The Magician’s Apprentice/The Witch’s Familiar Review

The Magician’s Apprentice/The Witch’s Familiar

The gang is back

Story 254, Episodes 814 and 815, Series 9 Episodes 1 and 2

Doctor: The Twelfth Doctor

Companion: Kate Stewart, Clara Oswald

After a long long wait Doctor Who is back in Series 9! Old faces meet for the first time in a spectacular two-parter story.

The Review

Davros: the deadliest person ever to live

It starts with the Doctor meeting a young child on a battlefield,  and preparing to save him before realizing: it’s Davros. The Doctor leaves the child and centuries later as dying Davros sends snake-man to find him, giving us a look old friends the Shadow Proclamation and the Sisterhood of Carn. Clara is teaching when she notices that the planes in the sky have stopped. This leads her to UNIT which leads her to Missy with the news: the Doctor is dying and she has his confession. They go to the middle ages to find him.

A fourteenth-life crisis

The Doctor is rocking out with future technology, and when he hears of Davros’ summons decides to go. There the Doctor is trapped on a rejuvenated Skaro, and has to see Clara and Missy vaporized. Of course they’re fine: Missy explains how in a brilliant flashback where she shows the Doctor avoid crisis. While the Doctor temporarily steals Davros’ chair Missy takes Clara into the sewers of dead liquified Daleks and has her jump in one to get back into Skaro to track down the Doctor.

Davros rejuvenated

The Doctor is put back with Davros, and Davros emotionally convinces him to use some regeneration energy to keep him alive a bit longer. It actually works on all Daleks, but even the dead ones which vastly outnumber the living and attack them. Missy is unable to get the Doctor to kill Clara in the Dalek, and with sonic sunglasses the Doctor and Clara and back in the TARDIS. The confession dial is a secret for another time, but the Doctor survives the first meeting of the Master and Davros.

Missy works her charm on some Daleks

The pacing in this story is as good as I’ve ever seen from Doctor Who, and kept you thrilled from start to finish. The highlight again was Michelle Gomez who continues to play Missy so well I want her to appear as often as possible. Julian Bleach turned in another fined performance as Davros, and the regulars continued to impressive. This episode was Doctor Who distilled to its core: funny, thrilling, and with the charm that only Doctor Who can provide.

The Master AND Davros in the same episode! Even the 50th Anniversary didn’t have that! If Series 9 holds to this quality this will the best series ever.

10/10. I’ve never given one of these before, but I honestly cannot think of a flaw. This story is Doctor Who at it’s absolute best. And this was only the intro story!

The Doctor in awe at this story’s incredibleness

Dark Water/Death in Heaven Review

Dark Water/Death in Heaven

The universe’s greatest rivalry begins anew

Story 252, Episodes 811 & 812, Series 8 Episodes 11 & 12

Doctor: The Twelfth Doctor

Companion: Kate Stewart, Clara Oswald

The Doctor and Clara go to Hell and find some nasty robots, an old friend, and the afterlife in the finale to Series 8.

The Review

Danny’s last moment

This story is monumental, and starts with a bang. Danny Pink is dead, dying ordinarily in a car accident. Clara meets the Doctor again and tries to force him to break the laws of time to save Danny, but the Doctor gets out of it in a clever dream sequence. Clara takes the TARDIS to where she’ll Danny again, and it’s a creepy mausoleum with sitting dead bodies in water tanks. We meet a very kissy MISI and a Doctor who explains they’re at 3W. The dead live on and still feel what they’re bodies feel, so they are cared for in the afterlife by 3W.

Hello Master!

Danny’s not dead, well, he’s dead, but found himself in the Nethersphere. It’s just ‘more life’ than he was expecting. Telling Clara to stay away and seeing the kid he killed as a soldier, he heads to delete himself. The Doctor sees ‘MISI’ again and the bodies are seen to truly be Cybermen, MISI is really Missy. As the Doctor runs out of St. Paul’s Cathedral with Cybermen on his tail, Missy is really…the Master. He’s back! Well, she.

The Doctor and UNIT

Part two picks up there, starting with Clara saying she’s the Doctor to avoid death and the opening hilariously having her and Capaldi’s roles reversed. UNIT comes to confront the Cybermen and Missy. The Cybermen explode into clouds that start to infect graveyards. The new President of Earth Doctor is taken aboard UNIT’s plane where he learns: the dead are being turned into Cybermen. Missy darkly kills Tumblr-character Osgood, reveals she kept Clara with the Doctor, and buggers off.

All the dead are Cybermen

After a cool scene where the Doctor falls from cruising altitude into his TARDIS, Clara awakes in a graveyard as Cybermen rise from their graves, and sees she was saved by CyberDanny. The Doctor comes by and has to have Danny’s emotions inhibited to see Missy’s next plot. Missy flies in and reveals the truth: the army was for the Doctor. The Doctor rejects her, seeing that Danny loves Clara even without emotions. Danny takes command of the Cybermen and they destroy the clouds, ending the scheme.

“Hugging is just is a way to hide your face.”

