In the second episode of the third series of Doctor Who, Shakespeare and Harry Potter collide and nothing else in the world matters. Ever. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Doctor Who.
This episode isn’t particularly staggering in execution, nor is it that frightening, but good lord, it is a whole lot of fun.
I’ve said before how much I really love the episodes of Doctor Who that travel back in time and suggest an alternative explanation to events in history. So here’s me being a broken record: I really like the idea that Love’s Labour Won was actually sucked into a void with the Carrionites, who tried to embed a code to open a portal into this world and allow their kind to annihilate the earth. Maybe I’m just a fan of that sort of ridiculous story telling in general, but in general, “The Shakespeare Code” is ambitious as hell, and I appreciate that.
I say “in general” on purpose. I don’t think these scripts are meant to be fine-tuned in the same way other forms of fiction are. Pointing out plot-holes or unexplained turns would sort of render this whole project kind of boring and tedious if I went in that direction, so I am mostly ok ignoring them. MOSTLY. This is one of those times where once I thought about the story, I noticed there were a lot of weird holes in it, but all in all, traveling back in time to find out what happened to Shakespeare’s lost play was pretty damn fantastic.
Martha Jones proves to be a much different companion than Rose and the Doctor doesn’t shy away from pointing this out. I felt bad for Martha because it’s clear she’s stepped into some difficult shoes to fill for the audience and for the Doctor. Is it a stretch to say that the Doctor vocalizes what a lot of the fandom felt as she was introduced? I thought it was pretty rude of him to say, “ROSE WOULD HAVE FIGURED THIS OUT, GOSH” to here. (In his own way, of course.)
I don’t know, it’s a difficult situation all around. Surely he recognizes how much quicker Martha is to believe in the absurd things she is introduced to, right? Hopefully this isn’t continued beyond the next few episode.
The script for “The Shakespeare Code” is a lot more dense with jokes and references than usual, which is saying a lot for Doctor Who. Even right from the get-go, Gareth Roberts, who wrote this episode, references race relations as a way to identify an obvious point: how can Martha, a person a color, simply walk around London in 1599? (My heart swelled during this scene YOU ARE FIERCE AND AWESOME, MARTHA JONES).
I’m sure this episode also ticked off a bunch of Shakespeare purists with it’s HILARIOUS portrayal of the famous bard. There’s no way it’s even remotely accurate and I DO NOT CARE. EVER. I enjoy that Doctor Who can be both referential and silly about it’s portrayal of public figures throughout history, and this particular episode has quite a few running jokes about famous Shakespeare lines, Harry Potter nerdery, a great Back to the Future reference, and the ongoing joke that Shakespeare wasn’t quite as poetic and verbose when you actually spoke to him. Does it detract from the general plot? Not really, though I was more interested in the conversation than most of the Carrionite story most of the time. It was nice to have a plot that wasn’t so doom-and-gloom throughout and highlighted the witty writing I’ve come to enjoy from this show.
There’s a lot of little stuff I loved in this episode, so let’s just move on to that:
THOUGHTS
- Best line of the episode? “Come on! We can have a good flirt later!” “Is that a promise, Doctor?” “Oh, fifty-seven academics just punched the air.” a;sdkfjas;lkdfj asf;fklkldfs;j asf;fdkjas;dlkdfkls;j BRILLIANCE.
- “It’s like in those films: if you step on a butterfly, you can change the future of the human race.” “Then don’t step on any butterflies! What have butterflies done to you?”
- “So, magic and stuff? It’s a surprise, it’s all a bit Harry Potter.” “Wait till you read book seven. Oh, I cried.” I LOVE YOU FOREVER, DOCTOR, BECAUSE I TOTALLY CRIED TOO.
- “The play’s the thing. And YES, you can use that.”
- I love that the psychic paper didn’t work on Shakespeare. Which brings me to my next point:
- Watching the Doctor fan-out all over Shakespeare was probably funnier than him nerding out over Dickens.
- “Rage, rage, against the dying of the light…” “I might use that.” “You can’t. It’s someone else’s.”
