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| The Shakespeare Code |
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 Name: William Shakespeare
Format:
Television Show, Book and Audio.
Time of Origin: Earth, 1564 to 1616 (With a couple
of brief time-travelling encounters to other eras).
Time
Span: "The
Empire of Glass", "The
Kingmaker", "The
Time of the Daleks", "Apocrypha Bipedium" and "The
Shakespeare Code"
Doctor: First
Doctor, Fifth
Doctor, Eighth
Doctor and Tenth
Doctor
Companions:
Vicki, Steven
Taylor, Peri Brown,
Erimem, Charley Pollard and Martha Jones
History: As one of Earth’s most famous writers
throughout its history, it was inevitable that Shakespeare would have some
encounters with a time traveller as fond of Earth as The Doctor, The Doctor
more than once expressing an admiration for Shakespeare’s work and
implying that he has assisted Shakespeare in writing some of his work,
to the point that he apparently collaborated with Shakespeare between draft
one and draft two of Hamlet, one of Shakespeare’s most famous plays
("Byzantium!"), writing some parts of the play when Shakespeare
sprained his wrist writing sonnets ("City
of Death").
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The Time of the Daleks
(Justin Richards) |
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Apart from the obvious details of his writing career
- having written such famous tales as Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, A
Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Richard III, many of which remain favourites
of The Doctor -, Shakespeare’s life has intersected with The Doctor’s
on various other occasions. His earliest recorded meeting with The Doctor
occurred when Shakespeare was twelve years old and working as a kitchen
boy, when The Doctor discovered that General Mariah Learman, a corrupt
dictator in the future, was attempting to erase Shakespeare from history
so that she could stop the revolution against her using him as a figurehead
(Ironically caused by the fact that some people were beginning to forget
Shakespeare as the event that would result in him being erased became
more likely) ("The
Time of the Daleks"). While attempting to
create a time machine using orthopositronium-coated mirrors, thus allowing
her to witness Shakespeare’s plays, Learman accidentally drew in
a group of Daleks who had escaped a temporal extinction device by travelling
through the temporal fissure.
Discovering that Learman was collaborating
with the Daleks to repair their ship so that she could kill
Shakespeare, retaining a protected copy of his work so that
only she could appreciate his work afterwards, The Doctor
and Charley Pollard were able to divert the Dalek assassination
force by manipulating the time machine to send them to various
dangerous points in history. Having rescued the young Shakespeare
- who had been drawn into the future by one of the rebels
in an attempt to protect him, the young Will working in Learman’s
kitchens -, The Doctor and Charley tricked the Daleks into
activating their temporal extinction device ahead of schedule,
trapping them in a time loop where they would forever repeat
the same actions over and over without ever escaping, three
surviving Daleks creating an attack force that The Doctor
would later destroy so that three Daleks would be the only
ones to escape. While taking ‘Will’ home, The
Doctor and Charley briefly visited the First
Doctor’s
companion Vicki - now known as Cressida and married to the
soldier Troilus in the aftermath of the Trojan War ("The
Myth Makers") -, although Will had already read the
historical accounts of Troilus and Cressida’s life
and did not allow his knowledge of their relocation to Cornwall
to affect the tragedy he would write as an adult ("Apocrypha
Bipedium").
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The Empire of Glass
(Andy Lane) |
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The First Doctor had another interesting meeting with
Shakespeare when he was investigating strange goings-on at the Armageddon
Convention, a debate between various galactic powers about the use of certain
weapons in future wars, that was being held on Earth in 1609 to remind
the debating powers what they were trying to protect (The Doctor would
have chaired the debate, but he was given the ticket during the Omega crisis
("The
Three Doctors") and lost all memory of the ticket’s
purpose when his memories of meeting his future self were erased, although
The Doctor’s place as chairman was effectively filled by Catholic
priest Cardinal Bellarmine, who used imagery from the Book of Revelations
to mediate a dispute between what he believed to be warring angels) ("The
Empire of Glass"). While The Doctor investigated an unusual attack on
Gallileo when he was preparing to present his new telescope, Shakespeare
was recruited by spymaster Thomas Walshingham to investigate reports of
a conference being held in Venice by a mysterious new empire, being particularly
surprised to run into his old friend Christopher Marlowe, who had already
befriended The Doctor’s companion Steven
Taylor. Learning that Marlowe had
faked his death after he witnessed strange demons abduct the inhabitants
of the lost American colony of Roanoke and found a strange piece of metal
in his body later, Shakespeare joined Galileo and The Doctor in their investigations
while Steven used a holographic disguise unit to assume Galileo’s
place in history and unveil the telescope.
At the same
time, Vicki discovered that the alien Greld were arms merchants
who participated in the conference only to sabotage it, having planted
micro-fragments of
a bomb in the bodies of the Roanoke colonists with the intention
of bringing them together with post-hypnotic suggestions so that the assembled
bomb
could destroy the conference. Although the bomb initially
failed to go off after Marlowe was killed in a duel before he could join
the other colonists,
matters were complicated when it was discovered that the
Jamarans - an ambitious race that Braxiatel had selected to help him organise
the conference
because he believed their lack of ties to others would make
them neutral coordinators - were attempting to steal equipment from the
others races,
culminating in Shakespeare stealing a telepathic data storage
device and downloaded its contents into his mind with the intention of
using the new
knowledge he acquired to help England. Fortunately, a distraction
caused when the Jamaran shuttle was destroyed after the colonists were
sent on
board and one of the envoys sacrificed himself to transport
Marlowe’s fragment of the bomb onto the ship gave The Doctor and
Steven time to slip Shakespeare an amnesia pill so that he wouldn’t
remember anything he had experienced or any of the technology he had tried
to acquire.
