

Now, I’m not expecting someone to have near encyclopaedic knowledge of 55 years of Who stories, but there is such a thing as a fan Wiki that does. Any check for the Devil would give you something.

Here’s the thing that’s been bothering me, and you might have picked up on it with my constant references to previous stories during these reviews. This Friday just gone was 23rd of November. The 55th anniversary of Doctor Who. Five years ago we had the 50th and it was massive. A movie length adventure that was shown in cinemas, TV specials, Comic books, radio dramas, documentaries, the works. Now I wouldn’t be expecting anything like that here, but something might have been nice. A reference or two wouldn’t have gone a miss.

Unfortunately, with this new writing team behind the scenes and crew in front they seem to be eager to push forward. Pulling in more new fans at the expense of the old. That’s a gamble, if you alienate the latter and don’t succeed with the former it won’t work. This is why long term fans of the show are disappointed, it feels like the show has passed us by. There should be more than enough room for all of us.

Episodes like this one don’t quite help. It wasn’t bad, but it certainly wasn’t anything special. There weren’t any clever twists, or spectacularly creative ideas presented here. Instead there was a competent script which might have dragged in places, and been predictable in others, but it wasn’t disappointing.

The acting was on par, more or less. Jodie Whittaker seems to have settled into the role. It’s improved from how things were at the beginning of the season at least and yeah, everything else was as it had been for the rest of the season. 

Again, that said you have to agree that the Companions didn’t have much to do this time around. Graham was mistaken as the Witchfinder General, Yaz referenced the fact she was bullied as a kid and there was the bit with King James taking a liking to Ryan, but that had no impact beyond the episode. 

Above all else that’s what makes this episode solid filler. Nothing important or earth shaking happened. You could easily skip this one and miss nothing. As I’ve said before; in a truncated season like this one are forgettable episodes really something the show can afford?

7 out of 13

Average, average, average.