Following the disappointing Kerblam! a couple of days ago, The Witchfinders was a welcomingly enjoyable episode! It's not standout by any means, but it's a really entertaining episode of Doctor Who.

By far the best thing in the episode is King James. Alan Cumming's performance is one of the greatest guest star performances in the whole show, it's just perfect for the role, and for Doctor Who. It's hammy and it's turned up to 11, but it's also deeper than that. A lot of King James' moments are hilarious, not just because of Cumming, but his dialogue is brilliant too. But he's got some really wonderful emotional moments too. One of the great things that Wilkinson does is turn him into more than just a guest star. She ties him in with Ryan, with their relationship with their parents, and she ties him in with The Doctor, in one of the Thirteenth Doctor's best scenes, where they talk about mystery and finding secrets while she's tied to a tree. It's really really well written stuff.

The whole episode is very fun, the mystery unfolds slowly and interestingly, the pacing is spot-on (I love how we're immediately thrown into the witch-trial) and the dialogue is absolutely wonderful. It's a shame that the ending is a little rushed, I think the Morax had potential to be more interesting than they ended up being, and considering the episode is 46m long, you could definitely plump up the last scene with them on the hill a bit. It's a bit disappointing that The Doctor just sticks her log into the tree and everything is fixed. Yaz also really draws a short straw this episode, and is given pretty much nothing to do.

I love Aprahamian's direction for this one. The whole thing is filmed really creepily, with lots of moving dutch angles, and the whole episode is very grey. But it really works, it's never distracting, always interesting and eerie. Akinola's score is similarly dark, the use of classic string quartet mixed with creepy ambient sounds is incredible, and of course his piece of music for King James is delightfully hilarious. I also noticed that, after someone mentioned in my Arachnids thread that Aprahamian was the best director of S11 in terms of the performances she got, that that applies here too - I think Jodie gives one of her strongest performances as the Doctor in this episode.

Overall I don't think it's as interesting as Rosa, as entertaining as The Woman Who Fell to Earth, or as powerful as Demons of the Punjab, but it's a really solid Doctor Who adventure, and one that is really easy to just put on and rewatch. I'd give it a solid 7/10.