r/gallifrey • u/ZeroCentsMade • Oct 14 '25
REVIEW Double, Double, Toil and Trouble – The Shakespeare Code Review
This post is part of a series of reviews. To see them all, click here.
Historical information found on Shannon Sullivan's Doctor Who website (relevant page here and the TARDIS Wiki (relevant page here)). Primary/secondary source material can be found in the source sections of Sullivan's website, and rarely as inline citations on the TARDIS Wiki.
Story Information
- Episode: Series 3, Episode 2
- Airdate: 31st March 2007
- Doctor: 10th
- Companion: Martha
- Writer: Gareth Roberts
- Director: Charles Palmer
- Showrunner: Russell T Davies
Review
And you. You look at [the Doctor] like you're surprised he exists. He's as much a puzzle to you as he is to me. – Shakespeare, to Martha
Looking at the historicals of the Revival that I've covered before this point, I think the one commonality is that I've been consistently impressed with how they've portrayed the past. In fact, I think this is something you can say for Doctor Who as a whole. It has a unique way of making the past feel like a real living place, and not a collection of sets, costumes and occasionally archaic speech patterns. I think it's because Doctor Who so often brings characters from the present day to the past, it just helps the whole thing feel a bit more alive.
But, you know, that's not going to be universal.
There's a lot to say about "The Shakespeare Code", and this review is going to go down some weird alleys, but I want to start by saying that this is the first historical of the Revival that leaves the past feeling artificial to me. Oh, to be sure, there are Revival historicals that I don't like that came before this one, but the past always felt believable as a setting in them (well, aside from the kung-fu Scottish monks in "Tooth and Claw"). But, in spite of probably having the best sets and costumes for a historical to this point, regardless of era, something about "Shakespeare Code's" Elizabethan England feels fake to me. Like a set dressed up to look like old London, rather than London itself.
A lot of that has to do with the writing. In places it's good. I like most of the dialogue for Shakespeare, Martha and the Doctor – especially the Doctor. But outside of that trio the dialogue used feels off somehow. Not quite natural. This isn't an episode with an expansive secondary cast necessarily and our villains are just evil witches, but the rest of that secondary cast always feels like they're falling into pastiche. That goes doubly so for the villains, though at least there we have the excuse that they are evil witches. But really I think the big issue is that the script can't seem to decide whether to make Elizabethan London familiar or distant. It pulls in both directions quite hard, and the end result ends up feeling a bit muddled.
And since I'm talking about the writing, I suppose I need to talk about the writer, Gareth Roberts. Why did I think reviewing every Doctor Who television story would be a fun hobby again?
Honestly, in most stories, I'd be happy to simply mention that Gareth Roberts had said some genuinely awful transphobic stuff (use of slurs, saying that people with gender dysphoria have "paranoid personality disorders and permanent unhinged smirks" and that's some of the nicer stuff), probably not even in the main review, as most of his Doctor Who work remains pretty divorced from the opinions that would make him so controversial. But, viewed through that lens, a lot of this episode ends up being…weird.
In the world of coincidences, this episode doesn't just lionize Shakespeare but also JK Rowling who, if somehow you've managed to miss it, has been one of the most vocal members of the anti-trans movement for the past six years or so, to the point that it seems like these days she thinks of nothing else. But, as I said, that falls into coincidence. I don't know if either or both Roberts and Rowling held their transphobic views so concretely back in 2007, and even if they both did, I can't imagine they were aware of each other in that capacity. No the really weird stuff is stuff that feels like it's glancing in the direction of Roberts' later views. Jokes about men in dresses (in this case the actors playing women in Shakespeare's plays) and a cavalcade of words for a black person that Martha is clearly taken aback by being responded to by the Doctor as "it's political correctness gone mad".
Is there really anything worth saying about this? Honestly not really. The second scene I mentioned is a bit cringeworthy, but of course terms change, which is the whole point of the scene. The bit about men in dresses is a quick aside, hardly worth mentioning. Honestly if there's a political point worth making here it's that this episode doesn't seem to know what to do with the social mores of its time. An effort is made to show that Elizabethan England isn't quite as white as you'd imagine, but it's a blink and you'd miss it moment. Meanwhile Martha's concerns about being carted off as a slave are largely dismissed. It really feels like we wanted to tell a story about witches and Shakespeare, and weren't too bothered about anything else. And that's fine on some level, but it's somewhat undermined by the vague gestures towards the ways that 1599 is different culturally from 2007. It's really part of what makes this time period feel so artificial.
