The Story
Consider the Doctor
The Doctor trapped. The Doctor alone. The Doctor angry, at the apparent loss of his friend and travelling associate Clara.
In other words, the Doctor doing his best Davros impression.
So the Daleks can't harm him and he escapes?
No, he's the Doctor. His chair turned out to be a pit of snakes.
Once he is returned to Davros's room, the Doctor and Davros have a heart to heart. The Doctor (seemingly) decides that Davros isn't so bad after all and gives him a bit of regeneration energy, just to get him through the night.
But it's all a lie! The cables that the Doctor tries to feed the regeneration energy into are actually Colony Sarff, from last week, and he holds the Doctor captive while leeching his life force to hand over to the Daleks!
Will the Doctor survive? Will the Daleks regenerate into David Tennant? Find out next this time!
Consider the Mistress
She has a pointy stick!
And a brooch!
And a gun!
Which she uses to free the Doctor.
But the Daleks are still renewed, and are still going to take over the universe!
...Right?
Will the Doctor and Missy escape? Are the Daleks truly insurpassable now? Why is Missy making that face? Find out next this time!
Consider the Daleks
Both the young, energetic ones, safely encased in their tanks...
And the older Daleks, abandoned by the youth, and resentful of the youth of today.
They don't get along. But they all got regenerated.
And you know what the Daleks' key strategic weakness is?
The dead outnumber the living.
And that was the Doctor's plan all along! Bring down the Dalek Empire from within!
Consider Clara
She's upside-down.
Then she's right-side-up.
Then she's handcuffed.
Then she's a Dalek.
Then she's not a Dalek
But how did Clara get out of the Dalek? She said the word "mercy"!
But how could she make a Dalek say "Mercy"? Find outnext this time!
Consider Davros
Mercy?
No? How about Mercy!
Not quite what I meant...
How about...
There we go.
So the Daleks can't harm him and he escapes?
No, he's the Doctor. His chair turned out to be a pit of snakes.
But it's all a lie! The cables that the Doctor tries to feed the regeneration energy into are actually Colony Sarff, from last week, and he holds the Doctor captive while leeching his life force to hand over to the Daleks!
Consider the Mistress
She has a pointy stick!
But the Daleks are still renewed, and are still going to take over the universe!
...Right?
Consider the Daleks
Both the young, energetic ones, safely encased in their tanks...
And you know what the Daleks' key strategic weakness is?
The dead outnumber the living.
Consider Clara
She's upside-down.
But how could she make a Dalek say "Mercy"? Find out
Consider Davros
Mercy?
How about...
The Review
Okay, show of hands. Who thought at the end of last episode that the Doctor was actually about to exterminate the little kid?
Pshhhh. Handmine are all liars.
So about The Witch's Familiar... To summarize, the Doctor stars out in the room with Davros by the cables, apparently knowing exactly what they were and what to do with them.
We go through a big, dazzling, and ultimately irrelevant scene with the Doctor in a chair, then a bunch of genuine heart-to-heart scenes between Davros and the Doctor, and then...
And... we're back here.
The Doctor knew what Davros was planning, with the cables. He knew from the start. Then why, when Davros said "touch the cables", did he not just grab them?
Or even better. Right at the beginning, when the Doctor was angry over the "death" of Clara, why didn't he, in a rage, transmit the regeneration energy right into the sewers?
Seriously, the whole episode was a build-up to a climax that either the protagonist or the antagonist could have initiated in Minute 1.
Of course, it couldn't have happened then, because we would have missed the long scenes where the two gentlemen have their hearts-to-heart. But even that. The feels that we got. All that genuine emotion between the Doctor and Davros? All trickery. On both sides.
So literally every moment that the Doctor and Davros shared; every single part of that story until the very last moment when the Doctor finally took hold of the cables, was deception. And from a narrative point of view, filler. No consequence at all.
Fine, once you wipe away the inconsistent fluff, the Doctor's plan was pretty clever. Take advantage of the resentful nature of the over-aged Daleks to have you greatest enemy crush itself from within.
But two questions from that:
I also enjoyed the whole scene with Missy and Clara capturing a Dalek. It provided a good setup for the finale to show that the aged Daleks were cranky and ready to swarm.
So about The Witch's Familiar... To summarize, the Doctor stars out in the room with Davros by the cables, apparently knowing exactly what they were and what to do with them.
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| Pictured: The beginning of The Witch's Familiar |
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| Pictured: The ending of The Witch's Familiar |
The Doctor knew what Davros was planning, with the cables. He knew from the start. Then why, when Davros said "touch the cables", did he not just grab them?
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| "Touch me!" |
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| "I'm so mad right now that I'm going to abandon the plan that I had to utterly obliterate the Daleks in favor of going on an ineffectual rampage and then returning to the original plan!" |
Of course, it couldn't have happened then, because we would have missed the long scenes where the two gentlemen have their hearts-to-heart. But even that. The feels that we got. All that genuine emotion between the Doctor and Davros? All trickery. On both sides.
