Doctor Who review: The Witchfinders – a scary monster episode, or a clash of genres?

The Witchfinders seemed to have a lot of key elements for a strong Doctor Who story. But did it live up to that potential?

I was considerably looking forward to The Witchfinders. It promised to feature a lot of elements that I enjoy in Doctor Who. A historical setting that’s brilliantly brought to life. Scary monsters to be afraid of. (And in this series, we were definitely in strong need of those.) And an exploration of the Witch Trials of the seventeenth century, a piece of history that particularly fascinates me.

We also had Alan Cumming playing King James I, which was definitely an exciting bit of casting for Doctor Who. Alan Cumming is a great actor, and can usually be relied on to give an entertaining performance.

That definitely seems to have been achieved with The Witchfinders. Especially judging from all the reactions to Cumming’s performance. So he certainly seemed to be popular with the fans.

We also had zombies in this episode. Zombies! OK, so it’s not the first time that we’ve seen zombies in Doctor Who (one of the best examples would be in The Waters of Mars), but it was great to have a completely fresh take on them. Especially in the seventeenth century setting. That mixture of gritty period history with dark horror had such strong Hinchcliffe vibes that it was impossible not to love it.

But despite featuring so many strong elements, did The Witchfinders live up to its potential? Was it successful at combining so many wildly different elements? Let’s see what our writers thought of the episode.

The seventeenth century was brought very effectively to life in The Witchfinders.

(Image credit: Doctor Who/BBC.

Image obtained from: official Doctor Who website.)

Raphael Kiyani – Staff Writer

The Witchfinders by Joy Wilkinson suddenly launches us into 17th century Lancashire and builds a gratifying foray into England’s dark witch-hunting past. Confused pacing and tone stops this episode from becoming something truly special, but, much like Kerblam! before it, it is a solid piece of Doctor Who goodness.

Like the majority of stories in Series Eleven – The Witchfinders continues the trend of creating memorable and authentic looking settings by utilising inspired location work, VFX and set and costume design.

17th century Lancashire is brought to life with an appropriately charming but spooky atmosphere. Immersing oneself in this well constructed time zone is engaging and is further strengthened by some class supporting characters.

The interactions between the grieving, but perceptive Willa and the haunted and manipulative Becka were a delight. Both of them had dimensions and fleshed out the dynamics of the village. It’s important that small scale settings don’t envelope themselves with an uninteresting sameness – this episode didn’t fall of foul of this with Willa and Becka making the village feel real and truly lived in.

Guest star Alan Cumming adds a riotous ingredient to proceedings with a rowdy portrayal of King James I. He certainly holds your attention whenever he’s on screen, with Cumming providing some deliciously quick-witted comedic delivery.

King James I is a fun character, but at times, he does waver into pantomime-esque territory. Much like Lord Sutcliff from Series Ten historical Thin Ice, this did occasionally clash with the tone of the story.

With scary zombies and campy King James, did the mixed tones in The Witchfinders work well for the story?

(Image credit: Doctor Who/BBC.

Image obtained from: official Doctor Who website.)

A clash of tone

On the topic of tone, it is here where things – no pun intended – get a little muddy. This story felt like two styles of narrative jammed into one. It felt to me that Wilkinson couldn’t decide on which direction to take.

In so doing, both styles competently but actively diminished the potential of both. The Witchfinders feels like it is torn between being a gritty non-alien introspection of human history like Rosa or Demons of the Punjab – or being a historical alien romp like The Shakespeare Code.

This would have weighed down the episode further if it wasn’t for some great character drama here, with Wilkinson devising some electric dialogue and a bewitching mystery.

The witches – or the Morax – looked and sounded creepy but they did not do enough threatening actions to merit the title of a good villain. I believe this is down to uneven pacing. Whilst I just previously lauded the character drama, there were some dialogue-heavy scenes that sagged and felt too long in places.

These could have been cut down in favour of the Morax, well, cutting down a few villagers. Their defeat too sprung up from nowhere, making the conclusion feel abrupt and not in line with the flow of the episode.

