Three members of the Woolstencroft family are contributors to BC Magazine. Each discovered the BBC's Doctor Who at a different point: Tony goes all the way back to Hartnell, Ian started with Pertwee, and Daniel came on board during Davison's stay in the Tardis. Each week, they will offer their take on the latest episode. WooWho continues...

The Script:

Tony: Badly written; it tries to mix "Olde Englishe" with the modern idiom and comes off a loser. The generic “evil aliens plot to rid the Earth of humans and take over” is becoming overused.

Ian: I thought this was by far the funniest episode of “New Who” thanks largely to a wonderfully witty script. Time paradox jokes, race jokes, Shakespeare jokes (including a gay Shakespeare joke - an addition of producer Russell T. Davies, perhaps?), even a Harry Potter joke, they’re all here and yet none of this humour feels forced, it flows from the characters and the situations.

Daniel: I'd agree with that; much pop culture fun this week. It all felt quite self-aware and confident, perhaps more confident than Who's been for a while actually. Gareth Roberts' script works well within the confines of what Doctor Who is. I'm not sure about the witches though - the Carrionites. Creepy for the kiddies, but nothing particularly new or exciting for the grown-ups.

Ian: The villains may not have been the most exciting that Who’s given us, but they perfectly fit the story; you can keep the Daleks, give me witches if it means the story will be this entertaining.

The Effects:

Ian: The make-up on the witches is good, although I doubt it taxed the effects department to create three such traditional-looking villains. As for the big return of the Carrionites at the climax of the story, the effects may be less than spectacular but this isn’t a story that requires a lot of effects. In some ways it’s like a stage production, no coincidence, I think, given that much of the story revolves around William Shakespeare.

Tony: Yes, they seemed to fluctuate from very good (the crowd scenes at The Globe) to not so good (the witch on a broomstick: it didn't look much better than creating a silhouette using black paper).

Daniel: I'd say some of the CGI looked really good; not the finale with all the Carrionites, but the locations. It didn't look like a cheap, nasty recreation of old world London. And I suppose the prosthetics on the witches did its job. There's not really a great deal to say this week.

Cast and Crew:

Daniel: Charles Palmer does another good job as director; he's not trying to be too flashy or over-the-top, and he seems to be perfectly confident with the scripts he's had so far.

Tony: An unusually subdued Tennant this week; maybe he wasn’t happy with the material? Freema Agyeman is beginning to fulfill the misgivings I had after her debut. She’s trying too hard to act and consequently is overacting, which is going to become tiresome very quickly if she doesn’t get it under control.

 

Ian: Really? I think Tennant and Agyeman are really starting to gel as a team, playing off each other with such perfect timing you’d think they’ve been working together for years. The bedroom scene is a particular highlight, but the duo really shines throughout. Having said that, the episode is almost stolen from under their noses by Dean Lennox Kelly as the legendary bard: capable of connecting with the common man, yet with the insight to see through the Doctor and his “psychic paper”, he really is, to use the Doctor’s words, “the most human of humans” and Kelly’s performance shows him to be just that.