Written
by Gareth Roberts
Directed
by Charles Palmer
Broadcast
7 April 2007
Reviewed
by DJ Forrest
It’s 1599 and the Doctor
takes Martha for her first trip in the TARDIS, by way of saying thank you. Martha is taken to see the greatest man that
ever lived, ‘the genius – the most human
human there’s ever been.’ William Shakespeare.
However, despite the big
build up by the Doctor, Shakespeare’s first words are not quite how he was
portrayed in English literature.
Shakespeare thrills the
crowd at the Globe Theatre with the announcement that he will perform the
sequel to Love’s Labour’s Lost, the very next night, a play entitled ‘Love’s
Labour’s Won’ (one of the lost plays).
This is news to the actors and news to the Master of the Revels,
Lynley. Lynley instantly puts his foot
down about the play and as the play had not as yet been written, refused to
have it performed on the stage the very next night. Yet on his departure, Lilith, a house maid
performed an act of witchcraft upon him, and Lynley drowned to death.
Later in the evening
Shakespeare had finished the play but the final touches were yet to be added. From the window behind Shakespeare, Lilith
enters the room, crafting her wooden doll with a strand or two of William’s
hair. Shakespeare has been under the
influence of Lilith and the Carrionites for some time, while they prepare to
bring their sisters through the portal from the Deep Darkness into the present
world.
As the finishing touches
are added and Shakespeare returns to his sleep state from his trance like
state, Lilith is disturbed by the tavern keeper Dolly Bailey. In order to silence the woman Lilith turns
back to her witch like form and scares poor Dolly to death.
The Doctor hears Dolly’s
scream and rushes in only to find Lilith has already left the building. Martha spies her on a broomstick, cackling
away in the distance.
In the Globe theatre,
the Doctor questions the significance of the 14 sides of the building. When he’s told about Peter Streete the
architect, he insists he has to see the man, even though he’s in Bedlam
hospital. The Doctor learns from Peter
that he had met the witches in All Hallows Street. They had insisted that he built the Globe
theatre as a tetradecagon (14 sides) as this would help to carry the sound in
the theatre. Lilith felt a disturbance in her mind, Peter
Streete had visitors. Lilith saw in the
magical waters before her, the Doctor, and fearing that Peter would give away
their plans, sent Mother Doomfinger to ‘doom the Doctor’s hide.’
Despite poor Peter being
silenced forever by the witch, the Doctor used the power of words to prevent
the same happening to him, Martha and Shakespeare. He identified the witch as a Carrionite from
the Rexel Planetary Configuration.
Carrionites themselves had been banished to the Deep Darkness by the
Eternals when the Earth was very young. Since then they had been trying to find
a way through to this world. Lilith and
her mothers had made it through during Shakespeare’s dip into depression after
his son Hamnet died at the age of 11. By
locating Shakespeare they had been manipulating him for years through his
plays, preparing him and them for the return of the Carrionites.
The Doctor realised that
the play was the key and informed Shakespeare to STOP the play. But William Shakespeare had already given the
play to his actor’s who had rehearsed the play all the way through. Reaching the part that gave the co-ordinates
for the Carrionites safe passage through, they saw an image trying to break
through into their world, although the words were not strong enough to
penetrate, it was enough for the actors to stop rehearsing and not talk of what
they’d witnessed.
The Doctor and Martha,
through Peter’s final words, located the witches abode, here he found Lilith
who through the power of the poetic word, put Martha into a temporary
sleep. Using a DNA replicator, (taking a
strand of hair from the Doctor and wrapping it around her wooden doll), Lilith
stabbed the doll through the heart and ‘killed’ the Doctor. However, underestimating the Doctor with his
two hearts, he wasn’t down for long and soon it was a race against time to
cancel the play and stop the Carrionites in their tracks.
But as the crowds
gathered, and Shakespeare entered the stage to cancel the play, Lilith and her mother’s
put paid to his words and knocked him out, by using the doll again.
The Doctor and Martha
are too late to stop the Carrionites from travelling through the portal, as the
players act out the scene giving the exact co-ordinates loudly and clearly, and
all hell breaks loose. It’s down to
William Shakespeare, the wordsmith to return them whence they came. But words that had once released them are
hard to think up, but with a little help from JK’s Harry Potter, the words work
and the Carrionites, including Lilith and her mothers are sent back into the
Deep Darkness held within the crystal ball that Lilith had brought into the
Globe Theatre during the play. The
Doctor for safe keeping takes it back to his TARDIS and stores it in a trunk
beneath the console.
The Queen comes to see
the play but on eyeballing the Doctor threatens to lop off his head. Unsure why she would want to kill him, he can
only guess it has something to do with another event he has yet to discover.
That’s the thing about
time travel!
Not being a fan of
Shakespeare I wasn’t sure this was going to be an enjoyable episode for me, but
with the 10th Doctor throwing in a few memorable quotes from the
stage from other writers, and some facts involving Shakespeare and the link for
Hamlet, I found it an enjoyable episode, with just enough crazy witchcraft and
sorcery to keep it within the world of Who.
In one particular part
of the episode, after the Doctor returns from the props store with a neck brace
for Shakespeare, he also brings through a skull of a strange creature. The Doctor is unsure of the skull and
announces that it reminds him of a Sycorax.
Shakespeare, the man of words tells the Doctor that he’ll have that word
off him also. As through the episode,
the Doctor would drop quotes right left and centre and Shakespeare, would
consider or attempt to take them for his own.
What I hadn’t realised however was that the word Sycorax has been used in a Shakespeare play before.
PROSPERO (Act 1, Scene 2, Page 12)
Thou
liest, malignant thing! Hast thou forgot
The
foul witch Sycorax, who with age and
envy
Was
grown into a hoop? Hast thou forgot her?
The Tempest (1611)
That’s one of the things
I like about Who, the way a word, a name can appear as if it were conjured up
but was in fact mentioned in a play from hundreds of years ago, a word that you
associate with a Who creature, that even in your wildest dreams would never
expect it to come from the pen of William Shakespeare!
Resources:
©BBC Doctor Who 1963
The Shakespeare Code
BBC BOOKS Doctor Who The
Time Traveller’s Almanac by Steve Tribe
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