Season 9, Episode 2 - The Witch's Familiar
Last week I suggested it was maybe a little lazy to not explain how Missy managed to survive. Okay. I admit it I was wrong to even mention it. The cold open of this episode was such a stark contrast to last week's which was tight and left me excited about the rest of the episode. This week's was laborious. I felt every one of the four minutes and thirty seconds that ticked by as Missy elaborately described her ploy to Clara. I'm always happy to see call-backs to classic Who, and Missy's words about it not mattering which face The Doctor was using was a nice way of explaining why Capaldi was doing the scene, but part of me would have preferred they stuck with one of the older ones.
Once we get into the episode proper, The Doctor has a bit of a meltdown, steals a crippled man's wheelchair and begins threatening violence on anyone who tells him the truth. Admittedly the scene with The Doctor tooling around in Davros' chair was pretty funny. And the cup of tea line was brilliant, coming as it did literal seconds after I asked that very question.
Does funny excuse nonsensical? Yes, it probably does.
Missy and Clara go for a wander through Skaro's sewers, where Missy takes the opportunity to do a bit of exposition around a vital plot device. Missy continues to be hit and miss for me, acting a good mix of nutty and self-centred in this part, but with some cringe-worthy moments too. Using Clara as bait, and tricking her into the Dalek shell was perfect, but her silly American accent thing whilst the decaying Daleks destroyed the live one was so annoying, and it just kept going. I'm also not sure how I feel about the revelation The Master had a daughter. I think I'm okay with it, as it makes him a bit more analogous to The Doctor, who we all know was a dad once.
The reappearance of Colony Sarff worked well here, showing a The Doctor as fallible, although how you could miss that many snakes in the chair, I'll never know. As The Doctor and Davros interacted, my ire began to rise significantly. What were they doing to Davros? He was the ultimate bad guy, and they were turning him into a big softy. I resigned myself to the fact that most people would have a bit of a change of heart when facing down the Reaper, so I just went with it, not once suspecting it was a ploy. My relief at that revelation was palpable. That didn't excuse having Davros suddenly able to open his eyes, nor the accompanying Star Wars line though.
I can't believe I already made that joke last week.
Davros' plot was a good one, but I'm interested to know how he knew the resultant Hybrid Warrior would truly be superior to the current Daleks, and not in some way infected with the weaknesses of the Time Lords. The process wasn't exactly scientific, was it. Just shoot regeneration energy into all the Daleks and see what comes out. Perhaps if he'd been a bit more scientific about the whole thing he wouldn't have ended up with the mother of all plumbing problems.
I was in no way a fan of The Doctor's whole "I knew what you were doing and I let you," thing. It reminded me a bit of The Curse of the Fatal Death. The interesting thing is, that despite not taking up Davros' offer to commit genocide on the Dalek race, The Doctor still seems pretty happy to cause them to be wiped out in another, far more complicated way, which also carried the risk of not working. What if the rotting Daleks had fully regenerated into living beings, rather than the Ghostbusters 2 style anger slime? What if the new Hybrids caught a case of forgiveness from him, and decided to work together despite being shoved into a sewer and all that?
Pictured: Everything going as planned.
Last week I talked about the loss of the Sonic, and questioned whether they'd abandon it for good, thereby voiding the issue of Deus Ex Screwdriver, finally concluding that The Doctor would most likely make a new one after all this was over. Little did I know it would be worse than I thought. Sonic Sunglasses? Groan!
Overall, this one fell a bit flat after the solid set-up in The Magician's Apprentice. In some ways it was good to get more insight into The Master's relationship with The Doctor, but the cold open did drag a lot. There were a couple of places that don't really stand up to close scrutiny, and if the rest of the story was going better, I wouldn't have time to scratch the surface of those and realise that was the case. So not an ideal episode, but buoyed somewhat by the first part.
7/10
Can we fix it?
A couple of quick, easy tweaks to start with here. Stop Missy from doing that stupid voice in the sewer. Also, choreograph or shoot the bit where Clara is threatening her with the stick so that when she snatches it back, it doesn't look quite so clumsy. Seriously, there is no reason Clara couldn't have avoided that lunge. Closer and faster is what that scene needs.
Now for the bigger stuff. I mentioned the opening flashback would have been stronger if they'd used an old Doctor. Having seen how perfectly David Bradley played William Hartnell in An Adventure in Space and Time, getting him in to play the scene as One would have been awesome. That said, Four would have also been a solid choice, because with coat, scarf, hair and hat, you could easily shoot the scene without clearly showing The Doctor's face.
My main alteration here would be to change the whole, "I knew what you were doing" thing. With a slight change of dialogue we could have "I thought that may be what you were trying, but I'm a good bloke, so I did it anyway." It could also be changed so that The Doctor was less concerned with the creation of the Hybrid and more that exactly what happened would happen. This makes him seem less callous about essentially doing the same thing he refused to do earlier. Just because he's not actually doing the killing, doesn't mean he's not responsible.
The Doctor pleads with Davros as he has his energy drained, saying he shouldn't do this, it's dangerous, etc. Davros laughs and gloats until Missy arrives and The Doctor explains sadly and without any smarminess what Davros has missed. Things then play out the same from there on.
Oh, except for the sunglasses. Rather than them being sonic, The Doctor just uses them like a car alarm. They could even make the little bloop-bloop noise.
Man, I hope the sunglasses were a one-off.
No comments:
Post a Comment