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troperville

This episode contains a lot of very silly Shakespeare jokes, almost all of which are also actually very clever, very obscure Shakespeare jokes in disguise. We open in extremely Elizabethan London, where a young man courts a damsel via period song. The damsel (unlike Juliet) rejects the idea of waiting until marriage, and invites the man up. She then pulls a Darla and toys with him a bit before putting on her witchy gameface, inviting in her equally witchy mothers, and devouring her ardent swain. This is not about premarital sex or gay marriage being evil, though. It's just campy.

Post-credits, enter the Doctor and Martha, off to the Globe Theatre to see Love's Labour's Lost. Martha is concerned about stepping on a butterfly or encountering old-timey racism, but the Doctor shrugs these off. The Doctor riffs on the parallels between London then and now, including analogising a crazy doomsayer to "Global Warming". This isn't an attack on climate theory, though. It's just silly.

At Martha's instigation, Shakespeare comes out after the play to address the audience. The witches magic him into promising to perform the sequel, Love's Labour's Won, tomorrow night. The Doctor, knowing that this play is a Missing Episode, realizes something is afoot. The pair decide to stay the night in Shakespeare's inn, and get to meet the dude. Shakespeare is a genius-level but bawdy empath, clever enough to be immune to psychic paper (although he does love the word "psychic"). He hits on Martha, but blows it by constantly referencing her race. "It's Political Correctness Gone Mad," mutters the Doctor.

There Is Only One Bed. They both crawl in, their faces very close... and the Doctor tells her that there's something he's... missing. Something... staring right into his eyes. Something... close, but just out of reach. "Rose would know what to do", he sighs moodily, oblivious to the sexual tension. Martha looks extremely annoyed. Meanwhile, the witch has crept in at night in order to plant some words in Shakespeare's script. Martha sees the witch flying off on her broomstick, and bemusedly IDs her.

This clue, along with the murder of the Master of the Revels, leads the Doctor and Martha to Bedlam, the insane asylum, with Shakespeare tagging along. They interview the architect who designed the Globe — fourteen sides, like fourteen lines in a sonnet — and realise the plan: the performance of Love's Labour's Won will be a spell to allow the witches to take over Earth. A witch shows up and kills off the architect... way too late, as the Doctor has worked out the witches' True Name...Carrionite. The mere word banishes her, and the trio split up: Shakespeare to stop the performance of the play, and the Doctor and Martha to find Witch Headquarters.

They don't exactly succeed. Shakespeare bursts onto the stage and announces that the show must not go on, but is K Od by witch magic. Will Kemp improvises an excellent triple-meaning couplet: if "Will" refers to Shakespeare, it's him dismissing the warning as drunken ramblings. If "Will" refers to Kemp, it's a mock-apology for his own silliness (emphasized with a goofy caper). If "Will" is the Elizabethan-era slang for penis, it's a joke about alcohol-induced sexual impotence. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Martha find the youngest witch and try the naming again, but it turns out It Only Works Once. The witch tries it on Martha, but Martha's anachronism saves her from permanent harm. The Doctor, of course, has no discernible name. So the witch vamps him instead, gets a lock of his hair and stops his heart. One of them, anyway. Martha wakes up, improvises some first aid to get the afflicted heart going, and they're off to back up Shakespeare.

But they're too late! At the play's end, two noblemen recite an odd invocation that allows the whole Carrionite race, sealed off long ago, to show up in the Globe. Shakespeare, the Doctor and Martha form an impromptu Power Trio: Shakespeare improvises a counterspell, flanked by the Doctor providing the right numbers and Martha providing the anachronism "Expelliarmus!" The spell imprisons the witches in their own crystal ball, and conveniently destroys all copies of the play. Let's pause a moment to discuss how awesome this is. The leader of the Power Trio banishes his enemy to scream for all eternity in a Fate Worse Than Death, by shouting "Expelliarmus" to the heavens. As of the time this show was written and released (after book 6, before book 7), this was not at all how Expelliarmus worked. Later, in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, this is how Harry defeats Voldemort. So this is an impossible anachronism even in the real world. It happened, presumably, because Expelliarmus is a cool enough word that it became an Ensemble Dark Horse of Harry Potter spells, leading independently to both Gareth Roberts and J.K. Rowling promoting it to its most dramatic possible use. The word expelliarmus was genius enough to create some real-life magic. It was, as the episode put it, a Word of Power. That, and it rhymed.

In the end, Martha is revealed to be the Dark Lady, the unknown (and speculated to be imaginary) African woman to whom Shakespeare wrote several sonnets (not including, however, the Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? one, which he starts to recite to her). Oh, and he casually figures out that the Doctor is otherworldly and Martha is from the future. They are interrupted, though, by Queen Elizabeth I, who showed up to congratulate Shakespeare on his excellent special effects. A Whole Lot of Running ensues when it turns out that Elizabeth considers the Doctor her "sworn enemy" for something he hasn't done yet. As of The End of Time, we know that this was briefly marrying her while on holiday.