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| "You mean you didn't mean any of it?" |
So literally every moment that the Doctor and Davros shared; every single part of that story until the very last moment when the Doctor finally took hold of the cables, was deception. And from a narrative point of view, filler. No consequence at all.
Fine, once you wipe away the inconsistent fluff, the Doctor's plan was pretty clever. Take advantage of the resentful nature of the over-aged Daleks to have you greatest enemy crush itself from within.
But two questions from that:
- How did the Doctor know that the regeneration energy was tied to the genetics? It could just as easily have been tied to the Dalekanium tanks, in which case his plan would have backfired.
- So the Doctor did magically know that. How did Davros not???
Seriously, there is no way that the mad genius behind the invention of the Daleks could have come up with this amazing plan without realizing how spectacularly it would backfire..
I don't want to focus too much on the negatives here, because there were a few things that The Witch's Familiar did quite well. As irrelevant as the scene with the Doctor in Davros's chair was, it was quite funny. And also tragic. The Doctor's rant, that Clara had better not be dead, was beautiful, and Capaldi showed a delightfully serious side. The Doctor, not in control.
I don't want to focus too much on the negatives here, because there were a few things that The Witch's Familiar did quite well. As irrelevant as the scene with the Doctor in Davros's chair was, it was quite funny. And also tragic. The Doctor's rant, that Clara had better not be dead, was beautiful, and Capaldi showed a delightfully serious side. The Doctor, not in control.
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| "If Clara's really dead, then you can say goodbye to the left side of your screen." |
I'll also highlight Clara and Missy. While they didn't contribute anything to The Witch's Familiar beyond filler, their filler was highly entertaining.
- "Consider the Doctor"
- "Between us and him is everything the deadliest race in all of history can throw at us. We, on the other hand, have a pointy stick."
- "Make your own stick."
The "Consider the Doctor" scene was really well done. Stylistic, fun, clever twist. And it served the purpose of explaining both how Clara and Missy survived last week and how Missy survived last season.
Although it was kind of jarring to spend the first five minutes on a story that either never happened, or happened so long ago that it's not part of this story.
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| What a brilliant hypothetical victory! |
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| The Case of the Leaky Dalek |
Although... (why do I have to keep saying that?) The older Daleks swarm in, kill the younger Dalek, blow up the tank, and then... leave?
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| "Hey Clara, you need protection from this explosion even though it doesn't damage the exploding thing at all." "Are you just trying to get close to me?" ".....no..." |
Why is the tank unscathed? Why is Clara able to roll around the sewers without harm? The canned Daleks don't seem to be able to recognize her - why can the sewer Daleks know not to target her?
Finally, that scene with the Doctor figuring out that Clara-Dalek was really Clara. That was fun. I had let myself believe that Missy had reformed a bit over the last two episodes, that she had become "good", so of course we had to see that she was still up to her devious ways.
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| Pictured: A very elaborate, slightly metaphorical game of Stop-Hitting-Yourself |
Which was all fine and good until the point where the Doctor tells Missy to run and then turns to Clara. Repeating "I'm sorry Clara. I'm so sorry," he begins, with great focus, to try to remove the things wired into her brain. This will obviously be hard, and some screentime will be devoted to figuring out how he saves her.
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| This will NOT be easy. |
And then six seconds later... literally six seconds later... She is free from the Dalek tank and on the run.
So we have bad storytelling on the small scale, within a scene, and on the medium, across the whole episode. But what about the grander scheme? The Witch's Familiar was part 2 - how well did it complete the narrative begun in The Magician's Apprentice?
Not at all, I should think. The entire pathos of The Magician's Apprentice was the Doctor's guilt over abandoning kid-Davros on a battlefield, and The Witch's Familiar, while paying some lip-service to that, was actually about the Doctor's secret plan to regenerate the Daleks to death. Neither episode had anything to do with each other, aside from the tenuous cliffhanger of Clara's "demise".
I suppose it makes sense
So we have bad storytelling on the small scale, within a scene, and on the medium, across the whole episode. But what about the grander scheme? The Witch's Familiar was part 2 - how well did it complete the narrative begun in The Magician's Apprentice?
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| So is this the Magician and the Witch? Who is the familiar... Clara? |
I suppose it makes sense
Overall
"Consider the Doctor" was cool.
The Doctor-as-Davros was fun.
Clara in a Dalek suit was entertaining.
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| "Peekaboo!" |
And I liked the way they tied together the ancient zombie-Daleks that Clara and Missy encountered with the ultimate resolution of the episode.
But that's not enough. The scenes in an episode need to have a cause-and-effect relationship. There needs to be some sense that the end follows from the beginning, and that just didn't exist here.
Let's ask the Doctor how he felt.
Oh, he fell asleep. Must've been bored. Clara?
Her too...
...Davros?
Gee, I guess they were all bored of the lack of a coherent narrative.
Better luck next time!
But that's not enough. The scenes in an episode need to have a cause-and-effect relationship. There needs to be some sense that the end follows from the beginning, and that just didn't exist here.
Let's ask the Doctor how he felt.
...Davros?
Better luck next time!
3/10
NEXT: UNDER THE LAKE
Ghosts!
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