Your Sewers Are Revolting

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 out next this time!

Consider Davros

Mercy?

No? How about Mercy!

Not quite what I meant...

How about...

There we go.

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.

Pictured: The beginning of The Witch's Familiar

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...

Pictured: The ending of The Witch's Familiar

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?

"Touch me!"

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?

"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!"

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.

"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.

"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.

What a brilliant hypothetical victory!

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.

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?

"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.

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.

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?

So is this the Magician and the Witch? Who is the familiar... Clara?

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

Overall

"Consider the Doctor" was cool.

The Doctor-as-Davros was fun.

Clara in a Dalek suit was entertaining.

"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!

3/10

NEXT: UNDER THE LAKE

Ghosts!

Dude, Where's My Skaro?

Because why have one villain when you can have ALL OF THEM!

The Story

Prologue: The War

A battle rages. Ships fly overhead. Soldiers shoot at them with arrows. A child runs across the battlefield. A battlefield strewn with handmines.

...wait a minute.... Did that guy just say "handmines"?

...okay then.

A child, then. Trapped amid a field of grippy eye-things. No hope of escape, no resources, no friends.

But hope shows itself, in the form, of a two-hearted, twelve-faced, blue-box-laden time traveller.

The Doctor is here to save the day! And all he asks in return is the name of the boy he is saving, which the boy is all too happy to give.

"Davros. My name is Davros."

Sorry kid, but you are not going to age well.

Chapter 1: The Search

A creature named "Kalanisaf" is on a mission: He must find the Doctor, for he has a message from his employer.

"I've had all these stripes on my face my whole life, and I need a specialist to get rid of them. WHERE IS THE DERMATOLOGIST?"

He tries the Maldovarian, the Shadow Proclamation, and Karn, but to no avail. Upon his return to Davros, now wheelchair-bound, three-eyed, and dying, he informs him of his failure, and Davros instructs him to seek the Doctor's friends.

Chapter 2: Journeys Halt

The planes have stopped moving! UNIT convenes as many noted experts as it can find, including Chief Scientific Officer Kate Stewart, and Chief English Teacher Clara Oswald. We learn pretty quickly that the stopped planes are a message from a rogue Time Lord Lady to whom we said a cheerful farewell two episodes ago.

She really let all that immortality go to her head.

The Doctor has vanished, leaving behind nothing but a will, and Missy is determined to find out why he sent it. Clara meets her for tea, and, while Missy has a hard time giving up her murdering habit, she does appear to be genuine in her desire to save the Doctor. She and Clara join forces, and use a very sophisticated algorithm to find the Doctor.

Pictured: Algorithms 101 final project

When a Time Lord is supposed to die, he (or she) is supposed to find somewhere to meditate, repent, and accept. In other words, a crisis point without a crisis. The algorithm pictured above is so amazing that it is able to weed out all of the actual crises, and is left with only one, a massive part in Medieval England.

Missy is so delighted that she tries to kiss Clara.

And their kiss is so amazing that they both disappear.

Chapter 3: Journeys Begun

Our heroes (yup, I guess Missy is a hero now) have manipulated themselves into a tournament in the Middle Ages. And at last, they find the Doctor, putting on a rock concert several centuries earlier.

After the Doctor's monologue about the word "Dude", Kalanisaf shows up. His mission is finally a success as he has found the one he seeks!

He was so excited that his face slid apart.

Okay, so Kalanisaf is actually Colony Sarff, a colony of snakes that hides under a cloak and takes a human shape. He has been sent on a mission to capture, and the Doctor seems ready to oblige. Clara demands that she and Missy get to stay in the episode, so Colony Sarff beams them all up to his their shuttle for a trip to visit dear old Uncle Davros.

Chapter 4: The Invisible Planet

After an interminable stint in a Space Hospital's waiting room, Colony Sarff collects the Doctor and off they go. While the Doctor and Davros spend the rest of the episode reminiscing about the times they've shared, Missy and Clara go on their own adventure, beginning with a rather standard Space Walk.

One could be forgiven for thinking that this is just another example of Missy's proclivity for not dying, but in fact, it's just that she's walking on regular ground, breathing regular air. The only twitch is that the planet, the buildings (except for the hospital) and the atmosphere, all happen to be invisible. But not for long, once you've been breathing it for long enough, you can see it too...

 It's Skaro! Which means Daleks! Which means Clara and Missy get taken back inside pretty quickly and exterminated... with the Doctor as literally a captive audience.

But far be it for him to overreact.

The Review

Holy Cameo! The Magician's Apprentice showed us...

Kaleds

The Maldovarian, from Seasons 5 and 6 (home to Dorian, may his head rest in peace that box somewhere)

Now with a red tint!

The Shadow Proclamation

Also with a red tint!

The Shadow Architect

Now with bigger hair!

