Doctor Who preview: Witches and kings and Alan Cumming, oh my

The new season of Doctor Who continues as the TARDIS team travels back in time and find themselves involved in a witch trial.

Alan Cumming is guest starring on Doctor Who this week, and that’s hardly even the most exciting thing about this upcoming episode, entitled “The Witchfinders”.

As a series about a time-traveling alien, Doctor Who has had the chance to both visit and explore some particularly turbulent moments in history. But for whatever reason, the show hasn’t really ever tackled any of the witch panics that occurred from the late Middle Ages onward in Europe and America, or the trials they spawned.

That’s about to change, as Thirteen and friends find themselves in Lancashire during the reign of King James I. In case you didn’t know, prior to his ascension to the English throne, James – who was only King of Scotland at the time – published a compendium of witchcraft lore called Daemonologie, which laid out his full belief in all this sort of thing. He later passed the Witchcraft Acts of 1604, which gave his new Witch-finder general more leeway to hunt down and prosecute those believed to be invoking evil spirits, communing with familiars or other supposedly witchy activities.

Um. Yikes?

Where exactly in his reign this story will take place is anyone’s guess, however. And the official episode synopsis for this week is once again predictably vague.

"In 17th-century Lancashire, the Doctor, Yaz, Ryan and Graham become embroiled in a witch trial and the arrival of King James I."

Could that be less helpful? Whew.

For what it’s worth, Salem in the late 1600s was actually pretty high on my list of historical places I’d like this TARDIS crew to visit, and this feels kind of like I’m getting my wish on that front. The Salem trials are, of course, the best-known outbreak of witch panic in America, but it’s far from the only ones that happened worldwide. (And, historically speaking, it actually happened pretty late compared to the rest of the globe.)

Mostly, the idea of this particular Doctor landing in the middle of a witch panic anywhere is intriguing. Because Thirteen is a woman now, and while she may not behave any differently than any Doctor that’s come before her, her actions will be read in a whole new way by the oppressive folks (read: men) who’ve ruled the world for much of its history.

In short: There’s pretty much no way that the fact that the Doctor is a woman, and a strident, outspoken, generally magical woman at that, won’t come up. Odds are she’s going to get named as a witch. (And maybe some of her companions will, too.)

And that’s going to be wild to watch.

Doctor Who season 11 continues Sunday at 8 p.m. EST on BBC America.