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| "Hey, have I got something in my teeth?" |
Yeah. Sucks, doesn't it? Especially after the third time it happens.
Unfortunately, that is the case for a young man playing a lute and just wanting to have a verily good time getting ye olde rocks off. Lilith, the leader of apparently a group of witches, addresses the audience (in a very...Shakespearean way) to tell us that it's the end of the world as we know it. Also, the witches all have spooky wrinkle faces.
These are the Carrionites, as we'll find out later...and they're actually one of my favorite aliens to be introduced in New Who.
And no, for the record, they don't address the audience again for the entire episode.
We return to Martha Jones (who the rabid fanbase to this day seems to hate for merely existing and not being Saint Rose of Tyler) and her adventures in the TARDIS already in progress. Like with transition from Rose into The End of the World, no time has passed for the newly minted TARDIS crew of two. After learning that the Doctor failed his first test to fly the TARDIS, Martha is brought out into London of 1599.
The Doctor shows her around and directs them to the Globe Theatre to meet the one and only...William Shakespeare. Martha unintentionally creates the "Author! Author!" chant and the Doctor gets to be disappointed in the genius that is William Shakespeare speaking in a way that speaks to the groundlings rather than the height of absolute genius intellect he expects ol' Willy to speak with.
Never meet your heroes, kids.
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| "I'm just relieved this isn't a Russell T. Davies script..." |
This episode is actually pretty comedy heavy, though its never too grating and is balanced well with the overall plot. It's never so much that you don't feel the stakes of the episode, so credit to Gareth Roberts on that (I'll be saying that wearily little on this retrospective, but I'll take it where I can get it - and he still has a altogether better hit record than Russell does).
Lilith is in one of the box seats, wielding a voodoo doll with extreme prejudice. Shakespeare suddenly falls into a trance and then snaps out of it, mentioning that the audience won't have to wait long for the sequel to the play they watched tonight - Love's Labour's Lost - because he's already working on the sequel - Love's Labour's Won...something which gets the Doctor a bit unsettled.
For those not in the know, Love's Labour's Won is the famous lost play of William Shakespeare. Like with the mention of The Mystery of Edwin Drood back in The Unquiet Dead being an unfinished book by Charles Dickens, the existence of the play is known...and that's it. No copy of it has been found to this day. While some scholars have debated that this was merely Shakespeare's name for another play and decide to leave it at that, I have an unhealthy obsession with insisting that Doctor Who is canon with real life, so we get our explanation here as to what really happened to it.
What? No, I don't have a problem! You have a problem!
The Doctor's curiosity piqued, he and Martha head off to a tavern called The Elephant to meet the man himself. At first, Shakespeare is resistant to what he assumes to be a superfan...until Martha pokes her head out from behind the Doctor. Smitten immediately, he beckons them to sit and Martha gets the second of the three Tennant era "Don't do that"s when she tries to speak like a local. Shakespeare shows an immunity to the psychic paper, which impresses the Doctor greatly.
After a bit of political correctness gone mad, the Queen's inspector turns up to rant at Shakespeare and threatens the play being performed. Lilith, posing as a serving girl, gets a snippet of the man's hair and - with the other Carrionites - performs a spell to drown the man on dry land, killing him with an impact to the heart to seal the deal. The Doctor, Martha, and Shakespeare head out and the Doctor bluffs the locals into thinking the man died from an imbalance of the humours. When Martha asks why, he tells her that he doesn't want the people panicking and thinking this was witchcraft.
Martha, understandably worried, asks the Doctor what killed the man. The Doctor replies, "Witchcraft."
The Carrionites, meanwhile, brew a potion to be used on Shakespeare as he writes.
After a brief discussion with Shakespeare in which he fingers the Doctor and Martha as being someone other than what they appear to be, the Doctor and Martha go to their room in the inn for ship teasing...I mean, to further the plot.
...it's the Russell T. Davies era. It's all ship teasing. Even the plot.
The Doctor, however, takes the opportunity to be a dick. Mostly because Martha isn't as experienced as Rose was. Needless to say, Martha isn't impressed. Nor am I.
