Doctor Who/Recap/S29/E02 The Shakespeare Code

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
< Doctor Who‎ | Recap‎ | S29

The Doctor: When you go home you can tell everyone you’ve seen Shakespeare.
Martha: Then I can get sectioned!

This episode contains a lot of very silly Shakespeare jokes, almost all of which are also actually very clever, very obscure Shakespeare jokes in disguise. We open in extremely Elizabethan London, where a young man courts a damsel via period song. The damsel (unlike Juliet), rejects the idea of waiting until marriage, and invites the man up. She then pulls a Darla and toys with him a bit before putting on her witchy gameface, inviting in her equally witchy mothers, and devouring her ardent swain. This is not about premarital sex or gay marriage being evil, though. It's just campy.

Post-credits, enter the Doctor and Martha, off to the Globe Theater to see Love's Labour's Lost. Martha is concerned about stepping on a butterfly or encountering old-timey racism, but the Doctor shrugs these off. This will come back to bite her in a few episodes. The Doctor riffs on the parallels between London then and now, including analogizing a crazy doomsayer to "Hollywood Global Warming". This isn't an attack on climate theory, though. It's just silly.

At Martha's instigation, Shakespeare comes out after the play to address the audience. The witches magic him into promising to perform the sequel, Love's Labors Won, tomorrow night. The Doctor, knowing that this play is a Missing Episode, realizes something is afoot. The pair decide to stay the night in Shakespeare's inn, and get to meet the dude. Shakespeare is a genius-level but bawdy empath, clever enough to be immune to psychic paper (although he does love the word "psychic"). He hits on Martha, but blows it by constantly referencing her race. "It's Political Correctness Gone Mad," mutters the Doctor.

There Is Only One Bed. They both crawl in, their faces very close... and the Doctor tells her that there's something he's... missing. Something... staring right into his eyes. Something... close, but just out of reach. "Rose would know what to do," he sighs moodily, oblivious to the sexual tension. Martha looks extremely annoyed. Meanwhile, the witch has crept in at night in order to plant some words in Shakespeare's script. Martha sees the witch flying off on her broomstick, and bemusedly IDs her.

This clue, along with the murder of the Master of the Revels, leads the Doctor and Martha to Bedlam, the insane asylum, with Shakespeare tagging along. They interview the architect who designed the Globe—fourteen sides, like fourteen lines in a sonnet—and realize the plan: the performance of Love's Labor's Won will be a spell to allow the witches to take over Earth. A witch shows up and kills off the architect... way too late, as the Doctor has worked out the witches' True Name...Carrionite. The mere word banishes her, and the trio split up: Shakespeare to stop the performance of the play, and the Doctor and Martha to find Witch Headquarters.

They don't exactly succeed. Shakespeare bursts onto the stage and announces that the show must not go on, but is K.O.'d by witch magic. Will Kemp improvises an excellent triple-meaning couplet: if "Will" refers to Shakespeare, it's him dismissing the warning as drunken ramblings. If "Will" refers to Kemp, it's a mock-apology for his own silliness (emphasized with a goofy caper). If "Will" is the Elizabethan-era slang for penis, it's a joke about alcohol-induced sexual impotence. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Martha find the youngest witch and try the naming again, but it turns out "It Only Works Once". The witch tries it on Martha, but Martha's anachronism saves her from permanent harm. The Doctor, of course, has no discernible name. So the witch vamps him instead, gets a lock of his hair, and stops his heart. One of them, anyway. Martha wakes up, improvises some first aid to get the afflicted heart going, and they're off to back up Shakespeare.

But they're too late! At the play's end, two noblemen recite an odd invocation that allows the whole Carrionite race, sealed off long ago, to show up in the Globe. Shakespeare, the Doctor and Martha form an impromptu Power Trio: Shakespeare improvises a counterspell, flanked by the Doctor providing the right numbers and Martha providing the Anachronism: "Expelliarmus!" The spell imprisons the witches in their own crystal ball, and conveniently destroys all copies of the play. Let's pause a moment to discuss how awesome this is. The leader of the Power Trio banishes his enemy to scream for all eternity in a Fate Worse Than Death, by shouting "Expelliarmus" to the heavens. As of the time this show was written and released (after book 6, before book 7), this was not at all how Expelliarmus worked. Later, in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, this is how Harry defeats Voldemort. So this is an impossible anachronism even in the real world. It happened, presumably, because Expelliarmus is a cool enough word that it became an Ensemble Darkhorse of Harry Potter spells, leading independently to both Gareth Roberts and J.K. Rowling promoting it to its most dramatic possible use. The word expelliarmus was genius enough to create some real-life magic. It was, as the episode put it, a Word of Power. That, and it rhymed.