A more assertive Doctor

On the positive side though, the Morax threat and their defeat did, at least, allow Thirteen to be more assertive. She felt really ‘Doctor-y’ here and that lifted some of the pitfalls of the Morax for me.

Along with Thirteen’s assertiveness, I also found that the rest of Team TARDIS felt well-adjusted and brave. They felt more polished and they gelled as a group. Bradley Walsh, again, is the highlight and has continually been one of the strongest parts of Series Eleven. Only he could quote Tarantino and elicit warmth and laughter.

The Witchfinders has tonal and pacing issues – to some this will be jarring and obtuse – to others it will be a mild inconvenience. In spite of this, Joy Wilkinson has created an engaging story with an eerie atmosphere, interesting and varied supporting characters and a Team TARDIS that feels unified. It may fall short of the other historicals this series, but it still remains an entertaining journey.

The Witchfinders put the Doctor in noticeably more danger than other stories this series.

(Image credit: Doctor Who/BBC.

Image obtained from: official Doctor Who website.)

Luke Molloy – Staff Writer

Doctor Who does witch trials in an episode conceptually perfect for Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor. Does The Witchfinders emerge as a Who-high? Or sink to a watery grave? Well it’s somewhere inbetween – offering up an archetypal fun, but average, Series Eleven episode.

It’s typical that I spend weeks pleading for a monstrous threat in Doctor Who and the time I’m gifted one, it doesn’t suit the episode at all. It was just too jarring when the Morax-of-the-week were introduced with less than ten minutes of the runtime left.

Then it was super quick – Doctor explains who they are, how to stop them and BOOM. There was zero time to process the exposition and blow up a tree, never mind build them up as a threat.

I wanted to get my biggest gripe out of the way (and hope for a good threat early next week!) as I really did enjoy the story before the Morax U-turn. The mud-zombies looked brilliant and for half Six on a Sunday, they would have had Mary Whitehouse spinning in her grave. The location shots were eerily atmospheric and did its job in immersing you in the crow-and-broomsticks territory.

The Doctor in peril

Thankfully, The Witchfinders feasts into the obvious potential of getting the Doctor accused of witchcraft. I wanted her to get dunked from the very start. I thought she was going to talk herself out of it at the tree, then on the chair… Then finally – she got DUNKED. It was an absolute treat.

Seriously, we’ve barely seen the Doctor in any peril this year. She’s not been zapped or tied up or in a tough situation to get out of—but in The Witchfinders we had all three. My only complaint is I still wanted more. I thought they could have dragged it out a bit more, and had more underwater shots of the Doctor struggling, just to really increase the tension.

I was more annoyed at the trial at the beginning – the Doctor dives in and tries to save a woman from drowning and then brings her up to land…All in about six seconds. Show us the action, Chibbers! That would have been a brilliant sequence over the course of a minute or so.

A friend also mentioned how Yaz getting dunked may have been better, as she won’t have had any Houdini skills and is a bit more mortal. Both have their dramatic weight – seeing how the Doctor would react to seeing one of her friends in serious danger would be interesting as we haven’t truly seen that yet. However, it is the Doctor’s show and it wouldn’t have felt right if she weren’t the dunkee!

Alan Cumming’s performance as King James certainly stood out in The Witchfinders.

(Image credit: Doctor Who/BBC.

Image obtained from: official Doctor Who website.)

Team TARDIS – an ongoing problem

It was brilliant to see the Doctor on her own for once too, getting slowly more serious as King James and Becka accused her of “witchcraft”.  I much prefer the darker, serious side of Whittaker’s Doctor we’ve had tiny snippets of. We’re given the singular focus, verbal-diarrhoea version of the Doctor near-constantly and it just doesn’t work for me. I would much welcome a bit more balance between the two.

I also won’t mention this again in reviews but it’s clear that Team TARDIS doesn’t work. It’s difficult to believe that these four people would travel together (they don’t seem to have anything in common), they don’t really care much for the universe (Ryan seems bored by anything he sees) and they always have to be given jobs in the episode to make it worth them being there.