It's not as if the Doctor complained about Leela wasn't as experienced as Sarah Jane when he first picked her up. Then again, that might have been because Leela would have strangled him with her janis thorns and we would have gotten Peter Davison's Doctor four years early.
That evening, as Shakespeare writes, Lilith pops in through the window and knocks him out with the potion. With the use of his voodoo doll, Lilith has him write at a much more expedited rate. The tavernkeeper, a woman named Dolly comes in and is literally scared to death by Lilith in Carrionite form. Her scream brings the Doctor and Martha running, just in time to see Lilith escaping by broomstick into the night.
Seriously? Witches and Shakespeare? That's like running into Charles Dickens and ghosts at Christmas!
...wait...
Anyway, the next morning, the Doctor, Martha, and Shakespeare try to discern what has happened. Shakespeare points them in the direction of the Globe. The Globe has fourteen sides and the Doctor talks a bit about the power of words when Martha brings up that sonnets have fourteen lines. Also, buttering him up a bit about the TARDIS...so I'm not really going to give him credit considering his earlier remarks.
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| Pictured: Crowley, getting snarky with Aziraphale (off-screen). |
Shakespeare takes them to Bedlam Hospital to see the architect, leaving a copy of the new play with one of his subordinates. On the way, Shakespeare flirts with both Martha and the Doctor in even measure.
Also on the way, back at the Globe, two of the actors recite some of the lines and accidentally summon a Carrionite in a very "Did you see that? Good, neither did I!" moment, the three Carrionites outside aren't too worried and even seem a bit amused. It fades away before it can do any harm, however. Also, yes, the non-human form of the Carrionite is all CGI and looks a little bit silly, but it's Doctor Who and isn't silly in the same way the Judoon were last episode in that it at least pulls off what it's trying to portray.
After some commentary about how psychiatry and the Elizabethan era were like John Wayne Gacy and the Dali Lama being roommates, the Doctor uses Time Lord psychic abilities to speak to Peter the architect. The Carrionites take notice and, after Peter gives some information about how the witches got him to design the Globe and drove him insane after (learning the house they can be found at as well), one of them teleports in. This one, Doomfinger, kills Peter with a touch and threatens the others. The Doctor, being the Doctor, goes through his encyclopedic knowledge of universal plot convenience to work out the name "Carrionite", which banishes Doomfinger.
As the Doctor explains later, the Carrionites use words the same what that human beings use mathematics. Human have the right numbers in the right sequence, they split the atom. Carrionites use words in the same manner, though in this case it means the end of the world. The Doctor later explains that the Carrionites existed in the dawn of time, all hopped up on blood and magic and chaos (which touches on some of the Doctor Who expanded universe), but suddenly vanished with no real explanation.
Lilith resolves to kill the Doctor. The Doctor begins to work out the plan, realizing that Love's Labour's Won is a weapon of the Carrionites, using the Globe as an energy converter for...something. The play performance begins as the Doctor sends Shakespeare off to stop it while he and Martha go off to confront the witches.
Doomfinger and Bloodtide are witness as Shakespeare tries to stop the play. With the use of his doll, he's knocked out. The actors play off Will's "drunkeness", much to their delight.
Meanwhile, the Doctor explains that time is all wibbly-wobbley to Martha, so she could easily fade away if they don't stop the Carrionites.
...which isn't exactly how time travel works in Doctor Who, but then the rules on paradoxes have never actually been uniformly consistent at any point in the Series (Old or New).
But Lilith opens the door for them, Martha fails to banish her using the name of her race. She returns the favor, using Martha's name to render unconscious. When Lilith tries to use the name of "Doctor" to affect the Doctor, it does nothing. But then...Russell got a hold of the script and we have a Rose reference.
You can't hear it right now, but I'm sighing.
