I was prepared to come in with a half-assed gag about how this is one of the episodes of all time…but I disliked it even more than I remembered.

It’s not silly enough to be a romp, and it’s not scary enough to be a horror (despite seeming like a Halloween episode, this one apparently aired in April). It doesn’t really engage with the time period or Shakespeare himself in a meaningful way. It’s just blandly there, for the most part.

It’s not very kind to Martha. The Doctor dismisses her concerns about being a Black woman in Elizabethan London. She doesn’t get to do any meaningful doctoring, which would have given her some agency in the story. They didn’t even make her a theatre nerd - she seems to have about as much familiarity with Shakespeare as the average person. But hey, she got to feel sad about the Doctor being hung up on Rose. Character development.

Shakespeare himself doesn’t get much, either - I actually think his initial “rock star” introduction is pretty fun, but he’s little more than a series of gags after that. Much is made about his genius, and his grief over losing Hamnet, but neither comes through in the writing or performance.

Sprinkle in too many references to Rowling that have aged like milk, and we’ve got an episode that I have no desire to revisit again any time soon.