Tropes

All Part of the Show
And I Must Scream:
The Doctor: I've got a nice attic in the TARDIS where this lot can scream for all eternity, and I've got to take Martha back.
Arbitrary Skepticism: The Doctor scoffs at the existence of witchcraft, but Martha reminds him that she just discovered that time travel is real.
Arc Number: This episode only; 14. It turns out to be because the witches' solar system has 14 planets.
Badass Boast: Shakespeare's final lines against the Carrionites.
Close up this din of hateful dire decay.
Decomposition of your witches' plot.
You thieve my brains, consider me your toy
My doted Doctor tells me I am not!
Foul Carrionites fester, cease your show.
Between the points - Seven six one three nine 0.
Banished like a tinker's cuss,
I sing to thee EXPELLIARMUS!
Badass Bookworm/Badass Bystander: William Shakespeare, The Word-Smith. He didn't plan on fighting witches, but was quick to adapt to the changes brought forth by the Carrionites and the Doctor.
Bizarre Alien Biology: The Carrionite witch Lillith creates a voodoo doll and stabs one of the Doctor's hearts. He gets by well enough on the other one until Martha gets it going again.
Bi the Way: William Shakespeare.
"We can all have a good flirt later —"
"Is that a promise, Doctor?"
"Ooh, fifty-seven academics just punched the air."
Brick Joke: "I TOLD THEE SO! I TOLD THEE! 8D"
Continuity Nod: The Doctor calls himself Sir Doctor of TARDIS.
- The Doctor mentions the Sycorax. Shakespeare uses the name for one of his characters.
Description Cut: The Doctor saying that Shakespeare is a wordsmith and bound to say something wonderful, only for the man himself to just rudely tell everyone to shut up.
Doomsayer: He's quite delighted that the end of the world is happening, crying: "I told ye so! I told ye so!"
Mr. Fanservice: Will Shakespeare himself. It helps that this story happens before he lost his hair.
The Exit Is That Way
Foreshadowing: Grandfather Paradoxes become more important by the end of this season.
Grandfather Paradox:
Martha: "What if I kill my grandfather?"
The Doctor: "Are you planning to?"
Have We Met Yet?: Inverted — the Queen immediately recognises the Doctor from a meeting that hasn't happened to him yet.
Historical Hero Upgrade: William Shakespeare.
Historical In-Joke:
- Love's Labour's Won is a lost play today because it was commandeered into a spell to release the Carrionite race. When the spell is reversed, the play vanishes along with the Carrionites.
- The Doctor feeding Shakespeare his own lines. Specifically, it resolves the Brick Joke of the Sycorax set up in "The Christmas Invasion"; Sycorax is a witch mentioned in The Tempest, and where Shakespeare got the name is a bit of an academic mystery — as far as anyone can find she's not a figure from mythology, and if it's a Meaningful Name it's far from obvious what the meaning is. "The Christmas Invasion" used it as the name of an alien species, with no explanation / comment, and this episode has Shakespeare hear the Doctor talking about them and likes the sound of it.
- Shakespeare's reaction to Martha's appearance foreshadows the reveal that she's his Dark Lady.
Historical Villain Upgrade: Queen Elizabeth I in the end. While in Real Life, she had her faults, ordering her soldiers to murder a man on sight in her presence without a trial was not among them.
Hoist by His Own Petard: The Carrionites are defeated by Shakespeare using their own source of power, language, against them.
It Only Works Once: The power of a True Name.
Magic from Technology: Sort of. The Doctor points out that the Carrionites' powers only seem like magic because earth's science is maths-derived while the Carrionites instead learned how to manipulate words.
- Kind of Fridge Logicy, though — after all, we may use maths to manipulate reality, but only by actually doing things that the maths tells us to do. You can't just split an atom by yelling out mathematical equations.
- Actually functions as a Continuity Nod back to Logopolis, where just doing maths did alter reality, in ways that forced living minds to perform the computations because the computations themselves would make any mere machine performing them malfunction.
Moment Killer: For once it's not the Doctor who does this.
Shakespeare: The Doctor may never kiss you, why not entertain a man who will?
Martha: I don't know how to tell you this, oh great genius, but... your breath doesn't half stink.
Names to Run Away From Really Fast: Mother Doomfinger and Mother Bloodtide. The species name Carrionite as well.
Noodle Incident: "I can't wait to find out!"
- As it turns out, Queen Bess just isn't happy seeing her ex again.
No Sell: Shakespeare is too good for the Doctor's psychic paper.
Oblivious to Love: The Doctor doesn't realise how There Is Only One Bed can be interpreted; even more what it means when a young attractive woman accepts.
Doctor: There's something I'm missing, Martha. (She turns to lie face-to-face with him, their eyes inches apart) Something really close, staring me right in the face and I can't see it. (pause) Rose would know. That friend of mine, Rose. Right now, she'd say exactly the right thing. (flops back over on his back) Still, can't be helped. You're a novice, never mind. I'll take you back home tomorrow.
Martha: (hurt and angry) Great! (She turns her back on him and blows out the candle)
Playing Possum: The Doctor does this to convince Lilith to leave after the first stab.
The Power of Acting
Rhymes on a Dime: The witches, whether they're incanting or not.
Running Gag: "No... no, don't do that" makes another appearance.
- Within the episode, "I might use that!"
  - Also subverted with "Rage, rage against the dying of the light", which the Doctor says Shakespeare can't use because it's someone else's — or will be in a few hundred years.
Sealed Evil in a Can: The Carrionites.
Shakespeare In Fiction
Sherlock Scan: Shakespeare is very good at picking out the unusual details of the Doctor and his companion, and by the end of the episode has worked out who they are.
Shout Out: See above, re: Harry Potter. And apparently the Doctor read Book 7 early. There's also one towards Back to the Future.
- Also, The Doctor says that Martha is from Freedonia.
There Is Only One Bed: There's just one double bed in the room The Doctor and Martha share. The Doctor doesn't find this situation uncomfortable at all.
True Name
Words Can Break My Bones
Weapons Grade Vocabulary: The witches are finally destroyed with a shout of "Expelliarmus!" The Doctor reacts to the destruction by shouting, "Good old JK!"
Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: "Verily! Forsooth! Egads!"
- "No... no, don't do that"
You Are Better Than You Think You Are. Faced with the burden of crafting words powerful enough to bind the Carrionites back into their prison, Shakespeare has a brief moment of crisis when the Doctor boosts him back up by telling him he is the one true genius capable of stopping them.