Story 180 - The Shakespeare Code

In which a young man goes to serenade his beloved. This is London, 1599. The young woman, Lilith, invites him in, and he is shocked to find two witch-like old crones present - Mothers Doomfinger and Bloodtide. Lilith's features transform to look like the old women, then the trio pounce and tear him apart.
The Doctor takes Martha on her promised trip in the TARDIS, and they arrive in the city nearby. Martha is at first concerned about her ethnicity, but the Doctor reassures her. He takes her to the Globe Theatre on Bankside to see a performance by Shakespeare - "Love's Labours Lost". Lilith and her Mothers are in the audience, in a private box. The Doctor is surprised to hear Shakespeare announce that tomorrow night he will be debuting a new play - "Love's Labours Won". As they leave the theatre, the Doctor explains that this is the playwright's famous lost play, which some doubt ever existed. Curious to know more, he and Martha get rooms in the same lodgings as Shakespeare and introduce themselves to him. He is quite taken with Martha, and finds the Doctor intriguing. The Psychic Paper fails to work on him. Lynley, the Master of Revels, arrives and informs Shakespeare that he will not perform the new play as it has not been passed by him as official censor. Lilith is here, posing as a maidservant. She steals a lock of Lynley's hair and attaches it to a figurine which she then plunges into a barrel of water. The Master of Revels dies - drowned on dry land.

Lilith has a figurine representing Shakespeare, and she uses this to make him complete his new play, with phrases inserted by her. The woman who runs the inn also dies, and Martha sees Lilith fly off on a broomstick. Now suspecting some alien presence at work, the Doctor goes to the Globe next day with Martha and Shakespeare. He is curious to know why the theatre was designed with 14 sides, and Shakespeare informs him that his architect, Peter Streete, had a mental breakdown after the work was completed. He is now in Bedlam, the notorious asylum. They go to there to see him. He tells them of seeing witches at a house on All Hallows Street, then suddenly Mother Doomfinger appears. To stop him saying any more, she stops his heart. The Doctor has worked out who the witches are and names them aloud - Carrionites. This naming forces Doomfinger to flee. The Doctor explains that the Carrionites are an ancient, bloodthirsty race, who were banished to a limbo dimension by the Eternals when the universe was still young. They came from a planet in the 14 star Rexel Configuration - hence the shape of the Globe. Carrionite science is based on the power of words, rather than numbers. This trio of Carrionites have escaped somehow, and are going to use Shakespeare's words to free the rest of their kind.

Shakespeare is sent to the theatre to stop the performance taking place, whilst the Doctor and Martha go to All Hallows Street to find the aliens. Lilith manages to steal a lock of the Doctor's hair and uses a figurine to stop his heart, before flying out of the window. She makes her way to join her Mothers at the Globe. She has not realised that the Doctor has two hearts, so he quickly recovers, and he and Martha follow. The Carrionites stop Shakespeare from interfering with the performance. As the cast speak the lines which Lilith had made the playwright include a whirlpool of energy starts to form in the theatre, and the Carrionites begin to materialise. The Doctor urges Shakespeare to use his words to combat them, with Martha inserting a bit of Harry Potter. The Carrionites are sent back to their own dimension, taking every copy of the play with them. Lilith, Doomfinger and Bloodtide are trapped in their own crystal ball, which the Doctor takes back to the TARDIS for safekeeping. Back at the Globe, the Doctor and Martha are making their farewells to Shakespeare when Queen Elizabeth arrives, having heard about the events of the previous night. The Doctor is shocked when she recognises him as her greatest enemy, and orders his death. He and Martha hurry back to the TARDIS and leave.

The Shakespeare Code was written by Gareth Roberts, and was first broadcast on Saturday 7th April, 2007. The name is a play on Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. which was still incredibly popular due to the movie version the year before. Roberts had written for the Virgin New Adventures range, and had been responsible for the "Tardisode" mini-features which accompanied Series 2. He was also noted for his expertise on Shakespeare and his peers. A Ninth Doctor comic strip for DWM written by Roberts had featured rival playwright Robert Greene - he who referred to Shakespeare as an "upstart crow" - and Roberts is also referenced in Park Honan's Christopher Marlowe: Poet & Spy.
A celebrity historical featuring Shakespeare was always going to happen, and it was always going to be penned by Roberts. The young man who meets a grisly end in the pre-credit sequence is named Wiggins - after Dr Martin Wiggins, a friend of Roberts who is an expert in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama.
Shakespeare had appeared in the programme once before, when Barbara tuned the Time-Space Visualiser into the court of Queen Elizabeth in The Chase. The Fourth Doctor had claimed that he was a nice man, but a dreadful actor, and also that he had written the first draft of Hamlet after Shakespeare had sprained his wrist writing sonnets. Here, the playwright clearly has never met the Doctor before, so these earlier mentions either came later in his life, or the Doctor might simply have been making it up. Roberts argued that Shakespeare would have been treated as a rock star would be today, and so actor Dean Lennox Kelly chose to model him on Robbie Williams.

