Ladies and Gentlemen, Doctor Who is back and I’m already late to the party and oh what a party it was. Remember folks, my TARDIS Talks are full of spoilers so if you haven’t seen the episode yet, then let this be your warning. Turn back now. Read a horror review from Raz. He’s posted 3 in the last few days! That’s 3 times more than me! Allow this picture of a Dalek pug to be your final chance to hit the back button.
Doctor Who Series 9 Episode 1: The Magician’s Apprentice
This episode started out with a very gripping war scene with an ever bigger bomb dropped at the end all revolving around an ill-fated little boy. The handmines that threaten to pull him under were very creepy and well done. I may or may not have pulled my legs up onto the couch while watching this scene, you can’t prove a thing! But I digress. The Doctor appears like we all know he was going to and tries to save the boy. At this point I was waiting for the bass to drop. This was the series 9 premiere of Doctor Who. This wasn’t going to be a simple situation. And it wasn’t. When the kid said his name I’m ashamed of how long it took me to remember who he was. After all, the last time we saw him was in the finale of Series 4, the episode titled Journey’s End. Tennant’s last episode.
“Tell me the name of the boy who isn’t going to die today!”
“Davros. My name is Davros.”
When Colony Sarff searches the Shadow Proclamation and Karn for the Doctor and neither the Shadow Architect nor Ohila claims to know where the he is (even though we know the Doctor was on Karn), you realize just how serious he is about not being found. Colony Sarff was a nice creepy addition to the Doctor Who universe. A man made out of snakes? I think I found Indiana Jones’s worst nightmare.
And next, enter Clara Oswald who is now the longest running companion. At first I wasn’t sure we needed the scene of her teaching class. The show could have jumped right to UNIT and introduced Clara by having Kate Stewart say something like “we brought help.” But now that I think about it, the school scene with Clara was needed to show that she’s trying to move on. Move on from the Doctor and from Danny. Even though she patched things up with the Doctor, she was never really like the other companions who would stay on the TARDIS with him. Clara goes on an adventure and comes straight home. Either way, she can’t move on, not yet. When she arrived at UNIT HQ it was nice seeing Kate Stewart again but I missed seeing Osgood who we know through comments from Moffat, is coming back.
I thought the planes were being held in the air by the Daleks somehow, but when Missy popped up, I screamed. It was a manly scream, not high pitched and girly at all. The Doctors two biggest adversaries in one episode? Missy isn’t dead. It was Christmas. The sit down between Missy and Clara was great, especially when you realized that Missy/The Mistress/The Master is considered to be the Doctor’s best friend. Something I picked up on in this scene is that there’s still hope for Danny. Missy says “how’s your boyfriend? Still dead?” If the point of bringing Danny up was to just get a reaction out of Clara, then Moffat didn’t do a good enough job of showing that. This was foreshadowing, plain and simple.
After that scene it was time to see the Doctor again who was bordering on Matt Smith levels of goofy, which was fun to see. But the party was short lived when Colony Sarff showed up again to put a stop to things and get the Doctor to go see a dying Davros. The trip to the supposed space station was quick and uninteresting which was fine by me. It was only used as a tool to show them traveling. Any more would have been unneeded. I really liked how well the Doctor and Missy communicated in this short part. I’d really like to see them do an unconventional buddy cop type episode later this year. Maybe give the Doctor hope that he could save her because you know that somewhere he’s holding out hope that The Mistress isn’t the monster she appears to be.
The next big shock was something I didn’t see coming at all. I didn’t know it was going to be Darvos in the first scene but I knew something was amiss. My jaw quite literally dropped when Missy and Clara discovered they weren’t on a space station, but on Skaro, the Dalek home world. The next scene with Missy and Clara talking to Dalek Supreme was interesting. Missy tried to get them to not destroy the TARDIS but to let her pilot it so they can take over the universe. I think that was a trick. When it turns out they’re both alive next episode (come on, you know they’re alive too) I bet you the reason they’re still alive has something to do with Missy’s actions.
With both Clara and Missy “dead” the Doctor flips out, which we don’t get to see. Instead we see what happens next. We go back to the beginning with the boy in the middle of the minefield and the Doctor returns, but this time he has a Dalek gunstick. That is why I say he flips out. Chances are he goes crazy on them and takes the gunstick from a dead Dalek to return to kill the boy, so he can save Clara and Missy. I don’t think he’ll kill the kid. We all know the Doctor doesn’t kill, or at least doesn’t do it on purpose. He may allow something to happen that results in death, but he himself doesn’t pull the trigger. So he’ll probably end up helping the kid, thinking he can change Darvos. But that, my friends, is the next episode.
So before I go I want to make a few obvious predictions for Series 9. We all know that this is Clara’s last season so expect to see the whole Danny situation resolved. Missy is back and since she was so loved last season I believe she’ll have a pretty big story this season too, if not having her be the bad guy in the finale for a second year in a row. Moffat already hinted that Osgood comes back and I hope and pray that she’s the next companion. I expect to see her made over for it though as all the companions have been sexually appealing. So she’ll just lose the jacket and let her hair down and boom! New companion. On to Series 10. Well folks, that’s it for me. I’ll see you next week for episode 2.