3x02 The Shakespeare Code

The historical figure centric Doctor Who eps can be hard for me to rate. Sometimes a lack of familiarity with the person makes much of the episode goes over my head (see: The Unquiet Dead). Unfortunately for The Shakespeare Code I had the exact opposite problem. While I'm nowhere near an expert on the Bard I know enough that the low hanging fruit references and jokes that were the foundations of this episode quickly became tedious.

Outside of the repetitive jokes what gets me about these types historicals is that they rarely allow the figure centralized to feel like a person. Rather they craft a representation of the general idea of them. Shakespeare is a genius, (the Doctor emphatically tells us so) but the audience never really gets a sense of that. Sure he says a nice speech at the end and figures out the Doctor's is an alien time traveller (because he's a such a good playwright, I guess:person_shrugging_tone4:) but the story being told doesn't facilitate us actually learning about Shakespeare as a person or as writer tbh. The episode briefly touches on the effect losing his son had on him but quickly returns to shallow jokes and references.

But maybe the project of this episode wasn't to give us an insight into Shakespeare the man but answer a historical mystery with a fun sci-fi twist. In that respect this episode was solid. The alien witches were fun. The makeup and costume team went hard on the old hag effects to great success and the actors gave suitably over the top performances. Their actual plan wasn't very interesting they're bog standard trying to destroy the earth for reasons aliens but the camp of the voodoo dolls, crystal balls and shapeshifting held it down.

This episode also sits low in my regard as the real introduction to Martha's pining for the Doctor and his pretty heartless baiting of her feelings. Scenes like the Doctor explicitly telling Martha Rose would have done better job than her or the very knowing use of the "only one bed" trope to specifically slight her were wince inducing.

Scenes like these demonstrate Martha was explicitly written to be compared to Rose. It's a pretty unrewarding role for any character to be but especially stings in the context of her place as the first Black woman companion. The idea that we can't even exist in these fantastical worlds without our place as second best encoded into our roles in the story. Honestly, I feel my ability to process this season separate from how this storyline affected me when I was literally 12 slipping away. But I'll try to be fair as I do my rewatch.