The Magician’s Apprentice

This episode definitely has its moments.  It's full of neat ideas for the Daleks and feels sufficiently zeroed in on the Doctor and Davros' characters for a return to Skaro.  The Missy stuff might not work with everyone, but I found her very fun and enjoyed the stuff with her, UNIT, and Clara at the top chunk of this episode.  It all felt very true to this world - that UNIT would be keeping track of important Doctor-adjacent people for scenarios like these, and that Missy would be able to easily manipulate the situation to her liking.  I don't know if all the ideas of Davros' past and the Doctor's relationship to him were really paid off in this or the next episode, but it's entertaining and memorable enough this story works a lot more than it doesn't, in my opinion.  It's certainly pretty memorable.

I wish Missy actually did hunt and eat Clara.

This is a one watch review. I may have missed bits. It's based on my first impression as a viewer and so I've not analysed any scenes or shots in detail. In my view too much dissection makes Doctor Who lose its appeal.

This was an ambitious cinematic time and space opera that was designed to dazzle the viewer with its breadth and scope. The central conceit was based upon a single line in 1975's Genesis of the Daleks and pretty much everything else was window dressing, although it was very pretty and very clever window dressing.

The idea of jumping about time and space gave us a somewhat breathless sense of urgency without taking us into much emotional depth, but the speed with which the story bounced about the cosmos and through time gave the sense of a simple joy ride. I felt the stand out performances came from the female regulars. Both Jenna Coleman and Michelle Gomez knocked it out of the park. They're a fascinating pairing and I'd love to see more of them. How about a spin off with Clara unwillingly exploring the universe with Missy? It seems like such delicious fun.

We got more of an insight into the Doctor's relationship with Missy/The Master. When directly challenged about it being love, Missy protests that friendship goes so much deeper than that. I loved her suggestion that setting traps was her form of flirting. Yet, just to ensure we don't think of her as too warm and cuddly she callously despatched two UNIT operatives as if she were swatting flies. That she and the Doctor appeared to be teamed up against the surprise antagonist had her protesting about who really makes the better mortal enemy, which was a beautiful demonstration of the relationship between love and hate and how the two have a lot in common.

The man made of snakes* was an interesting diversion. Despite reading his name in DWM it utterly escapes me now and in the spirit of a one watch review I'm not going to look it up. He had a Darth Maul vibe about him. It brought menace but no real sense of danger. He was an underling without much substance, but the effect where he dissolved into snakes was very nice. I hope we find out a bit more about him and how he appears to be some kind of gestalt democracy.

The daleks were wonderful. After Asylum promised a multitude of dalek types and failed to deliver it was great to see the 1960's daleks front and centre alongside the new series ones. It's touches like this that suggest to me the Steven Moffat does listen to fans and acts when he thinks it will benefit the series. It was pleasing to see that the hump backed daleks of Victory were nowhere to be seen. They were an unsuccessful design within a long line of well designed daleks. Seeing so many other types side by side demonstrated how much of a misstep that had been. It was also lovely to see elements of design and sound effects that really harked back to the creature's first appearance back in 1963.

I was disappointed to see a dalekized human used however. Since the appearance of human agents who suddenly sprout an eyestalk in Asylum of the Daleks I feel they haven't really worked. Apart from a neat visual effect what's the point of that eyestalk anyway? It looks silly.

That's a minor niggle really though as we had a very enjoyable romp through concepts that have been touched upon throughout the old and new series. Moffat has left enough narrative gaps for the regular viewer to be able to guess how the multiple cliff hangar could be resolved. I hope it's a little different to my own predictions which suggest a little time tampering or simply filling in a few gaps in the story to resolve the Doctor's dilemma.

Which brings me to the final cliff hangar. Did it not seem somewhat suddenly sprung upon us? How did it come about? There seemed to be a big jump in the narrative which jarred with me. I guess all will be revealed next week.

In all The Magician's Apprentice was an enjoyable watch and breath taking in several ways. We've been dazzled with a cinematic delight, but I hope the rest of the series will bring some smaller scale story telling and some more character based stuff. There was plenty of characterisation here, but it wasn't the main focus of the story, which was more about grabbing our attention visually and intellectually. I hope we'll see a little more heart in the coming episodes.

* Colony Sarf, of course! Twitter came to my rescue with the name.