Missy tells the Doctor where Gallifrey is and then is vaporized by a lone Cyberman…the Brigadier, saving the day one last time. Clara and the Doctor meet two weeks later and Clara says Danny’s back and everything’s fine, the Doctor saying he found Gallifrey. Both are complete lies. They part ways and the Doctor sits bleakly until Santa Claus bursts in and insists it cannot end like that! And that’s a wrap on Series 8.

Chris Addison and Michelle Gomez were fantastic

The first part was a thrilling set-up, and though part two did not quite hit those heights, it was fantastic too. This story had a brilliant female Master, exhilarating action, and a personal look at death and love. The Doctor isn’t a good man, he’s just a good man with a box who helps where he can. The sad conclusion of lies was the inevitable end to the series. In a story packed with deep exploration of themes and amazing acting, this finale really delivered.

Steven Moffat turns out a spectacular conclusion to Peter Capaldi’s debut as the Doctor. From Cybermen rising from old graves to Missy’s promise to kill Osgood in exactly a minute to ‘Don’t Cremate Me’, Dark Water/Death in Heaven rose to the occasion.

9.5/10 Peter Capaldi is good. REALLY good.

Nick Frost as Santa Claus is what I want for Christmas

The Day of the Doctor Review

The Day of the Doctor

The 11th, 10th, and War Doctors

Story 240, Episode 799, 50th Anniversary Special

Doctors: Eleventh, War, Tenth (Eighth)

Companion: Kate Stewart, Clara Oswald

Here comes the spoilers in the start of the 900-ish-Episode quest to review every Doctor Who episode!

Prequel- The Night of the Doctor

The Eighth Doctor returns at last

For some, this was an incredible moment. It was the return of the Eighth Doctor to Doctor Who proper after last being seen in a one-off movie in 1996. As having no Eighth Doctor experience, it was simply a good representation of the Time War. The Eighth Doctor is rebuked by a Companion and is mortally wounded trying to save her. He is offered a choice, regenerate and stop the Time War from ripping the universe apart. The prequel simply gave the Eighth Doctor closure and introduced the War Doctor.

8.5/10

Prequel-The Last Day

Less good as the Night of the Doctor, The Last Day showed a promising start to a new FPS blending Time Lords and Halo. Despite that such a game is too awesome to exist, The Last Day was even more ‘prequely’ than the last one. The Fall of Arcadia indeed.

6/10

The Day of the Doctor

The Doctor

The Day of the Doctor is truly brilliant. It is one of the best episodes of Moffatt’s run, and undoubtedly deserving of the 50th Anniversary special. Contrary to expectations, the true main character was the War Doctor, played by John Hurt. The sadness and gravitas he brought to the role left me saddened that all we see of the War Doctor is this episode. The crux of the 50th Anniversary is the War Doctor being shown by The Moment/Bad Wolf/Rose what he will be if he murders trillions of Gallifreyans and Daleks. He is thrust into seeing Eleven and Ten meeting up to solve an ingenious Zygon invasion. The other Doctors are understandably scared of him, as they remember his murder. Also fantastic is the return of David Tennant, who hasn’t been seen since he regenerated four years ago. He hasn’t missed a beat. Tennant dives right back into the role, and all the things that made the Tenth Doctor my favorite were shown in force in his scenes with Elizabeth I. The wit, the charm, everything that truly made him, as Clara called it, The Hero. Ten is the quintessential Hero, and his return was seamless. The Zygon invasion was utter genius, especially with the Time Lord being a 3D moment in time. So, in 1592 or whatever, the Zygons hide in paintings that the Zygon Elizabeth I places in her collection until 2013 when the Earth is ripe for the taking. The round-about way of Eleven and Clara being called in by UNIT to deal with the Zygons escaping (by Kate Stewart in a commanding performance that wants me to see more of her), and finding Ten investigating the same invasion was perfectly executed. The War Doctor is aghast at his future selves ‘timey-wimey’ speak and kissing and what the New Series in general. As he may be near the age of long-time Doctor Who fans, it was a way of comparing the old and new.

The Moment is at hand

Through it all, he sees that the future is in safe hands, but he cannot avoid activating the Moment, the Time War must be stopped. Ten and Eleven come to help him in a heartbreaking scene, until they realize: Time Lord art is frozen in time, a moment frozen there. What if, they can do that to Gallifrey? Suddenly, the three Doctors rush to Gallifrey to do this, and contact the planet and their faces pop up on holograms. But not just there’s, ALL THIRTEEN Doctors arrive to save Gallifrey, including Peter Capaldi as the Twelfth Doctor! They freeze Gallifrey and it vanishes and the Daleks’ fire destroys themselves. The Doctors depart, with the War Doctor and Tenth Doctor knowing their knowledge of them not committing genocide is lost. Seems only the oldest Doctor remembers multi-Doctor stuff, for the most part. The War Doctor regenerates of old age, into the Ninth Doctor, but cuts out before we see Eccleston. D’aw. The final scene had Tom Baker returning for the first time since 1981 as a Curator to lead the Doctor on his journey…to Gallifrey. It’s almost poetic, the Doctor’s going home. Stunning episode, great 50th Anniversary that shows what the Doctor’s mission now has become: going home.

10/10

Highlight: All thirteen incarnations of the Doctor arrive to save Gallifrey.

Previously: The Name of the Doctor

Next: The Time of the Doctor

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