Doctor Who Series 11: 10 Huge Questions We Are Asking After The Witchfinders
6. Did The Psychic Paper Fail?
The psychic paper has certainly been back with a vengeance this year.
This week the Doctor uses it to convince the locals that she is the witch finder general. The trick worked perfectly on Becka Savage, but backfired with the King. Apart from giving Bradley Walsh the chance to wear a silly hat through most of the episode, the fact that James thinks it’s identifying the Doctor as the assistant draws attention to the gender issues behind the story.
Most of the time the Doctor’s new gender has been largely irrelevant, but here she finds it both a blessing and a curse. She is forced to look at worlds, past, present and future, through a woman’s eyes. Perhaps for the first time she is conscious of the effects of the misogyny that blights so much of our history.
Did James misread the paper through 17th Century assumptions, or did it fail the Doctor on this occasion? The psychic paper hasn’t always been the most reliable piece of kit. For starters, it requires some imagination on the part of the person reading it. This suggests that it isn’t completely under the control of the Doctor. James may have literally read it as listing the Doctor as the witchfinder’s assistant. To the king, a female witchfinder is an unbelievable fact, and the Doctor is lucky it didn’t fail completely (as it did in A Christmas Carol).