The Magician's Apprentice is a first in this new era of Doctor Who. Previous season openers can stand on their own in a single episode. First-time viewers without prior knowledge of Doctor Who tuning into The Magician's Apprentice will be left baffled, battered and utterly confused. It also features an impressive list of major players for being the first episode of the season. Clearly some fanservice was ordered up. Unfortunately, still no John Barrowman in sight. He's too busy being the bad guy in Arrow apparently.
The episode starts out on unknown, dusty battlefield. Soldiers garbed in desert battle gear are seen running from a bi-plane. It could be World War I. But then the bi-planes started shooting laser beams and the soldiers are shooting back with bows and arrows. Ok, so it's not planet earth. In the middle of the battle a soldier notices a lost little boy near a "handmine" field. What's a handmine? Well, they're these oily black hands with eyes on them hidden inside the battlefield. They grab victims by the ankle and pulls them into their doom underneath the grond.
Like landmines but made out of hands, basically stuff from your nightmares. So, naturally the soldier gets killed by a handmine and the little boy stands hopelessly as little boys are apt to do in the middle of certain death. The Doctor appears out of nowhere, as he's apt to do. He immediately tosses the boy his sonic screwdriver, The Doctor's weapon of choice. He tells the boy he can survive if he tries and asks for the boy's name, "Davros." And there you have it. You can almost hear the show teasing you, "Gotcha!" as the look of horror appears on The Doctor's face before cutting to the title scene.
The Doctor, on his way to look for a bookshop in the middle of space and time stumbles upon a planet that has been at war for so long, the technology have devolved down to bows and arrows. And on this wretched planet at this point in time, out of all the people he had to save, it was the one person responsible for the future creation of the terrible Daleks. Just his rotten luck. It's actually pretty cool that the director leaves hints of the planet being Skaro in the intro, just enough for the hardcore Whovian to guess it before the reveal.
It's starting to become apparent that this is not going to be like any other Doctor Who premiere in history. Rarely do we see an archnemesis introduced in the opener. Usually, they appear in the last couple of episodes as a culmination of their evil plot throughout the season. They also introduced a new kind of villain, a manoid made out of several snakes coiled around each other. Snakeman serves the Davros at the time of his neardeath.
It'll be interesting to learn how this oddity managed to find himself in servitude to the Dark Lord of Skaros. The Snake-man thing is tasked by a dying Davros to search for The Doctor through space and time. It was a treat to see the Shadow Proclamation and the Sisters of Karn in this episode as well. As we are reminded, Davros remembers the time the Doctor tossed away his precious sonic screwdriver during Davros most vulnerable years.
And now we're back into the modern world, or modern per the viewer's perspective -- nothing can ever be considered the modern world when you're dealing with someone who can traverse space and time through a TARDIS. Back to the point, Clara Oswald is teaching Jane Austen to a class of dull students before things got interesting. All planes have stopped in time. Clara, the resident Doctor expert is summoned by UNIT, the international Doctor expert.
It's an international incident, every plane in the world, frozen. At UNIT's headquarter, they received a text through the Doctor Channel (apparently there is such a thing). The text reads,"You So Fine You Blow My Mind, Hey Missy" and in unison, Whovians rejoice. MISSY! Missy is back, projecting herself through UNIT's headquarter. "How did she do that?", Shouts the Brigadier's daughter... doesn't matter, she can. So this is where it got intense. A second archnemesis! It's as if they're asking Superman to deal with Doomsday and a Kryptonite Golem in the same issue.
Ok, so we all knew Missy was coming back to season 9. She died at the end of season 8. It seems that's what Missy/The Master does best, die at the end of a season. The surprise is that she returned quicker than anticipated. In her own words, "Not dead, back, big surprise, nevermind." And why should we mind, The writer (Moffat) understands that the Master is an integral part of the Doctor Who Universe. She can never be killed off permanently, The Master is the Yin to the Doctor's Yang. Fans loved Missy, the female incarnation of The Master, back in season 8 and they wanted to see her back. Moffat only obliged.