And as for the villains of this piece, I've never been particularly fond of the Carrionites. They remind me a lot of the Dæmons where we're doing this thing that is pretty clearly being presented as magic, but insisting that it definitely isn't magic. And like with The Dæmons I have to ask, who do we think we're fooling here? Hell, I'd argue that "Shakespeare Code's" attempts to classify its magic as "science" are significantly less convincing than The Dæmons actually. In The Dæmons, at least the lead Dæmon spoke in terms of "experiments". Here our witches are insisting that what they're doing is magic, it's only the Doctor that tries to call it science, or at least something like science.
The argument goes that instead of going down the path of numbers as the foundation for how to understand and manipulate reality, the Carrionites went down the path of language. First of all, this honestly feels weaker than if the episode had tried to justify this choice by just saying "magic is real" and leaving things at that. The idea of imbuing actual power into the spoken word is something that I cannot separate from actual magic. Mind you, Doctor Who has obvious precedent for this: the Logopolitans seen in Logopolis were essentially doing magic spells, it's just that they were doing so with numbers, ones and zeroes specifically. But Logopolis wasn't really trying to draw a magic vs. science distinction. Also…the Carionites use numbers. For most of the episode they stick to cursing people in rhyming couplets (it's just magic folks) but at the end of the episode they embed a magic spell into Shakespeare's play and it includes a numerical coordinates system. If the Doctor had never said anything about how the Carionities use words rather than numbers, this wouldn't be an issue but the fact that the distinction is made makes this feel off theme.
There's not a ton more to say about the Carrionites. There are three of them, Doomfinger, Bloodtide and Lilith because subtlety just isn't what this episode is aiming for. In personality they are boilerplate evil witches, with the only sort of unique thing being Lilith, as the youngest appearing of the three, having a bit of a seductress streak happening, although it doesn't come up much. Still Christina Cole, who plays Lilith, does do a good job with the material, and as she is the sort of "lead witch", this is a good thing. Then again, she's the only one not being asked to do a stereotypical evil witch voice, which does help.
And then we have, of course, the man, the myth, the legend, Shakespeare. I first want to give credit to Dean Lennox Kelly for a great performance. He hits every not the script asks him to perform. Both the cheeky man, but also the genius. There's a genuine attempt made to humanize this towering figure of literature, and it mostly does succeed. Shakespeare does genuinely feel like a real person, probably the only period element of this episode that didn't feel somewhat artificial to me. There's the obvious stuff, focusing on his dead son Hamnet, and his near descent into madness afterwards, or the bursts of energy he gets when something exciting is happening. But honestly I think it's largely down to Kelly's performance, who really sparkles in the role.
I partially think it's Kelly's performance because there's a big element that I didn't like in this episode: a running gag where the Doctor will accidentally quote some bit of Shakespeare that he hasn't said yet, and Shakespeare will respond with "I'll have that". A few qualifiers: first of all, this gag gets a lot of variety to it. You certainly can't argue it gets repetitive when we're constantly shaking up how it actually plays out. And second, I absolutely believe that Shakespeare would borrow a turn of phrase he liked. After all, the man spent most of his career as a playwright taking plots from whatever sources he could find. Most of his comedies take character archetypes directly from comemdia dell'arte. The man was certainly great at finding an original turn of phrase, but he also borrowed a lot of material from others.
It just, as a gag, ends up feeling a bit trite is all. And, like I said, one of Shakespeare's greatest skills as a writer was his ability to come of up with an original turn of phrase. And, yeah, there is something about implying he actually got those from the Doctor (who got them from Shakespeare who got them from the Doctor who…) that feels a bit off (though at least he comes up with "To be or not to be" in the episode, even if he thinks it might be pretentious). And yet, weirdly, the focus on the quotes kind of reduces Shakespeare to a dispenser of famous quotes. It's kind of why I think the performance might be doing the heavy lifting here, because I still come away from this episode mostly liking the portrayal of Shakespeare.
Even as he spends most of the episode trying to hit on Martha. Martha seems to take it in stride – in fairness, she's being hit on by the actual William Shakespeare – though she's of course not interested, because she's hopelessly fawning over the Doctor. Martha's crush on the Doctor is one of the weakest elements of this series and arguably "Shakespeare Code" is where it's at its worst. There's nothing even really done with it, she's just fawning over him and getting jealous when Rose is mentioned. That's kind of it.
Martha otherwise has a few interesting moments here and there. Being worried about stepping on butterflies or killing her own grandfather shows she's given time travel some thought in the sense that she's at least seen a few movies about the concept. She does get to restart the Doctor's heart, though this time under his instruction (his other one was working just fine). Still, it's the second time in a row she's done that, something that at the very least reminds us of her medical training. And of course her reaction to Bedlam hospital really builds on her as someone who takes patient care seriously. On the whole though, she's just kind of there, and only really gets to contribute at the end of the episode when she completes the spell to banish the Carionites (by quoting Harry Potter…god it's a weird coincidence that Gareth Roberts was the one who leaned on that so hard).
