O'BSERVATIONS - THE WITCHFINDERS

EPISODE REVIEW #8
“THE WITCHFINDERS”

This season of ‘Doctor Who’ has been heavy on the historical stories. This could be the most that we’ve seen since the Hartnell era.  But at the same time, they haven’t been pure historicals; there have been the usual alien menaces tossed in as well. 

• “Rosa” – the murderous racist criminal Krasko
• “Demons of the Punjab” – the Vajarian observers

We had a few contemporary episodes and others which were far-flung futuristic tales, but the historicals were a breath of fresh air and I would welcome a season long string of these stories.

In ‘The Witchfinders’, the story took place in Lancashire of the 17th Century, focused on an actual location. 

From Wikipedia:
Pendle Hill is in the east of Lancashire, England, near the towns of Burnley, Nelson, Colne, Clitheroe and Padiham. Its summit is 557 metres (1,827 ft) above mean sea level. It gives its name to the Borough of Pendle.

It makes me wonder if the episode’s writer Joy Wilkinson either comes from that area or was otherwise quite familiar with Pendle Hill.  (Maybe she took the hike on it as Graham O’Brien did as he mentioned in the episode.)

The main villain was Lady Becca Savage, a human… or so we thought.  She was played by Siobhan Finneran, who will probably be entrenched in the memories of TV lovers forever as O’Brien, Lady Cora Crawley’s personal maid at ‘Downton Abbey’.

It was mentioned that Becca Savage gained her power and her lands through her marriage.  (That husband was long dead.)  But there was no mention of the couple having children.  That doesn’t mean they didn’t have any, however. 

So here’s what I’m thinking.  Becca had been a mother, perhaps have two children, and both of them were grown up and had moved away.  (I wouldn’t blame them – Becca didn’t seem like the type of woman one would enjoy being in their company.)  Perhaps she had a son who was now station at Court.  And maybe she had a daughter who was now married off and living in some other county.

The reason I bring this up is to suggest that her family line continued and it could have had a divergence which led to several branches that married into the sprawling O’Brien lineage.  This would lead to two more branches – one which led to Miss O’Brien at the Abbey, and the other leading to the Doctor’s companion Graham O’Brien.  So even though neither of them were aware of it, Becca and Graham were related.

The highlight of this episode being an historical was getting to see Alan Cumming as King James I.  Despite his fervor, the King was out of his element but being singled out away from others in his court made him stand out.  And Cummings elevated James I to new heights among the historical characters who have appeared on the show.  (When Cumming spilled the beans that he would be in the show, it was suggested that the King would be a recurring character over the season.  That didn’t pan out, but it would be nice to see him come back next season.) 

Cumming will be the high water mark against whom other guest actors are measured.  But he wasn’t the first one to play the king in the TV Universe:

• William Podmore in The King's Author (1952), in the American TV series Hallmark Hall of Fame
• Everett Sloane in The King's Bounty (1955), in the American TV series Kraft Television Theatre
• Bill Paterson in the ATV drama series Life of Shakespeare (1978)
• Patrick Malahide in the "Treason" episode of the HTV West children's TV series Into the Labyrinth (1981), about the Gunpowder Plot
• Hugh Ross in the Ulster Television series God's Frontiersmen (1988)
• Angus MacDonald in Kings and Queens of England Volume II (1994)
• Wayne Opie in the TV drama documentary Elizabeth (2000)
• Jeremy Irons in the PBS TV series Freedom: A History of Us (2003)
• Robert Carlyle in the BBC TV series Gunpowder, Treason & Plot (2004)
• Ewen Bremner in the TV miniseries Elizabeth I (2005)
• Derrek Riddell in the BBC TV series Gunpowder
• Alan Cumming in the Doctor Who episode "The Witchfinders" (2018)

One day King James I will be inducted into the TV Crossover Hall of Fame as a multiversal.  As Cumming’s King interacted with established TV characters, he will probably remain as the main Toobworld televersion.

In the meantime, I’m sure there is slash fanfic out there already which could get pretty graphic dealing with King James I and Ryan Sinclair, his Nubian Prince…..

The alien threat were the Morax.  They don’t seem to be of a hive mind among their species and if the Morax ever did return – different Morax – they might prove to be allies of the Doctor.

I also wondered what they looked like before they were imprisoned in Pendle Hill several billion years before.  Did they have physical form?  Or were they intangible in form, pure thought energy, like several alien species we met in ‘Star Trek’.  It could be that they abandoned their physical forms in order to bond with the mud of Lancashire to give them a way to escape imprisonment.

Ms. Wilkinson may have gained the name of the alien race from religious mythology.

From Wikipedia:
In demonology, Morax is a Demon, Great Earl, and President of Hell, having thirty (thirty-two, according to other authors) legions of demons under his command. He teaches Astronomy and all other liberal sciences, and gives good and wise familiarsthat know the virtues of all herbs and precious stones. This profile of the demon can be seen in Pseudomonarchia Daemonum (Johann Weyer, 1577) as well as in Goetia (S.L. MacGregor Mathers, 1904).

He is depicted both as a man with the head of a bull, as well as a bull with the head of a man.

It has been proposed that Morax is related to the Minotaur which Dante places in Hell (Inferno, Canto xii). See Fred Gettings, Dictionary of Demons (1988)

His name seems to come from Latin 'morax', that delays, that stops.

The Latin word could have come from the aliens. 

As was my opinion with King James, I’m hoping we get to see what the non-evil Morax are like someday.

Definitely this episode is in my top three of the season.

Exeunt, followed by a Morax…..