Recap / Big Finish Doctor Who CC S14 E3 The Prints Of Denmark

The Meddling Monk takes Zoe back through time in an attempt to make good on his promise from "The Time Meddler" and have Shakespeare's Hamlet premiere on television.

Tropes:

• Anachronistic Clue: Zoe realises that the Monk has been interfering with the course of history when she sees a photograph in the 16th century.
• Bowdlerise: In-universe example: after Cromwell's destruction of the original master tapes of the 1601 broadcast of Shakespeare's Hamlet, the only surviving copy is a film recording that has had violent and sexual scenes edited out, in a parody of the Australian censorship of 1960s Doctor Who stories.
• Callback: In "The Time Meddler", broadcast 57 years before this story's release, the Meddling Monk bragged to the Doctor that, by interfering in humanity's past, he could speed up their technological development to the point that "Shakespeare would be able to put Hamlet on television". In this story, his time meddling leads to exactly that...
• Celebrity Paradox:
  • Rufus Hound, who plays the Monk in this and other Big Finish stories, is mentioned by name as an actor in the story.
  • Peter Purves (Steven Taylor) also gets a name-check, having been apparently involved in an incident with a giraffe voted the second greatest moment in television history.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: The story parodies the Doctor Who missing episodes situation, with the original broadcast tapes of Shakespeare's Hamlet from 1601 having been destroyed by Oliver Cromwell, but an edited version having survived as a film recording with censor clips excised, and those censor clips existing separately in the hands of a private collector^note A reference to the existence of clips removed by the Australian censors existing for several missing Doctor Who stores; and telesnaps of the original broadcast also surviving.
• Pun-Based Title: The title is a play on "the Prince of Denmark"; Hamlet's royal title.