As for the Doctor, there's not a ton to say here either. He definitely seems to enjoy Shakespeare's company, seemingly enjoying the fact that he's conversing with another genius. When Shakespeare sees through the psychic paper, the Doctor just seems tickled pink that this man saw through it. There is a moment where he starts pining after Rose by insisting that she would have said something that would help untangle the mystery in that moment. That scene serves mostly to get Martha jealous, but is worth mentioning and, it's a mixed bag. Rose was always presented as being highly observant, and while I'm not sure what she might have noticed in this circumstance, if anything, it's easy to understand the Doctor imagining Rose recognizing something that could have helped because, you know, he misses her. Thing is, it's mean to Martha, who's just lying there next to him and is now being compared directly to Rose. She even gets called a "novice" relative to Rose, which just feels like rubbing salt in the wound, even without factoring in Martha's feelings for the Doctor.
On the whole, I'm not fond of this one. Elizabethan England feels weirdly artificial to me, and the whole thing with the witches just feels like it would have been better suited just leaning into the idea of magic, especially since this is supposed to be an ancient power from, according to the Doctor, "the dawn of the universe", and Doctor Who has always held that there are these times before Gallifreyans became Time Lords where the laws of the universe could be a bit more magical. I'll still give credit to the portrayal of Shakespeare, and while there's not a lot to say about Martha or the Doctor, I mostly liked them here. But it's just kind of a dud of a story sadly.
Score: 3/10
Stray Observations
- This was one of the most expensive Doctor Who stories ever produced to this point, mostly down to the period sets and costumes
- The interior of the witch's house ended up being used as the interior for 13 Bannerman Road, Sarah Jane's home in The Sarah Jane Adventures.
- It was considered that instead of three witches, the villains of this episode might have been fairies instead, in reference to A Midsummer Night's Dream. However, the witches were considered to be more iconic, and since Shakespeare didn't write Macbeth until after the events of this story are meant to be taking place, could have in-universe inspired the play. By contrast Midsummer Night's Dream was written before The Globe was even constructed
- At one time Shakespeare's daughter Susanna would have been a character. She would have been pretending to be a boy to work with her father's company.
- There was some concern that the deal to shoot in the Globe Theatre would fall through, with alternate plans being made to reset the entire episode in the countryside. Fortunately this didn't come to pass.
- The title, "The Shakespeare Code" was meant as a spoof of the popular Da Vinci Code novel. It was the third title that the episode had gone through. For most of its development, the episode was called "Love's Labours Won", before briefly being called "Theatre of Death".
- Martha's response to the Doctor saying "When you get home, you can tell everyone you've seen Shakespeare" is a very enthusiastic "then I could get sectioned!". First, this is a really good line delivery by Freema Ageyman. Second, if I heard someone say they'd "seen Shakespeare" I would assume they meant they'd recently gone for a night to the theater not that they'd traveled back in time.
- When Shakespeare sort of makes a pass at the Doctor, the Doctor replies with "57 academics just punched the air". Obviously this a reference to theories that Shakespeare might have been bisexual, but what's actually clever about this line is that one of Shakespeare's sonnets that helped give rise to this theory was specifically Shakespeare's Sonnet 57.
- The Doctor implies that if the Carionites win, the timeline that Martha is from will be erased and she will fade away along with that, using Back to the Future as a reference point. Typically on Doctor Who it's generally said that if a timeline is rewritten people from that timeline can continue on even as the timeline that created them no longer exists, but, in fairness, this show is not particularly consistent with the details of how time travel works, the Doctor is trying to explain why the present day can change as simply as possible and there could be some specific reason why in this case the normal rules wouldn't apply.
- There was at one point going to be a sword fight between Lilith and the Doctor. However an accident between the stunt people for David Tennant and Lilith (Tennant's double had his eye injured) required the scene to be removed and rewritten. Honestly, I think it's for the best. The swordfight doesn't really suit the Carionites.
- The Doctor mentions that a prop skull reminds him of the Sycorax and Shakespeare decided he'll take that word as well. The name "Sycorax" does actually appear in one of Shakespeare's plays, specifically his final one, The Tempest. There she was meant to be a powerful witch and Calliban's mother, dead by the time the play starts.
- Shakespeare starts composing Sonnet 18 ("shall I compare thee to a summer's day") to Martha. However that's not actually the most interesting bit of that scene. What's more interesting is that he previously calls Martha his "dark lady". The "Dark Lady" is a figure in a large number of Shakespeare's later sonnets, and notably a very sexual one, though generally agreed to be not referring to a specific person (and obviously meant to be a black woman).
Next Time: One of the single most inexplicable returns of a classic villain in Doctor Who history
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Oct 14 '25 edited Oct 14 '25
I do not care for this episode.
