Doctor Who: The Witch’s Familiar

Worth the slow start.

The Magician’s Apprentice was a distinctly slow in as a start; very little happened until the last five minutes. As I said in my review of that episode, it was a bit difficult to stay interested, when the episode was about 95% set-up.

But I’m happy to say, that it was worth the wait and the quality of this episode makes it predecessor better by association.

It’s nice to see the image of “the Doctor without hope” resorting to particularly gruesome tactics. I mean Davros is the bad guy, but the Doctor yanking him out of he chair and leaving him (literally half a man) lying on the floor, is pretty brutal.

This is far more effective than the last time we saw Davros bring the darker side of the Doctor out. That was in “Journey’s End” and was so poorly executed that it had to be said in dialogue that it was a dark act. There’s a simple rule of show-don’t-tell in film and television and (for the faults he does have) Moffat writes in a way that meets this far more effectively than Davies.

Capaldi is on form, particularly when he’s rolling around in Davros’ chair, deliberately aggravating the kill bots around him. One thing about the Twelfth Doctor is that you’re never sure if he will actually kill something he’s angry with. He’s a bit like James Bond in that he can switch from the fantastic out-of-this world character to a killer in a second. It’s a trait that wouldn’t have fit on the Tenth or Eleventh, largely due to their relative youth.

Missy’s part in this episode is a bit confusing; it’s easy to imagine that when Moffat thought up this episode it would have been River Song in her place. That said, Michelle Gomez is brilliant as ever, particularly in her turn at the end when she tries to make the Doctor accidently kill Clara. She gives the reason that she wanted to show him his own dark side, but I suspect it was just something she found fun.

On that point, putting Clara back in the Dalek is a good call back to her first appearance and may foreshadow a gruesome end for her.

One thing; I have absolutely no love to the “there’s good in everyone” ending to this episode. One; it’s contrary to all of Davros’ actions in the third act and two; the Doctor shooting all those hand mines was really predictable.

Aside from an annoying ending this is a pretty good episode.