- “Good old J.K.!” OH GOD I LAUGHED SO HARD.
- So, the Carrionites…do they just appear as witches? I’m not sure I understood their species at all. But they were definitely alien, just….witch-like?
- I liked that the voodoo doll things were actually DNA replication modules.
- So did this episode chronologically take place before the Doctor met Queen Elizabeth in “Tooth & Claw”? I was unsure why he said he had never met her yet when he clearly had. [AUTHOR’S EDIT: OH. OK. IT’S BECAUSE HE DIDN’T MEET QUEEN VICTORIA. OOPS.]
- I could not even count how many Shakespeare references there were in the dialogue of this episode. Too many! Bravo.
you know, i really can't blame him for comparing Martha to Rose. she's still pretty fresh in his mind, and she made a pretty big impact on him. the audience is comparing the two anyways. The Doctor doesn't have much tact when he compares them though, but we forget that he ISN'T human, and doesn't really think the same way we do…..
One difference between Martha and Rose can be encapsulated by the opening exchange in the TARDIS:
"But how do you travel in time? What makes it go?"
"Oh, let's take the fun and the mystery out of everything. Martha, you don't want to know. It just does."
Rose was all about the fun and mystery. Martha questions things, and Ten doesn't necessarily like that, because that manically cheerful exterior is only about a millimeter deep and there is all kinds crap underneath. One of the points of Donna's story is that the Doctor does need someone to question him. By the end of her tenure, I don't think Rose was really doing that anymore, and when Martha tries the Doctor's initial reaction is to stop it. (When he does relax and engage with Martha, the two of them become super adorable: "Then I can get sectioned!")
It was at this point that I started to get really, really tired of Ten punishing Martha for not being Rose. No other companion had to put up with that kind of shit, so far as I know – if the Doctor hated them it was on their own merits, like Adam's greed and Jack's initial refusal to take responsibility for the consequences of his con. Martha doesn't get disdained for anything she did, but simply for not being Rose. I don't give a flying monkey if that's a "realistic" portrayal of grief – Ten is supposed to be the protagonist of this show and I'm supposed to like him and when he does things like this it makes it really, really hard to feel that affection.
RTD has a self-admitted yen for unrequited love, and that's one of the things I like least about his writing. No, wait, that's not strong enough – I freaking loathe it. I hated it when it was Mickey getting treated like crap by Rose, and now I hate it when it's Martha and Ten. Davies always manages to write it in such a way as to make me facepalm for the person with the crush and get seriously annoyed with the crushee. And what's the point of any of it? It doesn't add to Martha's story, it's distracting, and it frames the companion relationship as a competition for the Doctor's Twu Wuv, which is just…wrong. I hate it hate it hate it.
I don't give a flying monkey if that's a "realistic" portrayal of grief – Ten is supposed to be the protagonist of this show and I'm supposed to like him and when he does things like this it makes it really, really hard to feel that affection.
Thank you for this. I feel like a lot of people are saying that we're supposed to dislike the Doctor sometimes, but I seem to end up disliking Ten a lot – more than I think I should given the Doctor is not an anti-hero, but a straight up hero. He is a beloved television icon.
When people can't agree with each other over whether we're supposed to like the goddamn protagonist or not, likely something's gone wrong with the writing.
I wonder which Doctor had the spare time to sit down and read the Harry Potter novels? I'm thinking Eight, because we only have the one movie, and Nine was apparently fresh from a regeneration when he met Rose.
Then again there are gaps in the narrative here and there for all of them.
OTOH? With all of Space and time to read…
…and now I want to visit the TARDIS's library.
You can put up a lot of bookshelves with a Sonic Screwdriver.
"it’s all a bit Harry Potter.” “Wait till you read book seven. Oh, I cried."
The best thing about that is this ep came out long before the book.
NO FAIR, DOCTOR, SKIPPING THROUGH TIME TO READ THE LAST BOOK IN A SERIES IS EVEN WORSE THAN READING THE LAST PAGE(S)!!!!!
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