In which the Doctor arrives in the middle of a battlefield, and attempts to save the life of a boy who is trapped in the centre of a minefield. These particular mines are Handmines, which pull their victims under the ground to suffocate. The Doctor is horrified to learn that this is the planet Skaro, and the boy is named Davros...
Later, the Doctor has gone into hiding. A mysterious figure named Colony Sarff begins hunting for him across the galaxy, from the Shadow Proclamation to Karn. He tells Ohila, leader of the Sisterhood, that she should let the Doctor know that Davros wants to speak with him, for he has remembered.
On Earth Clara is in the middle of teaching a class when she spots that an aircraft appears to be frozen in the sky. Checking the internet she finds that this has happened all over the planet. She goes to UNIT HQ and meets with Kate Stewart. They use a computer algorithm to try to trace the Doctor - looking for temporal anomalies. Missy suddenly intervenes. She is in Spain, and she is responsible for freezing the aircraft, purely to catch their attention. She wants to speak with Clara.
Clara is taken there by Kate, and Missy reveals that she is also looking for the Doctor. She has the metal disc which the Doctor had asked Ohila to pass on to her. It is a Confession Dial - something which a Time Lord uses when they are facing death. Clara helps to trace the Doctor to Medieval England, and Missy uses a Vortex Manipulator to take them both to an Essex castle in 1138. The Doctor has been here for some time, preparing for what he thinks will be his death. Colony Sarff arrives and captures him, intent on taking him to Davros. He is actually a gestalt being - a mass of snakes which can take on humanoid form - and he acts as Davros' bodyguard. Missy and Clara insist on accompanying them. The TARDIS is found by the Doctor's friend Bors, who is really a Dalek slave. It is transported with them.
They rendezvous with a vessel in deep space which Sarff claims is a hospital unit. Davros is here, and the Doctor is taken to meet him. The Kaled scientist is in a weakened state, apparently dying.
Missy is suspicious of their surroundings. After breaking out of their cell she finds that this is not a spacecraft at all, but a building on a planet which has been hidden from view. Once the illusion is broken, she is shocked to find that they are on Skaro, on the edge of the Dalek city.
All is not as it seems, however, as Missy has employed a transmat device to send them both into the wastelands close to the city. Missy tells her a story about the Doctor, when he did something extremely clever to get out of a similar, seemingly fatal, situation.
They will return to the Dalek city to find the Doctor, but in secret via a subterranean cave system.
The Doctor still believes his friends to have been killed. The Dalek Supreme is surprised to find that monitors show that Davros has left the infirmary and is on his way to the council chamber.
When the doors open, it is the Doctor in the chair instead. Davros has been pulled out of his chair and left on the floor of the infirmary where he calls for help.
The Doctor is armed with one of their weapons as he threatens the Daleks for what they have done. Attempts to shoot him fail - as Davros has built a protective force-field into his chair in case of further treachery from his creations.
The Doctor hasn't bargained on Colony Sarff, however, as the chair is full of snakes which overwhelm him. Captured once more, he is returned to the infirmary.
Outside, in the cave system, Missy explains that these are actually Dalek sewers. The creatures can be destroyed, but do not die of old age. They simply deteriorate physically into a shapeless form, which is then dumped down here. The tunnels are covered in a dark slime which is actually still-living Dalek genetic material. These discarded Daleks hate their healthier kind for what they have done to them.
Missy deliberately lures a sentinel into the caves to capture them, using Clara as bait. It is attacked by the slime and killed. Missy's plan is to use the empty shell to infiltrate the city - and it is Clara who is to occupy it.
In the infirmary, the Doctor and Davros have been talking and have come to a strange understanding of each other. They may actually have more in common than they first realised, and they do have a long history together. The Doctor discovers that Davros is only remaining alive by drawing off some life-force from the Daleks. Were they to be destroyed, he would perish with them. As their creator, they have a form of respect for him and so are content to keep him alive. The scientist is now dying, however, and does not expect to see the next dawn. He would like to see this with his own eyes, which he still has.
