by Tom Marshall

Obverse Books, out now

Obverse Books’ ongoing series of monographs focusing on a Doctor Who serial or story hits 2015’s Series 9 story The Girl Who Died.

I’m not saying that you have to be a qualified expert to write on matters, but it really helps where an author brings authority to their work, and Tom Marshall’s MPhil in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic pits him in a strong position to talk to us about Jamie Mathieson and Steven Moffat’s Viking drama The Girl Who Died.

The influences on the episode are very apparent in terms of Norse mythology, but less obvious are those of Monty Python silliness, which Marshall argues were largely missed by detractors of the episode. The silliness is as important as the subject matter, the two fused together in the script.

Marshall dives deep into the excesses of toxic masculinity and far-right movements, Viking stereotypes and even Dad’s Army. He writes persuasively on multiple fronts, even suggesting that Ashildr’s hybrid warrior-woman is genderqueer. Add to that an introduction to Bakhtin’s theory of the carnivalesque and an Appendix on Baby Talk, and we get one of the strongest Black Archives for some time.

Verdict: Questioning, challenging and well-informed – an excellent addition to the range. 9/10

Nick Joy