Doctor Who Series 9 Episode 1 review - The Magician's Apprentice

Doctor Who is back on the telly with a 9^th season. With Peter Capaldi in the chair as the Doctor, Jenna Coleman playing Clara and Missy being back as well, we’re in for a wild ride.

In this episode, the Doctor must face a mistake he made and a moral quandary he’s been facing since he was Tom Baker.

We have a couple of miraculous survivors. First up is Missy but… She’s the master, dying and coming back to life without any explanation whatsoever is sort of his/her shtick. We also have Davros, the last I saw of him he was in a ship that was about to explode. Then again he’s escaped death a few times without explanation too.

This time he’s dying for realsies, I think. And he’s called over the Doctor. Back in very early Skaro we see the Doctor give a young Davros his sonic, but abandoning him after finding out who he was (or possibly coming back to kill, but I can’t tell whether or not that’s in the future) Davros wants the Doctor to admit that his compassion is a weakness.

Meanwhile we have Missy who thanks to tech she pulled out of her vagina has the ability to stop planes in mid-air. Normally this would be a significant event of some sort but this was just Missy showing off.

She wants to find the Doctor who had been out of contact. She spends the entire episode regarding the Doctor as a ‘friend.’ The relationship between the two has always been complicated but I’ve never known the Doctor consider the Master a ‘friend’ before. A necessary ally, yes. The only other surviving members of his species, yes, but ‘friend’ is a little far. But then this version of Missy is nuttier than a fruit cake. And so is this version of the Doctor.

Yeah, the episode ends with the Daleks killing Clara and Missy. I’m spoiling this because the chances of them being actually dead are less than none whatsoever (you don’t bring a character back from the dead with no explanation just to kill them off again)

A lot happens in this episode, but too often the things happening aren’t plot related. Serval of them could’ve worked as stories of their own. But we’ve got to retread Genesis of the Daleks (except with Davros in the know this time). And yes, that’s pretty much what this is. If the Doctor kills Davros, he can stop the genocide the Daleks will go onto cause but will doom the people the people of Skaro to an everlasting war.

In spite of these flaws, I do like this episode, and I liked the references to former encounters with Davros. My biggest problem is the same problem I’ve had the Daleks since Moffat took over. What happened to the Daleks being all but wiped out in the Time War?

Rating 7.5/10

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