The Doctor decides to help him, sacrificing some of his regeneration energy by siphoning it into Davros' life support system. He is unaware that Colony Sarff has integrated himself into the system as well.
Davros' ploy is to use the Doctor's energy to feed to the Daleks, giving them the power of regeneration.
However, the Doctor has suspected a trick all along. The energy doesn't just go to the active Daleks in the city, but to all the discarded ones in the sewers beneath. They rise up and attack the Daleks in the city. Missy arrives in the infirmary and kills Colony Sarff with the Dalek gun. She then tries to dupe the Doctor into destroying the Dalek containing Clara, which she claims is the one who killed his companion. Its use of the word "mercy" lets him know he is being fooled and Clara is released. It transpires that the TARDIS was never destroyed, but entered a dematerialisation phase as a form of defence. It reconstitutes around the Doctor and Clara.
Missy is left to try to make a deal with the Daleks as the Doctor and Clara escape and watch the destruction of the city.
The Doctor recalls the events with the young Davros in the minefield. He had a chance to abandon him and so prevent the Daleks ever being created, but chose to have pity and rescue him. In saving him, the Doctor actually changes the future of the Daleks as their creator will give them the concept of "mercy"
The Magician's Apprentice / The Witch's Familiar were written by Steven Moffat, and first broadcast on 19th and 26th September, 2015. They mark the opening adventure of Series 8.
The structure of this series differed from other Moffat ones in that it had a large number of two-parters - though Moffat explained that these might be only very loosely connected.
The title of the first instalment derives from the fact that this Doctor has been described as looking like a magician (Time Heist and Last Christmas, as well as the prequel The Doctor's Meditation).
It is also a play on the fable of the Sorcerer's Apprentice. This 1797 poem by Goethe tells of a sorcerer's young apprentice who decides to use magic to do the cleaning up, only to lose control through his inexperience. It was famously used in the 1940 Walt Disney animation Fantasia, where the apprentice is Mickey Mouse.
If the Doctor is the magician, then Missy is obviously the witch. Clara fulfils the role of apprentice to one, and familiar to the other, as she becomes Missy's companion for a time.
The series had a very low key opening in terms of publicity. There was hardly any, especially compared to the "World Tour" of the year before, and what there was was badly judged. We saw the Doctor and Clara in the TARDIS, saying that things were going to be the same as usual for them. The publicists might have thought this meant more adventure and excitement, but to the casual viewer it said "nothing new to see here". Davros and the Daleks didn't even feature. Things were not helped by the BBCs decision to move the show around the evening schedule, often showing it in slots which were the latest it had ever held - so the few remaining kids who had stuck with it so far finally gave up on it.
This is a sequel to all the previous Davros stories, especially Genesis of the Daleks. These links are made explicit by having Davros view clips on a screen in the infirmary. The Doctor's moral dilemma of potentially killing Davros before he can ever create the Daleks is supposed to mirror the Fourth Doctor's similar dilemma about destroying the Dalek nurseries. The fog-shrouded battlefield setting is also reminiscent of this story.
The Daleks and Planet of the Daleks both featured a friend of the Doctor hiding in a Dalek shell. The fact that it is Clara reminds us of Oswin in Asylum of the Daleks.
The mix of Daleks from all eras is similar to that story.
The Doctor and Clara watching the destruction of the city is a repeat of the conclusion to Evil of the Daleks.
It is stated that Skaro has been rebuilt by the Daleks. This would explain how it can have featured after its destruction in Remembrance of the Daleks.
In the opening section Colony Sarff goes looking for the Doctor, taking in Karn (The Brain of Morbius and Night of the Doctor), the Shadow Proclamation (The Stolen Earth) and the Maldovarium (first seen in The Pandorica Opens).
Along the way we see old aliens like Sycorax, Hath, Kahler, Blowfish and Skullions. The latter featured in the very last episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures.
There are also Judoon at the Shadow Proclamation.
