Doctor Who: The Magician's Apprentice (9x01)

Well, we're back. Not only is this the start of a new season of Doctor Who, it also marks the beginning of fall premiere season, meaning I've got to get back into the swing of writing these things. I'm going to try something a little different, starting with today's review. Instead of going in to an in-depth plot summary, I'm just going to jump straight in to pros and cons and talk about what happened throughout. We'll see how it goes. As always, however, we're going to start with the negatives.

Cons:

This episode suffered from a bit of Moffat-itis, although I am happy to say the symptoms are so far mild. One of my biggest complaints about Moffat as show-runner is his need to "epic-ify" everything. Now, for a series premiere, I'm rather okay with that. But I must admit it gets annoying when we continually focus on the Doctor as the center of events. Everything is about him. About how extraordinary he is. I guess I miss the occasional simple episode where the Doctor and his companion travel somewhere for fun and get swept up in somebody else's drama. I don't like the grandness implied by the Doctor's presence.

What the hell are they doing with Clara? Only Jenna Coleman's acting has saved this character from being one of the most truly awful things to come out of Doctor Who in a long while. She is seriously nothing but a pawn! In this episode, she finds the Doctor, and then goes with him when he turns himself over to Davros, and then gets herself trapped and killed. She doesn't solve anything, figure anything out other than that the Doctor is probably at a party, and she is just generally useless as a companion. When she died, I didn't even feel particularly sad, because the visual cues in the episode kept saying "wait for it... wait for it..." and so I can't even register this as a character death until I see what next week's episode brings. Here's the thing about Clara: in the beginning, she was a puzzle for the Doctor to solve, which was, as I've discussed, annoying. But now, it's flipped. The Doctor is a puzzle for her to solve. She's always trying to get inside his head, think like he thinks, so that she can figure out what to do about him. This is another one of those things that I always find problematic. The Doctor is an enigma, sure, but it seems like he purposefully obfuscates his intentions just to piss people off. Why? I don't get it.

We briefly got to see the Shadow Proclamation people in this episode - at the beginning, Clara notices that all of the planes have stopped, and she is called in by the Shadow Proclamation to try and figure out what's going on. That's fine in theory, but we spent so little real time with them, that it all felt like an unnecessary prologue to the real business with Missy, Davros, and the Doctor.

Similarly, I felt like there were some other plotty things that were overcrowding what was, for the most part, a clean and clear episode. Like, why did we have the part where Sarff, a snake creature, talks to people on the planet Karn? What was the point of that little detour? For that mater, Sarff was pretty cool, but was he necessary at all?

Missy reappears to try and find the Doctor, because she's worried about him. Okay... fair enough... but how the hell is she alive again? Now, I'm sure we'll be dealing with this in the future. Or... I'm not sure. Because Moffat likes to pick and choose which mysteries he wants to draw out and which ones he's just going to completely ignore. Another one of the significant flaws I find under his show-running.

But I've got to be honest. I did enjoy this episode, and I felt like it was a fairly strong opener. Let's jump in to some of the good stuff.

Pros:

The story itself. It's not needlessly complex, despite the few small problems I mentioned above. It's pretty straightforward. We see, in the prologue, that the Doctor once met Davros (future creator of the Daleks) when he was a young boy. The Doctor had to make the impossible choice as to whether or not to save his life. Later, an ancient, dying Davros wishes to speak to the Doctor one last time. The Doctor surrenders himself, and is forced to watch as first Missy, and then Clara, are killed on the planet Skaro, the home world of the Daleks. That's really all the necessary stuff you need to know. It creates clear conflict, it brings together the past and the future, and re-introduces one of the Doctor's greatest enemies without seeming too gimmicky. All in all, very strong.

I liked the way the prologue left it ambiguous as to whether or not the Doctor was going to save poor little boy Davros, but later we see that he did indeed leave him at the mercy of the hand mines (those things were awesome, by the way). It adds a complex undercurrent to the episode - is leaving Davros to his fate what turned Davros into the monster he later became? Maybe, if the Doctor had saved his life, Davros would have found faith in the world that he otherwise couldn't have discovered. Maybe he would have been a good person. The Doctor plays God, leaving a future criminal to his death, and it results in his losing two of the people in the world that mean to the most to him: Missy and Clara.

Let's talk about Missy, shall we? Continued props to Michelle Gomez, of course, for a superb acting job. She manages to play up the crazy parts of Missy, without overdoing it. She manages to make me believe that she really cares about the Doctor's fate, but not enough to risk her own life to save him. Most of the best humor of this episode came from Missy, and in particular from Missy's interplay with Clara. One of the most fascinating things this episode had to offer was the strangeness of the friendship between the Doctor and Missy. I love that the Doctor gave Missy his confessional, instead of Clara. It makes sense - the Master and the Doctor go way, way back - despite all of their intense fighting and enmity, they share a deeper bond than the Doctor has with anybody else.

Davros. Good decision to bring him back. He's still just as creepy as ever, but now with the added twist of the Doctor's earlier betrayal, we're seeing a new light to his evilness. One of the (few) things I like about Moffat's larger themes is the continued emphasis that the Doctor's hatred of the Daleks actually makes him more like a Dalek himself. The Doctor is all about compassion and kindness, which is everything the Daleks fight against. But in hating the Daleks, the Doctor has an uncomfortable connection to them, since hatred is what fuels the Daleks. That's actually rather interesting. I mean, I'm a bit annoyed that it's being hammered into our heads with a brick, but still. It's not a bad theme at all.

The deaths of Missy and Clara were both tremendously underwhelming, which means we'll probably be seeing them again. Even so, I did really love the part where the Doctor literally dropped to his knees and begged Davros to save Clara. That was quite touching. As was the hug that Clara and the Doctor shared earlier. Clara might be a stick in the mud, but I do find something lovely in the relationship between our two leads. They seem to have such genuine affection for each other, and it really shines through Coleman and Capaldi's performances.

The party scene was quite silly, but I still think I'll finish up this review by talking about it. The Doctor and his electric guitar solo, and his tank, and his introducing the word "dude" anachronistically to a group of 10th century renaissance folk... all of it was great stuff. This is where Moffat shines as a writer. He has a knack for the quippy humor.

I guess that's where we'll stop. A strong opening, with some interesting potential story threads to pull on next week. Still, we'll have to keep an eye on this season's Moffat-itis, and pray the case doesn't become terminal.

8/10