It didn’t really work in the classic series and they had double the run-time. The sooner we strip back to one-or-two companions, the more the show will benefit.

Alan Cumming

The Witchfinders had an ace up its sleeve though, and that’s the magical casting of Alan Cumming as King James I. He was rib-achingly hilarious but came packed with a careful backstory which could have induced sympathy into Satan himself.

For once, Bradley Walsh had the show stolen underneath him (but all he had to work with was a hat). More King James please, King James as companion! (Unlikely considering the Doctor wouldn’t even speak to him at the end).

It was enjoyable to have a story set in the past that didn’t deal with an issue too. Rosa and Demons of the Punjab were good episodes, but as mentioned in previous reviews, they felt too similar. This felt like good old style Doctor Who – and isn’t that what we all love?

In all, a decent episode to bob in-and-out of. It’s the first signs of Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor getting to do some Doctor-ish action and benefited the story more that she got some worthy screentime on her own. The story U-turn didn’t detract too much from its enjoyment, and the whole piece was elevated by a lovable performance from Alan Cumming.

The Witchfinders is another fun but unremarkable dunking into the Jodie Whittaker cauldron.

3/5

With terrifying zombies, The Witchfinders certainly had potential to a horror classic. But then, it had the potential to be a lot of things. Did it simply try too much for one episode?

(Image credit: Doctor Who/BBC.

Image obtained from: official Doctor Who website.)

James Aggas – Site Expert

The Witchfinders is a bit of a strange episode. I mean, tonally, it’s all over the place. At times, it feels like an incredibly dark storyline, as it explores the horrific history of the Witch Trials of the seventeenth century. It feels like a story where humans are the real monsters, and during this period of history, that certainly would’ve been very true.

But it’s almost like Joy Wilkinson knows that we’re kind of tired of that kind of storyline, at least in this series, and so we also get real monsters with zombies! Or, in this case, intelligent alien mud called the Morax! And it has to be said, these monsters are definitely horrific!

But then we get King James I! Now, the story does admittedly explore just how dangerous his rule was, and how keen he was to rid the country of evil. But my gosh, was Alan Cumming’s performance camp! Incredibly so, at times! To the point where it was, admittedly, very entertaining.

Individually, these are all very strong elements. But featuring them all in the same story feels more like a clash than a merge of interesting styles.

Last week, we got the very strong Kerblam!, which might be my favorite this series. It definitely helped that it was an episode that knew exactly what it was. While it had moments of comedy and sweetness, overall, it was an episode that specifically aimed to be fun, but at the same time, surprise and even shock the viewer. It also paid a lot of little nods to Doctor Who, both Classic and New along the way, but it always felt complimentary.

A story that needed more time?

The Witchfinders, on the other hand, seems a little unsure of itself. As such, there are elements that I love, even adore. With so many episodes avoiding the typical “monster of the week” format that Doctor Who does so incredibly well, it was so refreshing to have something as terrifying as the Morlax.

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But because of the amount of focus needed for the Witch Trials, particularly with the focus on Becka Savage, the monsters weren’t given quite enough time to be properly fleshed out this week.

Perhaps this is the real problem of The Witchfinders – not enough time to really explore all of the major elements it includes. If this had been a two-part story, it could’ve worked just fine.

We could have focused on the human monsters in the first half, with the strong implication that a very real threat is lurking beneath the surface. It’s only at the very end that the threat of the Morlax truly surfaces, and we end up with a very different story for part two.

Unfortunately, like every other story this series, The Witchfinders had only fifty minutes to tell its story in. It’s been plenty of time to tell the others (maybe even too much time for some, especially The Tsuranga Conundrum), but not enough for this week’s.

On the whole, The Witchfinders was enjoyable. But it’s also a story that could’ve been so much more.

(Oh, and for a brilliant story of similar subject matter, read First Doctor novel The Witch Hunters. A dark and brutal novel, but definitely worth a read!)

What did you think of this week’s episode? Is The Witchfinders a favorite of yours? Or was it more of a disappointment? Let us know in the comments below.