As with previous stories, Missy is played by Michelle Gomez, and Kate Stewart of UNIT by Jemma Redgrave. She is joined by Jaye Griffiths as Jac, who will be back later in the series.
Julian Bleach once again portrays Davros. We actually get to see the character out of his wheelchair, and see that he has no lower body at all. Very odd is the fact that he has had working eyes all this time. The reason for never using them is never given.
To keep his identity secret, Joey Price - playing the young Davros - was simply credited as "Boy".
Colony Sarff is played by Jami Reid-Quarrell, who will also be back later this year.
Already seen in the prologue was Clare Higgins as Ohila (first seen in Night of the Doctor), and from The Doctor's Meditation we get Daniel Hoffmann-Gill playing Bors once more. I am going to assume that this character was named after the one played by Dallas Cavell in Devil's Planet, the third instalment of The Daleks' Master Plan.
The Shadow Architect is once again played by Kelly Hunter.
As far as this series' story arc goes, we only have the notion that the Doctor left Gallifrey for reasons that aren't quite as he had claimed them to be in the past. He was afraid of something, which made him run. Missy also mentions a "hybrid", which she claims was half-Dalek, half-Time Lord.
Overall, another none too bad Dalek story - apart from the ending. The idea that Daleks are somehow immortal barring accidents, that they get dumped into sewers whilst still sentient, and are so pissed off that they are prepared to wreck their own race - it all just seems stupid. You are left with the feeling that Moffat simply didn't know how to conclude this story. He has bad form with two-parters after all.
Things you might like to know:
- Moffat really wanted Russell T Davies to write this story. The proposal he put forward to him was for Davros to be standing trial by his creations, with the Doctor as a witness.
- This story marks the debut of the sonic sunglasses, which will be around for the remainder of the Capaldi era.
- In the same way that a Dutch audience might have worked out who Darth Vader was to Luke Skywalker, Welsh speakers might have guessed the true nature of Davros' chief of security - "sarff" being Welsh for snake.
- To portray the character's gliding motion Reid-Quarrell mastered a hoverboard, hidden by his robes.
- There are a couple of references to The Curse of Fatal Death - with the Master / Missy spending time in a sewer system, and talk of why there would be chairs on Skaro.
- In searching for the Doctor UNIT use an algorithm which seeks out temporal anomalies. A couple of other earlier stories get referenced at this point. San Martino is mentioned - location for The Masque of Mandragora, Troy (The Myth Makers) and New York (a temporal minefield ever since The Angels Take Manhattan, but also another reference point for Daleks in The Chase and Daleks in Manhattan / Evolution of the Daleks). For serious fans, however, the most important reference is to Atlantis. The classic series contradicted itself with this fabled city state, giving three different possible fates - two by the same writers only a year apart. It was first seen in The Underwater Menace, where it was suggested that it had sunk through some natural disaster - being located beneath a volcanic mountain. The Daemons then claimed it had been destroyed by Azal or others of his kind as a failed experiment. Robert Sloman and Barry Letts then had it appear in The Time Monster exactly one year later, where it was destroyed by the Chronovore Kronos. In The Magician's Apprentice this controversy is laid to rest, as Jac explains that there are simply three different versions of the city existing simultaneously.
- The originators of the various aliens seen in the opening section got an on screen credit.
- Among the Daleks we see is the Special Weapons Dalek from Remembrance of the Daleks. One was also seen in their asylum. Here, it actually speaks for the first time. Without dome lights, it flashes just below the main weapon. Fans had always assumed that it lacked the intelligence of its fellows.
- Things which Missy mentions but we don't know which - if any - are true: that she had a daughter, that the Doctor stole the moon, and that the Doctor stole the President's wife. She also tells Clara a story about one of the Doctor's adventures, involving robot assassins and vampire monkeys. As this is told to illustrate a point, it is probably apocryphal. Unsure which incarnation of the Doctor was involved, we see both the First and the Fourth before settling on the Capaldi version.
No comments:
Post a Comment