Doctor Who - 'The Witch's Familiar'

“Admit it. You've had this exact nightmare.”

Missy and Clara gone, the TARDIS destroyed, the Doctor at the mercy of his archnemeses (creatures that shouldn't even recognise the concept:) could it get worse. Of course it could. There are the sewer graveyards for starters.

The Doctor faces off against his dying foe as his companions struggle to get back to him, and Davros reveals his organic vulnerability in his dying moments. Enemies become friends, friends become enemies, and as a new day dawns on Skaro, something terrible is looming, a prophesied dark messiah of war uniting the two most destructive races in history: Dalek and Time Lord.

The Good

• Davros is on superb form, playing on his own vulnerability and impending mortality to manipulate the Doctor. Julian Bleach and Peter Capaldi work it like the pros they are as Davros elicits pity and even laughter from the Doctor and the Doctor is appalled at himself for allowing it.
• Once again, there is a firm grasp on the motivations of the villains. Missy falls down because she shoots for the moon, and while Davros does want to overthrow the Doctor's belief in the virtue of compassion, he wants life and power more.
• The idea of the Daleks literally channeling their rage, hate and disgust into their weapons is actually quite neat. It also turns the denouement from a simple bait and switch to a definitive act of catharsis as the Doctor pours out his self-loathing in an act of mercy.
• Dalek Clara was a decent call-back to Jenna Coleman's initial appearance as Oswald in Asylum of the Daleks, which also had an early iteration of the sewer-tomb with its deathless, demented Dalek abominations.
• Deus ex machina as it was in-episode, I quite liked the idea that the Mistress escaped death using a trick she copied from the Doctor, highlighting the difference between them: Missy comes up with hugely elaborate master plans while the Doctor just wings it.

The Bad

• Sonic sunglasses? The screwdriver may have got a bit cliche and overused, but if you're going to have a sonic macguffin it is at least a classic.
• I'm not anti the TARDIS having a forcefield, or even the radical upgrade of the HADS from displacement to dispersal, but we've specifically been told that the Daleks are on top of this shit from millennia of Time War, so when exactly did the TARDIS get these upgrades?

The Ugly

• And damnit, we've just got back the Doctor as a mostly moral and effective hero and now he's the kind of arsehole who wears sunglasses indoors.

Theorising

Okay, so there's not a huge amount left to theorise on from these two episodes. I am hopeful, for the first time in a while, that we might get away from some of the more egregious excesses of the whole Doctor as antihero move. I confess I am a little concerned about the idea of a Time Lord/Dalek hybrid as the arc macguffin, although bit occurs to me that Maisie Williams would play the shit out of that concept.

Top Quotes

• "He’s trapped at the heart of the Dalek Empire. He’s a prisoner of the creatures who hate him most in the universe. Between us and him is everything the deadliest race in all of history can throw at us. We, on the other hand, have a pointy stick."
• "Proposition -- Davros is an insane, paranoid genius who has survived among several billion trigger-happy mini-tanks for centuries. Conclusion -- I'm definitely having his chair." Bonus points for the fact that the chair force-field meshes with one of the fan theories of Dalek chronology, which is that the Doctor clued Davros in enough to add one, thus saving his life at the end of 'Genesis of the Daleks' and creating the Imperial/Loyalist schism which prevented universal Dalek dominance for millennia.
• "Is this the conscience of the Doctor, or his shame? The shame that brought you here."
  "There's no such thing as the Doctor. I'm just a bloke in a box, telling stories. I didn't come here because I'm ashamed. A bit of shame never hurt anyone. I came... because you're sick and you asked. And because sometimes, on a good day... if I try very hard... I'm not some old Time Lord who ran away. I'm the Doctor."
  "Compassion then?"
  "Always."
  "It grows strong and fierce in you -- like a cancer."
  "I hope so."
  "It will kill you in the end."
  "I wouldn't die of anything else."
  "You may rely on it."
  Davros and the Doctor discuss, basically, what makes the Doctor the Doctor. Unless of course that is better summed up by:
• "And still you play the fool."
  "Well, by now that should make you nervous."
• "I’m not sure any of that matters. Friends, enemies. So long as there’s mercy. Always mercy." Compare and contrast with Ten's 'I used to have so much mercy' speech in 'School Reunion'. Since Ten ended up as the epitome of the messiah Doctor, I approve of this reversal at least.

The Verdict

Hells yes!

'The Witch's Familiar' is not perfect, but Doctor Who so rarely is. It just has too many things to be, and in particular if it's funny it's not serious enough and if its serious it's too dark; the balance is next to impossible to achieve. But sometimes, when the stars are right and the wind is fair, it gets pretty damn good. Honestly I found Missy really grating last season, but in this two-parter (oh, yes, it definitely helps for me that it's a two-parter, because I always prefer them) she's rather delightful in her sinister way. It also feels like something of a reversion to my preferred philosophy of Who. The Doctor sometimes makes hard calls, sometimes has to balance terrible alternatives, and occasionally even resorts to scuffling. In the end, however, he does carry people out of the fire.

Violence is not strength, compassion is not weakness, and your no-nonsense solutions just don't hold water in a complex world of jet-powered apes and time travel.

Score - 9/10