Doctor Who review: Misogyny is the real monster here

As Doctor Who season 11 continues, Thirteen must battle misogyny and alien mud monsters in “The Witchfinders”.

Arthur C. Clarke once said that “any significantly advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”, an idea of which Doctor Who is certainly well aware. The show frequently uses the Doctor’s sonic or similar devices to handwave the team out of danger, with little to no explanation or logic. Which is why it’s honestly amazing that this show has taken 55 years to actually do an episode about witchcraft, or any of the dark periods of witch panic that infected the world during the 16th and 17th centuries.

“The Witchfinders” rectifies that fact with a vengeance, not only tackling the story of a witch trial head on, but dropping Doctor Who’s first female Doctor straight into a time period where her new gender impacts the story in a demonstrable way. If the Doctor still looked like Peter Capaldi would half this episode happen? No, it almost certainly would not. Or if it did, it would definitely look a lot different.

Season 11 has worked pretty hard to present the idea that Thirteen is simply the Doctor, no matter what her gender happens to be. And that’s important, because this is the first time the Doctor’s been a woman, and that matters. Doctor Who viewers new and old need to believe and understand that this is the same character she’s always been, whether she looks like Jodie Whittaker or David Tennant. Showing us all that the Doctor remains the Doctor is necessary, in a series continuity sense.

But it’s also probably past time we got a story like this. The Doctor is fearless and outspoken, yes, but she also travels to plenty of historical time periods that are generally hostile to women. So it’s rather amazing that we haven’t seen a story yet where Thirteen is treated differently, or simply listened to with less deference, simply because she’s now a female regeneration. In that regard, “The Witchfinders” feels very necessary. However, it doesn’t quite go far enough, if you ask me.

Picture shows: Yaz (MANDIP GILL), The Doctor (JODIE WHITTAKER), Willa Twiston (TILLY STEELE) Photo Credit: BBC

Yes, Whittaker gets the chance to look exasperated and splutter against the misogyny that insists she can’t be “Witchfinder General” (a real job that King James came up with, by the way) but Graham can. Thirteen gets in a few verbal jabs about sexism here and there, but at the end of the day, she still has to smile and make herself smaller, assume the role that’s expected of her and not speak out as stridently as we might have previously predicted.  And while we all probably knew that any story about witch trials that involved this Doctor would eventually find Thirteen herself accused of witchcraft, it’s another thing entirely to watch her actually submit to the process without somehow talking her way out of it.

Perhaps this is a Doctor that’s simply more considerate of the historical timeline than her previous selves (though her immediate decision to attempt to save Willa’s gran in the episode’s opening moments argues otherwise). But it’s nevertheless disappointing to watch the Doctor repeatedly be told that women are only capable of so much (ladies, you know how we love to snoop!) and not have a big savior moment at the end where she proves that she’s not only an amazing hero but that her gender inherently contains that possibility too.

There’s a similar frustration with the episode’s villain (or one of them, at any rate). Siobhan Finneran — an actress probably best known to Americans as O’Brien on Downton Abbey — is frighteningly fierce as Becka Savage, the God-fearing leader of Bilehurst Cragg who’s been orchestrating the witch trials in a misguided attempt to rid herself of what she considers to be Satan’s dark influence. That she’s actually being possessed herself by an alien mud creature is the sort of bizarre that only Doctor Who would ever attempt, but it mostly works, even if it partially absolves Becka for her culpability in some of her actions. (Wouldn’t it have been more interesting if the story focused on Becka’s own internalized misogyny? She’s a woman with power, naming and killing other women as witches. That’s… let’s just say messed up.

Picture shows: Yaz (MANDIP GILL), The Doctor (JODIE WHITTAKER) Photo Credit: BBC

As it stands, the episode’s villains are thinly sketched out and add little to the larger historical story happening around them. It doesn’t help that the Morax are basically alien mud people who possess the dead, and it’s all got something to do with the fact that they’ve been imprisoned beneath a tree in what’s actually a secret prison. Carrying Becka all the way through as the episode’s Big Bad would definitely have been more thematically interesting, and given Finneran more to do.

As for “The Witchfinders’” other big guest star, Alan Cumming’s Doctor Who debut is entertaining, to be sure, as he throws himself into the role of King James I with abandon. His portrayal mixes the king’s well-documented obsession with witchcraft and religious devotion with his long-rumored fancy for handsome courtiers and conspiracy-fueled paranoia. The result is a character that is generally all over the place, and whose presence is often tonally jarring when considered against the rest of the episode. “The Witchfinders”, as a whole, is a pretty dark episode so the version of the king that’s played for silly laughs can feel out of place at times. Yet, Cumming shines in his quieter scenes opposite Toisin Cole and Jodie Whittaker, so much so that one has to wonder what this story might have been like if we could trade the campier bits for a few more of those serious moments that actually give us a window into his character.

If all of that sounds like this is a bad episode, that isn’t true at all. “The Witchfinders” is a genuinely creepy historical story, set in a time most people aren’t familiar with. (For the record: There were actual witch trials in Lancashire in the 1600s. Just not in this made up village.) While there’s not much in the way of character development this week, every member of Team TARDIS gets a moment or two to shine. The setting is moody and atmospheric. And, as stories go, it makes sense — of course, nefarious alien activity is a legitimate reason that people might accuse their neighbors of witchcraft. The episode just doesn’t go quite far enough in its exploration of how misogyny impacted these events — and our perception of them now — and that, for me, is the difference between good and great.

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