Doctor Who: The Witch from the Well

In the second part of the “Mary Shelley trilogy”, the 8th Doctor takes the novelist to modern day England, where she almost immediately encounters a monster. He then travels back to the 1650s to try and save the crew of the crashed spaceship that apparently brought the monster to Earth at that time. At which point he becomes embroiled in the witch-hunting scares of the day.

For most of the story, the Doctor and his companion are separated, with the latter to a large extent dealing with the consequences of the former's actions back in the 17th century. It's a nice plot idea, and works without much in the way of timey-wimeyness, although it does have the downside of not allowing them much time to interact with one another, which is a pity when the companion is so newly introduced.

On the other hand, I have to confess to a bias here, which is that I'm never terribly keen on Doctor Who stories that deal primarily with magic. In this case, what the aliens are doing is described as if it were some form of technology, but it clearly isn't, and the explanation for it doesn't really make any sense. (The energy that's said to power it would also, logically, have cropped up many times before, which, of course, it hasn't). Which left me rather cold.

If I try to put that to one side, then the plot is quite good, if nothing remarkable. The atmosphere of rural 17th century England is well-evoked, with many of the characters turning out to have more depth than initially appears. There is some degree of sanitation of the real-world brutality of the witch finders, but that's probably a good thing, all considered - it's not that kind of story.

In the modern-day sections, at least Mary gets to be the lead character, and remains consistent with her portrayal in the first part of the trilogy. There are also some good sections where she faces the temptation to find out about her own future through interaction with a man fascinated by the life of Lord Byron.

So, in the end, I'd probably give this a 3.5, rounded down to 3.