Doctor Who: 25 time periods Thirteen and Team TARDIS should visit

Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre Replica, London (Photo: reTxllxt TxllxT [CC BY-SA 4.0], from Wikimedia Commons)

Shakespearean England

To be fair, Doctor Who has done a Shakespeare-based episode fairly recently. The Tenth Doctor and his companion Martha Jones met the Bard back in season 3 episode “The Shakespeare Code.” But, much like Shakespeare himself told many different kinds of stories throughout his career, there’s certainly room for more than one Doctor Who story about the famous playwright’s life.

Historical figure we might meet: Shakespeare himself isn’t the only interesting person who lived and worked in the theaters where he made his living, so if we need some extra faces for this story there are plenty of options. Appearances by fellow playwright Christopher Marlowe, theater owner Richard Burbage, or even an original character who treads the boards with Will could all be worthwhile.

Potential adventures: When last we saw Shakespeare, Ten and Martha were busy rescuing him from some angry witches bent on forcing him to rewrite the ending of one of his plays so that the lines will release their sisters from a magical prison (and they, subsequently, can destroy the human race). After all is put to rights, Shakespeare reveals that he knows Martha’s from the future and the Doctor’s an alien. The show even makes an attempt to write in a joke insinuating that Martha’s the real life stand-in for the famous “Dark Lady” of Shakespeare’s sonnets. In short, this episode didn’t do a great job of handling the issue of Martha’s race or the fact that plenty of people of color lived in seventeenth century England.

By sending the Doctor back to Shakespearean times once more, we not only give Doctor Who the chance to tell a better story about the Bard, but we, as viewers, will get an opportunity to see how someone reacts to the fact that the Doctor has changed genders. We don’t often see many of the same characters within the universe of the show more than once, unless they’re companions, UNIT staff members or someone else who’s ultimately not too weirded out by the idea of a time traveling alien. What happens when a regular person who met the Doctor once meets her again – and finds out she’s a woman? Would people – particularly someone from a past period that had less than ideal feelings about gender equality – treat her differently? Be more or less inclined to believe her? That definitely feels like a story worth telling.