As an enemy, Roberts went for witch-like aliens, the Carrionites. This follows Charles Dickens encountering ghosts, at Christmas, in Series 1. Witches just seem to fit with Shakespeare, thanks to the Three Weird Sisters in Macbeth. Martha assumes the two go together, though the Doctor has to point out that he hasn't written the Scottish Play yet. It was first performed in 1606, when the witch-obsessed King James was on the throne.
Playing Lilith is Christina Cole, who had recently starred as a witch in the supernatural series Hex. Doomfinger is Amanda Lawrence, and Bloodtide is Linda Clark. Angela Pleasance portrays Queen Elizabeth. We'll have to wait a few years to find out the reasons for her animosity towards the Doctor.
Two of Shakespeare's acting colleagues feature - Richard Burbage (Jalaal Hartley, of Horrible Histories fame), and Will Kempe (David Westhead).
There are no references to this season's story arc this week.

Overall, a very enjoyable episode that fairly rattles along. One of Murray Gold's better musical soundtracks. The CGI-enhanced settings, coupled with genuine period locations (in Coventry) and use of the "real" Globe Theatre make for a polished production.
In honour of this being a Gareth Roberts script, here are references you might like to know:

• Roberts peppers his script with Shakespeare lines, and there is a running joke with the playwright claiming some of these spoken by others for his own future use. In the same way that Donna will mention Miss Marple to Agatha Christie before she had created the character (in another story written by Roberts), Shakespeare is given the idea of featuring witches in a play from Martha. 
• The Doctor likens a horse's skull to a Sycorax, a name Shakespeare will use in The Tempest.
• He gives Shakespeare a ruff as he has hurt his neck, suggesting that it suits him. This is a reference to the famous Droeshout portrait, an engraving of which is used as a frontispiece in the First Folio.
• The Doctor quotes Dylan Thomas - and forbids Shakespeare to use those lines.
• The Master of Revels is a fictitious character named Lynley. He is based on the real figure of Edmund Tilney, or Tylney. He was Deputy to the Lord Chamberlain, based at St John's Gate in Clerkenwell. 
• Will Kempe had left the Chamberlain's Men - Shakespeare's acting troupe - earlier in 1599, and never performed at the newly opened Globe. On his departure he embarked on what he called his "Nine Days Wonder" - morris-dancing from London to Norwich. It took a couple of months - so not nine consecutive days - and he was cheered and applauded all the way. Folks were easily pleased in ye olden days.
• Love's Labours Won appears as one of Shakespeare's plays in a list compiled in 1598, and again in one of 1603. As no copies are known to exist, it is generally accepted that it is an alternative title for one of his other plays - possibly Much Ado About Nothing. Love's Labours Won was an early working title for this episode.
• The Doctor claims that Martha comes from Freedonia. This was a fictional country in the Marx Brothers comedy Duck Soup.
• Shakespeare refers to Martha as the "Dark Lady" - a reference to the character who features in the later sonnets. The first are addressed to a young man, whose identity is still disputed. These have led to questions about Shakespeare's sexuality. When he appears to flirt with him, the Doctor makes reference to this debate.
• Martha attempts to speak cod-Shakespearean, and the Doctor advises she stop. This is one of Russell T Davies' running jokes, with Rose having attempted a cod-Scottish accent in last season's celebrity historical. Donna will later try to talk all P G Woodhouse in Roberts' next story.
• In the climactic scenes of the Carrionites materialising in the Globe, the aerial shot of the theatre shows people rushing into the theatre rather than away from it.
• Harry Potter is referenced. The Doctor mentions loving Book 7, but doesn't give the title as it hadn't been published when this was produced. Martha uses the spell-word "Expelliarmus" to clinch the Carrionites' banishment. 
• Back to the Future also gets referenced as the Doctor talks to Martha about the potential consequences of time travel, as well as Ray Bradbury's A Sound of Thunder, and the Grandfather Paradox.
• "Dravidian shores" feature in the play's dialogue. Dravidians are mentioned in The Brain of Morbius.
• Rexel 4 is a reference to an episode of The Tomorrow People.
• "The eye should have contentment where it rests..." A quote from the third episode of The Crusade, spoken by Jean Marsh as Joanna. David Whitaker scripted his historical tale in a Shakespearean style.