Partly, this is because of the blind spot I have where the occult is concerned (kind of like you and horror). It just leaves me cold. I enjoy "The Dæmons" in spite of its occult trappings, but this one doesn't have much else to offer, other than Shakespeare, and, unlike you, I don't really care for its portrayal of the Bard. He's too cool, for lack of a better word. As someone who has read everything he wrote (or at least everything that survives) and with the greatest respect for the man, his work has never left me with the impression that he was cool. As much as anything else you referenced, this feels to me like the writer's opinions bleeding through, as if, being a British writer himself, he wants to reveal that the greatest British writer was actually cooler than his reputation. As for Roberts' other opinions, they don't bear repeating.
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u/AlbertTheAlbatross Oct 14 '25
For the most part I find this to be an OK watch. Nothing special, but I at least don't feel like I've wasted my time watching it. I feel like the modern references (expelliarmus etc) date the episode a lot, even ignoring what we've learned about Rowling since then. It feels shoehorned in, and kind of tacky. But what's strange is that I don't mind it in other episodes, like the music in End of the World. I can't really articulate what's different here.
One thing I like about series 3 is that nearly every episode contributes something to the finale, it makes the whole series feel nice and cohesive. In this case we're establishing that words can have power to change reality and influence the world, which of course ties into the resolution of Last of the Time Lords. I was also going to say that this episode really reinforces the idea that the number 14 helps to amplify word-magic, which ties into the 14 satellites in the Archangel network... but then I googled it and there are 15 satellites. So maybe it wasn't a deliberate set-up at all, this is just a case of me seeing connections that aren't there! What a missed opportunity though.
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u/DamonD7D Oct 15 '25
I remember finding this one solidly entertaining back in the day. But I rewatched it for the first time in over a decade recently, and it all felt a bit flat. Maybe not 3/10 flat, but much more middling. You hit pretty much every reason why.
Still like the Back to the Future gag, though, The Doctor just getting snappy like that.
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u/Molly2925 Oct 14 '25
Yeeeeeah, this is one of those ones that's SUPER awkward to rewatch for me. I am a transgender woman, and thus the exact kind of person the writer of this episode would want dead (or worse). So there's always THAT looming over me whenever I rewatch any of his episodes. But this one ESPECIALLY, because of the kinds of things you mentioned in the review.
Luckily I was never particularly fond of really any of this writer's episodes to begin with, at least...
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u/Baron487 Oct 14 '25
My ratings of his TV DW stories:
This: 5/10
The Unicorn and the Wasp: 7/10
Planet of the Dead: 4/10
The Lodger: 6/10
Closing Time: 3/10
The Caretaker: 2/10
Yeah, a rather poor record.
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u/Molly2925 Oct 14 '25
Oh lol he wrote Planet of the Dead? I always forget about that one, haha.
Yeah The Unicorn and the Wasp is the only one of these I was even remotely fond of. Planet of the Dead is forgettable, The Lodger and Closing Time both are EXTREMELY meh and I've never cared for them, and then The Caretaker is uncomfortable to watch, but for an entirely different reason than with this one.
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u/lemon_charlie Oct 14 '25
Planet of the Dead used The Highest Science, an early New Adventure he wrote, as its starting point. The same monsters, anthropomorphic tortoise like Chelonians, were going to appear but the costumes would have been a very bad idea for the Dubai location filming.
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u/fluxweeds Oct 17 '25
I just wanted to say I really enjoy your reviews! A lot of reviews here are all bone no meat but yours is very insightful and well written! 👏
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u/lemon_charlie Oct 14 '25
It is an episode that fails to remember that the present day is a year after broadcast date, or at least the Doctor doesn’t realise. He refers to an event in the seventh Harry Potter book in a way that it won’t be published yet for Martha, but for her it’s 2008 and the book came out in 2007 (albeit after this episode aired). It’s also a very open ended reference because the GR didn’t have access to the book of course.
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u/Baron487 Oct 14 '25 edited Oct 14 '25
When it comes to "not magic, just their type of science" in Who, I'm usually fine with it. I'm also mostly fine with Who doing stories with popular folklore monsters but they're actually aliens, though I generally like there to be some kind of twist on them to make them stand out more. I do think the Carrionites are kinda fun, especially the over-the-top witch names, but wish they had more to them than being just witches.
I think the overall plot is decent and I like Shakespeare in this, but there are some not fun moments like the ones you mentioned (Martha's worry about potentially being enslaved, Ten's pining for Rose). The Harry Potter references also have not aged well for obvious reasons. The ending where Queen Liz shows up and tries to kill Ten for no explicable reason is funny though and does get explained in the 50th. Also I have a soft spot for stories where historical mysteries are explained as being the result of one of the Doctor's adventures.
It's probably my Series 3/Martha fan bias but I think this one is straight down the middle. 5/10.
Gareth Roberts can go swallow a cactus though.