This isn't simply about building a coherent story anymore, it's all about what makes the fans happy. We get to see or favorite villains and major characters in the Universe get together for something big, something that will change the way things are and will be. Back to Missy. Missy mutters on about having Clara meet her at a square somewhere in the Mediterranean to have a nice cup of coffee and 8 snipers. Wait, what? Yes, 8 snipers. 3 for each heart (Timeladies have 2 hearts after all) and 2 for her brain stem. Why? Because that's the only way they'll feel safe talking to her. Sassy.
Clara arrives with the entourage of military snipers and UNIT bodyguards, the ever stylish Missy sips her coffee in demure victorian outfit. The Missy and Clara banter offers a nice contrast to the two characters. Missy is aloof, colorful, and absolutely enjoyable. Clara is serious, brief, and very stuff. Some of the best lines in this episode came from Missy:
"How's the boyfriend? Still tremendously DEAD, I expect?"
Referring to Clara's dead boyfriend, Danny in Season 8.
"Would you like to sit in the shade? I know how you human BURN."
Referring to Missy's own inclination to vaporize people.
She isn't here to join the good guy, she's just here on a mission. A confession dial, the last will and testament of The Doctor to be delivered to his closest friend on the eve of his final day. Clara touches it and gets a shock. Apparently Clara is not the Doctor's good friend. And it makes sense. Missy goes on to compare Clara's companionship with the doctor like a man walking a dog whereas her relationship with the doctor extends further back, older than human civilization, infinitely more complex. TImelords are not normal people, they age different, some of them may live for thousands of years. To them, human civilizations rises and fall in the blink of an eye. She needs Clara's help to locate her frenemy, The Doctor. And to show that Missy is still evil, she vaporizes a few bodyguards, noting one of them is a family-man. Wow.
Everyone reluctantly agrees to work with Missy despite her earlier murderous rampage. With the help of Clara's intuition, they were able to locate where the Doctor could be. Somewhere during the middle ages in Essex UK, some guy threw a party. Missy travels back in time with Clara using a vortex bracelet, a John Barrowman nod, in the absence of his cameo. They're in the middle of a combat arena in medieval England. "Now we just need to look for anachronisms..." and just as Missy finishes, The Doctor rides in on a battle tank, rocking out on his guitar. At this point, you may be thinking, "But this doesn't make any sense." and that is true, none of this makes any sense. The Doctor is as whimsical as he is powerful. He's just enjoying himself as much as the show runners enjoy shooting the scene.
After a few comedic exchanges the Doctor spots Clara and Missy hiding in the balcony and begins to play "Pretty Woman" on his guitar. Was this for Missy or Clara? It was never verified, but Missy was the one jigging her head when she came down. Could this be a Missy and Doctor romance starting up? That'd be juicy. Alas, Snakeman came in to break the party and warps them all away, because you know, we can't forget about Davros, his other arch-nemesis.
Everyone gets teleported into a "hospital ship" where the dying Davros would like to meet his arch-nemesis for one last time. What for? We weren't told and will probably never know with 15 minutes left in the episode. Missy discovers they're not really on a ship. Clara is stuck playing a sidekick that bumbles along as Missy prances her away into freedom... Except the ship is on a planet and the planet is Skaro... yes, that planet in the beginning, except we're not thousands of years in the future and it's now home of the Daleks, the Doctor's other arch-nemesii. Davros of course, only wants to see The Doctor's reaction when his Daleks kills Missy and Clara. We also see the Daleks destroying the TARDIS (which had limited airtime). The Doctor didn't like that one bit... and we cut into a preview of The Doctor arriving back at the intro with a Dalek gun ready to kill the cute little child Davros. TO BE CONTINUED...
In a way, we kind of know Missy isn't going to die, she/he is always going to come back. And Clara will be saved, whether through a manipulation of time or some other MacGuffin. Jenna-Louise Coleman had stated this is her last season in Doctor Who but she didn't mention that her last episode was the first episode. They still have her locked up until the end of the season. But it's hard not to notice Michelle Gomez stealing the show in every scene from Jenna Coleman. She brings a much needed Scottish zest to complement the 12th Doctor inherent Scottish temperament. Clara was fortunate enough to join the show when it was at its peak, with a young, attractive Doctor. She never knew a Doctor Who episode where they had to depend on clever writing to offset a low budget. It will be interesting to see where they go from here with a much older cast. With the new energy Missy has brought to the series, it would be a shame for them not to give her some more screentime.