In the end, Martha is revealed to be the Dark Lady, the unknown (and speculated to be imaginary) African woman to whom Shakespeare wrote several sonnets, including the Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? one, which he starts to recite to her. Oh, and he casually figures out that the Doctor is otherworldly and Martha is from the future. They are interrupted, though, by Queen Elizabeth I, who showed up to congratulate Shakespeare on his excellent special effects. A Whole Lot of Running ensues when it turns out that Elizabeth considers the Doctor her "sworn enemy" for something he hasn't done yet. As of The End of Time, we know that this was briefly marrying her while on vacation.

Tropes

The Doctor: I've got a nice attic in the TARDIS where this lot can scream for all eternity, and I've gotta take Martha back.

  • Arbitrary Skepticism: The Doctor scoffs at the existence of witchcraft, but Martha reminds him that she just discovered that time travel is real.
  • Arc Number: This episode only, 14. It turns out to be because the witches' solar system has 14 planets.
  • Badass Boast: Shakespeare's final lines against the Carrionites.

Close up this din of hateful dire decay.
Decomposition of your witches' plot.
You thieve my brains, consider me your toy
My doted Doctor tells me I am not!
Foul Carrionites fester, cease your show.
Between the points - Seven six one three nine 0.
Banished like a tinker's cuss,
I sing to thee EXPELLIARMUS!

  • Badass Bookworm/Badass Bystander: William Shakespeare, The Word-Smith. He didn't plan on fighting witches, but was quick to adapt to the changes brought forth by the Carionites and the Doctor.
  • Bizarre Alien Biology: The Carrionite witch Lillith creates a voodoo doll and stabs one of the Doctor's hearts. He gets by well enough on the other one until Martha gets it going again.
  • Bi the Way: William Shakespeare.

"We can all have a good flirt later --"
"Is that a promise, Doctor?"
"Ooh, fifty-seven academics just punched the air."

"What if I kill my grandfather?"
"Are you planning to?"

  • Historical Hero Upgrade: William Shakespeare.
  • Historical In-Joke:
    • Love's Labour's Won is a lost play today because it was commandeered into a spell to release the Carrionite race. When the spell is reversed, the play vanishes along with the Carrionites.
    • The Doctor feeding Shakespeare his own lines. Specifically, it resolves the Brick Joke of the Sycorax set up in "The Christmas Invasion"; Sycorax is a witch mentioned in The Tempest, and where Shakespeare got the name is a bit of an academic mystery—as far as anyone can find she's not a figure from mythology, and if it's a Meaningful Name it's far from obvious what the meaning is. "The Christmas Invasion" used it as the name of an alien species, with no explanation/comment, and this episode has Shakespeare hear the Doctor talking about them and likes the sound of it.
    • Shakespeare's reaction to Martha's appearance foreshadows the reveal that she's his Dark Lady.
  • It Only Works Once: The power of a True Name.
  • Magic From Technology: Sort of. The Doctor points out that the Carrionites' powers only seem like magic because earth's science is math-derived while the Carrionites instead learned how to manipulate words.
  • Moment Killer: For once it's not the Doctor who does this.

Shakespeare: The Doctor may never kiss you, why not entertain a man who will?

Martha: I don't know how to tell you this, oh great genius, but... your breath doesn't half stink.

Doctor: There's something I'm missing, Martha. (She turns to lie face-to-face with him, their eyes inches apart) Something really close, staring me right in the face and I can't see it. (pause) Rose would know. That friend of mine, Rose. Right now, she'd say exactly the right thing. (flops back over on his back) Still, can't be helped. You're a novice, never mind. I'll take you back home tomorrow.
Martha: (hurt and angry) Great! (She turns her back on him and blows out the candle)

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