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The Kingmaker
(Nev Fountain) |
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The Fifth
Doctor had a far more difficult encounter with Shakespeare when he was attempting
to carry out research for a publishing company due to a contract he had
made to write various historical novels during his exile in his third incarnation
("The
Kingmaker"). When he and his companions were attending
a showing of Shakespeare’s play Richard III in 1597, The Doctor spent
time drinking with Shakespeare, only to become so intoxicated - this incarnation
not being a particularly heavy drinker - that he accidentally revealed
the doubts that would arise in the future about whether Richard III or
Henry Tudor killed the Princes in the Tower, the patriotic Shakespeare
refusing to allow his Queen’s lineage to be accused of such a crime.
Stowing away in the TARDIS during The Doctor’s later trip back to
1483 to carry out historical research for a series of novels he had been
commissioned to write, Shakespeare attempted to manipulate Richard III
to kill the Princes so that nobody could doubt his evil, posing as a time-traveller
called ‘Mr Seyton’ as he tried to convince Richard to kill
the Princes so that they couldn’t be used as a means of spreading
discontent among the people about a possible alternative succession.
However, this
attempt was doomed to failure from the beginning as it turned out that
the ‘Princes in the Tower’ were actually Princesses, their
true genders concealed to prevent the fighting that would have resulted
if a male heir couldn’t be produced; Richard couldn’t kill
the Princes as there weren’t any Princes to kill, and Shakespeare
would never accept that he had won until the truth came out. Despite his
attempt to force The Doctor to take him and Richard into Shakespeare’s
present so that Richard could be tried for his crimes in an Elizabethan
court, Shakespeare was apparently killed when The Doctor accidentally materialised
during the Battle of Badon Hill and Shakespeare ran outside the ship, being
subsequently killed by soldiers who mistook him for Richard III. However,
the real Richard III was apparently able to take Shakespeare’s place
in 1597 with The Doctor’s help in tackling the more difficult plays
left to him, The Doctor also arranging for the Princesses to take on the
role of ‘Shakespeare’s’ daughters so that they could
have a better life.
Despite their
adversarial relationship during the events of "The Kingmaker",
The Doctor and Shakespeare achieved a better relationship during their
next meeting in Shakespeare’s adult life in 1599, with there being
no reference to Shakespeare’s encounter with The Doctor in 1597 or
even any indication that Shakespeare was now Richard III. However, this
could be attributed to the fact that history had been reset at least once
since that meeting due to The Doctor’s battle with the Council
of Eight ("Sometime
Never..."), who had sought to collapse history
down to a single timeline that they could control ("Time
Zero")
before The Doctor restored alternate realities to the universe. The idea
of the two stories showing different realities is further supported by
the fact that "Sometime Never..." featured the Princes in the
Tower as genuine princes where "The Kingmaker" established that
they were actually Princesses, suggesting that the new timeline that existed
after the Council were defeated was not the same as the one that had existed
previously (In the new timeline, the Princes were captured by the Council
as potential hostages to be used against The Doctor, who subsequently left
them with his new friend Professor Fleetward - leaving two random skeletons
where the Princes’ bodies would be allegedly discovered in future
- as he was confident that Fleetward would be able to provide them with
a good life).
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| The Shakespeare Code |
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During a trip
to 1599, the Tenth
Doctor and his new companion Martha Jones were shocked
to learn that Shakespeare intended to show his ‘lost’ play,
Love’s Labours Won, the following night, prompting The Doctor to
remain to investigate what was happening. After the Master of the Revels
was drowned in the middle of a dry street when he threatened to forbid
Shakespeare from putting the play on at such short notice, The Doctor became
increasingly suspicious at the presence of ‘magic’ in the current
era when the structure of the Globe theatre was taken into account. Visiting
the Globe architect, Peter Streete, now a resident of an asylum, The Doctor
learned that Shakespeare’s grief over the death of his son had drawn
the mysterious Carrionites - a race capable of manipulating the rest of
the universe in a manner comparable to magic - back into the universe,
the grief of a genius creating a rift that they could use to gain access
to this universe.
Attempting
to further exploit this rift, The
Carrionites had influenced Streete to
construct the Globe in such a shape that it would further enhance the power
of the spoken word while also providing Shakespeare with suitable inspiration
to complete his play Love’s Labours Won, the final words of the play
being a ‘spell’ that could open a rift to the realm of the
Carrionites and allow the rest of their race to reach Earth. Despite the
rift being opened as the play concluded, The Doctor and Martha were able
to convince Shakespeare to use his genius to write a second sonnet to seal
the Carrionites away, banishing them into a crystal ball-like device that
The Doctor resolved to keep contained in the TARDIS in future. As The Doctor
departed - advising Shakespeare to dispose of all the pages of Love’s
Labours Won in case of residual Carrionite magic in the rest of the text
-, Shakespeare casually commented that he had deduced his and Martha’s
true identities, but assured them that he would keep their secrets, although
it was implied that Martha was the ‘Dark Lady’ he dedicated
some sonnets to.
Despite the
occasional difficulties in their personal interaction, Shakespeare remains
one of The Doctor’s favourite writers from his favourite planet,
his work often serving as an effective escape from the pressures that The
Doctor faces in his work, and their collaborations have generally been
enjoyable even if The Doctor obvious regretted the occasions where the
two ended up on opposite sides. |
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