The much awaited season 9 premiere of BBC’s “Doctor Who” finally aired, and it was heartbreakingly good. “I get them all muddled up”. The days where it was okay for a companion to serve a single season goal and move on? The Doctor was written into the Daleks’ past in 1975, and they were written into the Doctor’s past in 1988, both to great creative effect. Is the Doctor responsible for the rise of the Daleks? In “The Empty Child”/”The Doctor Dances”, the Doctor and Rose find themselves in the London Blitz opposing a cloud of nano-machines who mistakenly think that human faces should be part gas mask.
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The previous lowest audience is the 5.5 million who watched on the first weekend of 2011, when Matt Smith was the Doctor and the show returned was returning for the second half of that year’s run.
It was recently announced that Jenna Coleman, who plays Clara Oswald in the show, is to leave at the end of the series.
Described as the “outer space police” by The Tenth Doctor the universal government body returns to uphold their responsibility in galactic law, which means that their appearance in the episode could mean that the Doctor’s current adventures will lead to bigger implications in the universe. Davros even makes a statement about how he is finally seeing “his” Doctor again after all this time.
The B-plot of “The Magician’s Apprentice” was somewhat interesting, but definitely boring when strung in with everything else that was happening. Stars Peter Capaldi, Jenna Coleman, and Michelle Gomez have done an unbelievable amount of press interviews in the last few months, along with executive producer Steven Moffat. Missy is sending a message to get Clara’s attention. When the skies of Earth are frozen by a mysterious alien force, Clara needs her friend. Being the first episode of the season, its pretty safe to assume Clara and Missy aren’t really dead. Maybe my expectations are too high? She’s left the show, and then changed her mind. For those of you who have yet to watch it, and don’t want to ruin the surprises, suffice it to say that this is a Doctor very much returning to its roots, but dragging in the best new elements of the show along the way.
The Fifth Doctor, Tegan and Turlough are forced to land on 20th century Earth, where they discover that the Daleks have released Davros from his cryogenic imprisonment to find a cure for a virus used by the Movellans to defeat them.
At the end of last season, Missy was vaporised by a rogue Cyberman, while the Doctor began a new search for Gallifrey, the home world of the Time Lords.
Like the Doctor, the Master is a Time Lord and has gone through several incarnations – the most recent before Gomez being John Simm. This episode is one of many two-parters this season, so the imminent conclusion is still a week away, but its hard to believe with all the work he’s put into redeeming himself, he’ll actually go dark in the most deplorable way possible.
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After writing all that, I don’t want to make “The Magician’s Apprentice” sound lousy, because it isn’t. “You said you wanted an axe fight”. We’ve already seen the “zapped to death” gag from Missy, so its entirely possible she and Clara worked something out ahead of time in order to trick the Daleks and regroup with The Doctor.