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| Is it just me or does she look like a young Lalla Ward? |
Just...how? How would the friggin' Carrionites have any idea who Rose is? They aren't seers, we've seen that much. Even by Lilith's own admission, they escaped from their imprisonment by the Eternals and this is the first period in history that they've been in since the dawn of time. Rose won't be born until 1987. While I don't have math degree by any means, there's an almost 400 years gap between them showing up and her even existing. Also, don't get in touch and say "magic", because bite me. It's not magic, it's science.
Except for Russell's edits to the script. That's magic. Stupid, stupid narrative magic.
But the Doctor does work out that the Carrionites are using Shakespeare's play to bring back the rest of the Carrionites...mostly because Lilith tells him such before snipping off a bit of his hair to use for another doll and stabbing him in the heart. Martha wakes up after Lilith leaves, noting that the Doctor has two hearts. After a bit of physical comedy where Martha hits the Doctor's chest repeatedly, they head out for the Globe.
The play goes on, the Orb being activated and the Carrionites being released. Reuniting with Shakespeare, they take to the stage and the Doctor encourages him to use his words to counter the Carrionite spell. Shakespeare gives it his best shot, the Doctor and Martha filling him in on a few points including Martha giving the final word of "Expelliarmus!", which banishes the lot as well as the three who were out to begin with, sealing them within the Orb.
All's well that ends well, it seems. The Carrionites are gone, every copy of Love's Labour's Won was sucked up into the maelstrom as well. Shakespeare flirts with Martha, to no avail (because halitosis) and the Doctor gives him the frilly collar he's known for. Shakespeare lays the groundwork to write Hamlet and has worked out that the Doctor's an alien and he and Martha are traveling through time and space...and Shakespeare recites a sonnet for Martha...his Dark Lady.
Yeah. Rose Tyler got knighted by Queen Victoria? Well, people were arguing about who Martha Jones was for centuries before she was ever born. Suck it!
Then, of all celebrity cameos, Queen Elizabeth I shows up! The Doctor is, at first, delighted...until she declares him her sworn enemy and orders him executed. Shakespeare laughing the whole time, the Doctor and Martha run for the TARDIS. The Doctor notes that he's looking forward to finding out just why he's Victoria's sworn enemy...an arrow hitting the TARDIS just before it disappears into time and space...
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| "FUS! RO! DAH!!!" |
The Shakespeare Code is a pretty good episode on the whole. Definitely one of the better ones in Series 3 as a whole. Dean Lennox Kelly has a great turn as the Bard and is a delight to watch. The rest of the cast give solid performances, nothing that's too over the top or underplayed.
The Carrionites are an excellent villain and I really wish they'd pop up again some time besides the cameo they'll have later in The Unicorn and the Wasp (another Gareth Roberts episode). They touch on the lore of Doctor Who's expanded universe. The Doctor mentions several times that magic doesn't exist in the universe, it's all just science with a different shade of paint. Given that the Doctor personally knows several members of the Sisterhood of Karn (who we'll be meeting in a few Series' time and who have shown up in the classic show as well), a coven of witches that are a hold over from the ancient past where magic was a thing in the universe, he really should be adding anymore to the end of that statement. Before anyone gets in touch to tell me that that can't be the case because of "x", I'll remind you that I really don't care. My personal canon for Doctor Who accounts for some of the books as well, and before Rassilon and the Time Lords made the universe behave itself, magic was a thing in the Dark Times.
So button it.
Regardless of all of that, besides the egregious Rose reference, this is a great episode. I'm a big fan of the concept of words having power and being able to channel that power to produce effects. It's a very neat, almost meta commentary on stories and story-telling and the power that they have. Something that can use your own language against you as a weapon? A frightening idea indeed. Who better to bring to us the idea through than a man whose words have lived on for centuries after his death and are beloved and still being read and performed today?
Next time, however, we'll be getting to something far less remarkable. It's time to go back to Neeeeeeeeeeeew Earth. We'll see a classic series monster that doesn't resemble its classic series version in anything but name and vague appearance, and we'll get our arc for the Series.
As you can probably tell, I don't much care for it.
Doctor Who is the property of the British Broadcasting Corporation.
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