‘Careful! That’s my pricker.’ I’m a huge fan of folk horror films, so I’m naturally inclined to enjoy this. In particular, the photography and composition are great pastiches of the modern folk horror style, with washed-out colour grading and plenty of stark shots of figures in landscapes (most notably in the gorgeous flashback to Becka cutting down an alien tree, framed on the brow of a hill). Very Ben Wheatley.

Taking the 1612 Pendle witch trials as a starting point, Joy Wilkinson’s script doesn’t shy away from the misogyny of witchfinding. This opens with a grim sequence of Old Mother Twiston being killed by drowning, and for the first time properly countenances the kind of new complications a sex-changed Doctor faces when travelling into history. Other episodes could have benefited from more of Whittaker’s bristling fury as the Doctor is patronised and side-lined by James, and her anger as he condemns the possessed Becka to the flames. Of course, she’s the Doctor and she’s never let human ignorance stop her from trying to save them, but I quite like seeing her doing it slightly grudgingly for once.

While the Doctor benefits, three companions remain a problem. Graham gets to wear the big hat, Ryan becomes the King’s ‘Nubian prince’, Yaz is sort of there doing some of the ‘family liaison’ work. None of them gets much look-in to a script that reserves the best part for its guest star: Alan Cumming’s gloriously fruity turn as James Stewart, the sixth or first depending on your inclination. He single-handedly turns a credible folk horror into a Doctor Who adventure, with a playful, naughty performance that skips from Carry On camp (anything with the pricker, brandished like the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver) to moments of almost touching honesty as he remembers the dismal winter of his Scottish childhood. Cumming becomes such a centre of gravity that the episode starts to falter when he’s not focus of attention.

That’s particularly notable in the last act, which is a bit of a mess. In a long info-dump it turns out Becka accidentally got infected by a Morax war criminal that’s been slowly converting her; she’s tried to hide that by killing anyone who found out, but the Morax converted them too. And they’ve got a prison filled with angry Morax under Pendle Hill, which the Doctor can just switch back on. I don’t think this swerve into bafflegab particularly works. Which is a shame, because for a good two thirds of its run time this is on the way to becoming the best 13^th Doctor episode yet.

Next Time: It Takes You Away