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Doctor Who: I Hate Good Wizards, They Always Turn Out To Be Him!

. at Tuesday, January 26, 2016 . No comments: Christopher Morley takes a magical trip with the Doctor. Can magic & science co-exist? The Third Doctor would have said a firm "no" prior to the events of The Daemons, but as Grand Wizard Qui Quae Quod he would pass off advanced science as magic to the villagers of Devil's End, who'd fallen under the spell of Reverend Magister.......

HAWTHORNE: You would dare to harm the great Wizard Qui Quae Quod?
THORPE: Wizard?
HAWTHORNE: You wouldn't listen to me before and now you're in the power of the Magister. You know I speak the truth.
BERT: Get on with it, man.
HAWTHORNE: No, wait, listen to me. Under the Magister you have been frightened, injured, your property destroyed. Serve the great Qui Quae Quod. In him lies peace and great joy.
BERT: If he's such a great magician, let's see him untie himself.
DOCTOR: You choose to mock the great Qui Quae Quod? Well, I will not.
BERT: Because you can't!
HAWTHORNE: Give him a sign of your power, O mighty one!
DOCTOR: What had you in mind?
HAWTHORNE: I know. That lamp. Shatter it.
DOCTOR: Shatter it. Yes. Lamp, I order you to shatter!

Well after his encounter with those sinister Morris dancers (who must surely be near the top of anyone's wishlist of classic enemies to return for Series Ten - #MorrisMoffat ) he would return to matters of magic in Battlefield...

...Being implied to have served as the Merlin to an alternative King Arthur was surely an ideal spot of pre-Hobbit training for Sylvester McCoy, who would of course play Radagast the Brown in Doctor Who fan Peter Jackson's adaptation of JRR Tolkien's pre-Lord Of The Rings tale.

Will Jackson get his apparently long-held wish to direct an episode? Right now we don't know, but we go from tenth series speculation to Tenth Doctor spellcasting, as the Carrionites use the power of words in an attempt to cross over into our universe through the writings of the immortal Bard in The Shakespeare Code.....

MARTHA: So, magic and stuff. That's a surprise. It's all a little bit Harry Potter.
DOCTOR: Wait till you read book seven. Oh, I cried.
MARTHA: But is it real, though? I mean, witches, black magic and all that, it's real?
DOCTOR: Course it isn't!
MARTHA: Well, how am I supposed to know? I've only just started believing in time travel. Give me a break.
DOCTOR: Looks like witchcraft, but it isn't. Can't be. Are you going to stand there all night?

In a sense though, it is real, or presented as such here.

DOCTOR: The columns there, right? Fourteen sides. I've always wondered, but I never asked. Tell me, Will. Why fourteen sides?
SHAKESPEARE: It was the shape Peter Streete thought best, that's all. Said it carried the sound well.
DOCTOR: Fourteen. Why does that ring a bell? Fourteen.
MARTHA: There's fourteen lines in a sonnet.
DOCTOR: So there is. Good point. Words and shapes following the same design. Fourteen lines, fourteen sides, fourteen facets. Oh, my head. Tetradecagon. Think, think, think! Words, letters, numbers, lines!
SHAKESPEARE: This is just a theatre.
DOCTOR: Oh yeah, but a theatre's magic, isn't it? You should know. Stand on this stage, say the right words with the right emphasis a the right time. Oh, you can make men weep, or cry with joy. Change them. You can change people's minds just with words in this place. But if you exaggerate that...

A sideways leap from Shakespeare into myth & legend in a sense, with the daft old man who stole a magic box going down in legend as a good wizard!

DOCTOR: There was a goblin, or a trickster, or a warrior. A nameless, terrible thing, soaked in the blood of a billion galaxies. The most feared being in all the cosmos. And nothing could stop it, or hold it, or reason with it. One day it would just drop out of the sky and tear down your world.
AMY: How did it end up in there?
DOCTOR: You know fairy tales. A good wizard tricked it.
RIVER: I hate good wizards in fairy tales. They always turn out to be him. Only the nameless terrible thing was hardly nameless, wore a bow tie & deemed it cool. A marked sea change from when he wore a scarf & appeared to scoff at Leela's grasp of magic, yo-yos & the transdimensional mechanics of the TARDIS itself.

LEELA: Can I stop now?
DOCTOR: If you want to.
LEELA: It will not affect this?
DOCTOR: Affect this? No, it's a yo-yo. It's a game. I thought you were enjoying it.
LEELA: Enjoying it? You said I had to keep it going up and down. I thought it was part of the magic.
DOCTOR: Magic, Leela? Magic?
LEELA: I know, I know. There's no such thing as magic.
DOCTOR: Exactly. To the rational mind nothing is inexplicable, only unexplained.
LEELA: So, explain to me how this TARDIS is larger on the inside than the out.
DOCTOR: Hmm? All right, I'll show you. It's because insides and outsides are not in the same dimension.

But just to add another dimension to the mix we can throw in Clarke's Third Law, as quoted in Battlefield. Which is to say "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" and therefore vindicating the Doctor's initial scepticism as expressed to Jo while working on good old Bessie.

Perhaps after a good listen to the Fifth Dimension, his attitude softens.

"You're right, Jo, there is magic in the world after all."


