Doctor Who:
The Shakespeare
Code
By Gareth
Roberts
“That's it.
They used you. They gave you the final words like a spell, like a code. Love's Labor’s
Won. It's a weapon. The right combination of words, spoken at the right place,
with the shape of the Globe as an energy converter! The play's the thing! And
yes, you can have that.”
The Doctor
takes Martha to 1599 London where they go to the Globe Theatre to see a play by
William Shakespeare. There are others
interested by Shakespeare also and want to use his genius with words to open a
portal from their dimension to ours. The
way they plan on doing it is with the play Love’s Labor’s Won which is the lost
play by William Shakespeare.
The Doctor
and Martha do some snooping around and discover that the ones behind all this
are the Cartonites. A race that
manipulates words to make things happen which looks like magic when they do
it. The Doctor and needs the help of Shakespeare
to stop the Carronites by postponing his newest play which debuts tonight and
it might already be too late to stop the invasion. Unless of course The Doctor can think up of a
way to stopping it using the words of Shakespeare as a weapon.
This is the
story in which The Doctor meets William Shakespeare. In its 50th year history The
Doctor hasn’t met Shakespeare, on TV, until now in 2007’s Series 3 story. Well the encounter is an intriguing one at
that as we have three witches using Shakespeare’s genius to get their race on
Earth. What is clever about all this is
that Carrionites need words to be said a certain way to open the portal between
both worlds allowing them to invade the Earth and take it over. Another of their powers is being able to
control humans by getting a lock of hair like voodoo in a way.
The
Shakespeare Code is a pretty entertaining story to watch and a lot of fun also.
It is mostly fun if you are a fan of
William Shakespeare with all the references to his numerous plays. I’m not up on Shakespeare but even I was able
to recognize them. What I enjoyed in The
Shakespeare Code was that it used a historical era that did not have any
technology and The Doctor used his wits to stop the Carronites plan. Even the sonic screwdriver couldn’t get him
out of trouble which is refreshing since it is overused in New Who.
The
Shakespeare Code has some similarities to Rose’s first trip back in time. Both companions meet historical figures who
also happen to be world famous authors.
Plus they are both aghast in amazement that they did travel back in time
and take in the experience and coolness of being in past. In fact if you look at it both companions’
first two trips in the TARDIS was to the future and the past and that is
duplicated with this season. He even
does the same trick with Donna next season but leaves out the historically
famous author.
You can definitely
get a different feel when Russell T. Davies isn’t writing an episode. For one the silliness is cut in half and you
do not have that face palm moment. That
has been a constant with his era and my biggest complaint except for the reset
switch. But I have to say his show
runner skills is pretty good when he suggest stories for the other writers to
write. The one negative I really had with The Shakespeare Code is that the
witches looked a bit silly. At least two
of them looked like they were appearing in a play. Maybe that was intentional and was playing on
the play theme of the story but I did not really care for it.
The
Shakespeare Code is a fun story to watch and entertaining throughout. Even with that Queen Elizabeth I scene which
was surely a RTD add on. It was pretty
neat and clever concept to use words as a weapon and to not have a technology heavy
story for a change. Plus it has
Shakespeare in it and how cool is that.
Grade B +
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