Doctor Who (2005) 11-08: The Witchfinders (Quick Review)

Episode:

848

|

Serial:

284

|

Writer:

Joy Wilkinson

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Air Date:

25-Nov-2018

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm sharing my thoughts on The Witchfinders, episode 848 of Doctor Who.

Doctor Who's had female writers and female directors before, but it's rare for an episode to feature both like this. In fact its only happened twice before in the series' history, both in the classic series: Enlightenment and Mark of the Rani. And Mark of the Rani was co-written by a guy.

Here's some other trivia which will get more interesting years from now when people have started forgetting it: Amazon Prime subscribers accidentally got to see the episode three days early in place of Kerblam!, which just happened to be an episode criticising Amazon. I guess now we know that the company's not run by witches at least.

There will be SPOILERS for the episode and earlier ones below, and if I'm feeling particularly precognitive I might even spoil future stories too! For instance, I'll tell you now that the long awaited four-part Star Trek: Destiny / Doctor Who crossover in series 15 will be a bit of a let down, but The Fourteen Doctors will be the best multi-Doctor story since Day of the Doctor.

Doctor Who (2005) 11-04: Arachnids in the UK (Quick Review)

Episode:

844

|

Serial:

280

|

Writer:

Chris Chibnall

|

Air Date:

28-Oct-2018

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, it's Arachnids in the UK: the fourth episode of Doctor Who's 11th season to be written by showrunner Chris Chibnall. In a row.

Everyone knows that the title's a play on the Sex Pistols song Anarchy in the U.K. but there's also a subtle clue in there that the episode's about spiders. By an interesting coincidence the fourth serial of the classic show's 11th season, Planet of the Spiders, was also about evil spiders! Well okay it was the sixth serial, but close enough.

This is a spooky story just in time for Halloween, but I have to admit that I wasn't overly hyped for it. Mostly because I was worried it'd put me off my food. Writers should be more considerate of people who watch TV while they're eating their dinner!

There will be SPOILERS below this point, for this episode and perhaps even earlier ones, but no SPIDERS. I realise that most people reading this would've watched the episode already and have no problem with scrolling down to a surprise spider screencap, but I figured I'd play it safe.