The Sisterhood of Karn

Kate Stewart

And, of course, a Dalek 1.0!

Extermin-ONE

I enjoyed that. As hectic as it was, it was fun to see so many different callbacks, even giving us a smidge (the Shadow Proclamation) from Tennant's era.

But as much fun as it was to be tossed around from familiar place to familiar face, it didn't quite make for satisfactory viewing. The problem is that for much of The Magician's Apprentice, I found myself asking "What was the point of that?"

"The point is up there!"

For instance, the planes stopping.

Not only are they stopped, but they're also 25,000 feet below where they're supposed to be.

What was the point of that? Missy didn't accomplish anything with the plane-stopping that she couldn't have done by simply walking into UNIT Headquarters.

And if you don't believe me, then riddle me this: In all honesty, by the time you got to the spacewalk scene, did you even remember the plane thing?

...Handmines are all liars anyway...

Or what about Colony Sarff's expeditions to various planets to find him, only to have Davros at the end tell him that he was going about it all wrong. Couldn't he have just started by finding the Doctor's friends?

"I alwaysss ssspeak with this annoying hisssss, and I need help to fickssss it. WHERE ISSSS THE SSSPEECH PATHOLOGISSST?"

Come to think of it. What was the point of Colony Sarff at all? I mean, I get that we need a messenger from Davros, but what was the point of him being a giant snake colony?

Also, with no mouth movement. Seriously, pictured here is the most open his mouth ever is.

Why go to the bother of having a giant snake that talks on-camera when you're not going to animate the mouth movement at all?

Why does Colony Sarff have eyes, a nose, and a mouth in his (their?) human form.

What is the point of Sarff being a democracy?

Admittedly, this is the first part of a two-parter, so some of these questions could all get resolved in The Witch's Familiar. I guess we'll see then, won't we.

Speaking of familiars... and witches...

Why were they even in The Magician's Apprentice? They spent most of the episode apart from the Doctor, and didn't really do anything. Sure they discovered stuff and had that (pretty awesome) walk through space, but you could cut them out of this episode without changing anything.

BUT WAIT! You say, in all caps because you have an irresistible urge to shout. THEY WERE THE ONES WHO LED COLONY SARFF TO THE DOCTOR. THEY HAD TO BE THERE.

Okay, first of all, stop shouting - I'm right here. Second, check out this guy:

"I pledge allegiance, to the flag..."

He was with the Doctor during his whole Medieval death party. Davros did not need Colony Sarff to find the Doctor - Bors had already found him!

Nitpick time!

See that couple over there? This area is almost certainly secured, as shown by the men in suits and the snipers. So how did the couple get there with their dog?

How about this:

Why could they see the hospital when everything else was invisible? Shouldn't the hospital have been invisible too? 

And when they were approaching it, and it looked like a space station, it was spinning waaaaaay too fast to be a planet...

Alright, I'm done complaining. The Magician's Apprentice did something absolutely amazing. Something that I honestly did not think was possible.

It brought Missy back, after a one-episode absence, and made me glad they did.

And I actually believed it.

I loved, absolutely loved, seeing Missy as something other than a pure antagonist. Her camp is annoying, and I didn't like it before, but once she's forced to take something seriously - once she actually cares about something, Michelle Gomez is fantastic!

Seeing Missy lose control is an element of her character that we've not seen before. That alone makes me glad that they brought her back from the dead.

...for one episode. After that shot, I'm sure she's gone for good...

And as long as we're talking about great acting, I cannot speak enough praise for Jenna Coleman's Clara... again. She was thrust through a wide array of emotions, from hatred to worry, from wonder to bewilderment, and she played them all perfectly.

Pictured: Pure, unadulterated hatred.

I'll also commend almost each one of those big scenes. The stopped plane saga, while perhaps pointless, was a lot of fun to watch, as was the reveal that Missy was behind it.

And in terms of sheer epicness, what could possibly top the spacewalk-turned-Skaro?

Honorable mentions to the battle scene at the beginning with the handmines, and the cafe scene with Clara and Missy.

Those were some awesome scenes.

Pity they weren't connected to each other.

Overall

It's a challenge to take a lot of big, bold sequences and tie them together into a cohesive whole. And since it's a challenge, why bother?

The Magician's Apprentice had huge scenes - the Missy reveal, the handmine battle, the hospital spacewalk. Those were so cool, so unique, so Doctor Who. And who can give anything but praise to Clara's acting, and the range that she has to go through from seeing Missy to having to actually work with her. Huge kudos to Coleman for not making us doubt that for a second.

But this wasn't an episode. It was a series of big, dramatic shorts, connected to each other by the flimsiest of circumstance at best, and at worst, not at all. If only there was some visual from this episode that representing things related that way...

Ewwww....

5/10

NEXT: THE WITCH'S FAMILIAR

The secret to defeating Davros is to find where's he's the most ticklish.