Doctor Who Series 11: 10 Huge Questions We Are Asking After The Witchfinders
7. Is The Doctor An Atheist?
Despite the Doctor’s positive reference of the New Testament gospel, the episode presents some elements of Christianity as primitive. Almost dismissively, Yaz points out that it’s alien mud they are dealing with, not devils and witches. She is interested in Willa’s non-religious prayer for her grandmother, perhaps because its holistic spirituality is easily transferable to any tradition. As soon as specific names are given to the forces behind life and death, rules are set into place and faith becomes a religion.
This series, the Doctor has been more open to the religious beliefs and practices of others than we have ever seen before in the show. This episode certainly puts the brakes on all of that and puts us back on more familiar ground. In episodes such as The Daemons and The Rings of Akhaten religion is presented as either a misreading of the facts based on superstition or a means of manipulation and control. The Witchfinders falls very much into that tradition. Religion, especially in its identification of the heretical and the demonic, is against everything the Doctor stands for.
The Doctor would probably never describe herself as an atheist, preferring instead to be open to having her faith challenged. The Tenth Doctor, after meeting Satan had this to say: “That’s why I keep travelling. To be proved wrong.”