TV Review Dr Who The Witchfinders

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Spoiler alerts This ought to be called Dr Who And The Alan Cummings Pantomime After two quite realistic history based episode, Rosa & The Demons Of The Punjab, it was time for a rather silly romp, moved with elements of genuine horror. Trying to get to the Coronation of Elizabeth 1st the time travellers end up in the shadow of Pendle at the height of the Witch Hunt craze, but the story move away from addressing the actual Pendle Witch Trials to deal with events in a fictional village. (It’s disappearance from the maps being explained later. The Doctor breaks up a witch-testing party, despite her own warning not to interfere in or change history, but there are no Father’s Day consequences for her humanitarian action, possibly as the suspected witch dies anyway. The witch-swim actually confuses ducking stools with the real method of witch-swimming which was really about floating witches, hogtie hand and foot. One character even tells the Doctor that the Ducking Stool should be used for dealing with village gossips. Zombies of the dead witches come back, and look genuinely scary. They eventually prove to be possessed, but not by Satan. It is the alien convicts from under the hill who have escaped thanks to the tree used to lock them in being chopped down to make the ducking stool. Siobhan Finneran is great as the fanatical lady of the manor hall, gradually forced to accept that she is the real source of the tragedy she has tried to prevent by killing everyone she can. Alan Cummings however is brilliantly out of place as King James 1st, visiting the village with few royal bodyguards for no real apparent reason. Cummings hams it up hilariously. Even his sorrowful tale of neglect by his mother made me laugh. He also seems to have the hots for Ryan. There is some good fun along the way, with the King unable to accept the idea of a woman being in charge, giving the Witchfinder hat to Graham instead. No one addresses the King with reverence or respect. He is treated like a nuisance throughout. The Doctor & Co are never questioned over their outlandish clothes or mannerisms. That alone might have drawn them to the attention of witch-hunters. The Doctor concluding that the Morax will be weakened by the kryptonite effect of the fumes from burning the very wood that imprisoned them comes from nowhere. We also get the supremely corny line “Kneel before Morax, puny humans.” A fun romp rather heightened by the Over The Top panto antics of Alan Cummings as a king who really ought to have had better things to do with his time. Arthur Chappell