The Witch's Familiar

"The Witch's Familiar" is the second episode of the ninth series of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was first broadcast on BBC One on 26 September 2015.^[1] It is written by Steven Moffat and directed by Hettie MacDonald. It is the second part of the story, following "The Magician's Apprentice".

In the pair of episodes, alien time traveller the Doctor (Peter Capaldi) battles his old enemies the Daleks and attempts to save his companion Clara Oswald (Jenna Coleman). Julian Bleach and Michelle Gomez reprised their roles as Davros and Missy, the current incarnation of the Master, respectively.^[2][3] The episode received critical acclaim, with many praising Michelle Gomez' performance as Missy and the interactions between the Doctor and Davros.

Several different designs of the Daleks from across the series' history reappear in the episode, alongside their creator, Davros, and their home planet, Skaro.^[4]

Plot

After being seemingly killed by the Daleks at the climax of "The Magician's Apprentice", Clara finds herself outside the Dalek city with Missy. Missy explains how they managed to escape: using energy fired from the Daleks' weapons to teleport themselves away via their vortex manipulators (which they'd used to find the Doctor in the previous episode), destroying the devices in the process. Missy illustrates the method by relating a previous instance in which the Doctor performed the same trickery.

Meanwhile, the Doctor, not believing Clara to be dead, forces Davros out of his life-support wheelchair and uses it to confront the Supreme Dalek, safe from Dalek firepower due to the wheelchair's force-field. He attempts to force the Daleks to find and return Clara to him, but they insist that she's dead. The Doctor is surprised by Colony Sarff, who appears in snake form from Davros' chair and forces the Doctor into unconsciousness.

Back inside the city, Missy and Clara enter a Dalek 'sewer', a graveyard for decaying, insane, and undying Dalek mutants. Missy uses Clara to lure and destroy a Dalek for its casing. She then forces Clara into the telepathically controlled casing in order to trick their way back into the main city. Missy directs Clara to make various statements and finds that if Clara attempts to say her name, the Dalek system translates it to "I am a Dalek", and other attempts by Clara to express herself are translated as "Exterminate".

The Doctor wakes up back in the infirmary. Davros reveals the life-support cables surrounding it are connected to every Dalek on Skaro, which also keeps him alive. He tries to tempt the Doctor into destroying every Dalek using the cables, but the Doctor refuses. The Doctor reveals he came to Davros, not out of shame, but out of compassion for his sickness. After the Doctor also admits that Gallifrey has returned, Davros expresses his congratulations, claiming that every being should have a place to belong. He then opens his natural eyes and seeks moral guidance from the Doctor over whether creating the Daleks was right. The two even share a joke about the Doctor's poor medical skills.

After Davros wishes to see Skaro's sun rise one last time, the Doctor rewires the life-support system, but finds that not even every Dalek in the city is enough to keep Davros alive for long. He then releases a small amount of Time Lord regeneration power into the cables to restore some of Davros' health. In doing so, however, he falls victim to Davros' real plan: the regeneration energy is instead transmitted into every Dalek on Skaro. This increases their power and begins creating hybrid creatures. After breaking back into the city and abandoning Clara, Missy appears and saves the Doctor from the life-support system, killing Colony Sarff in the process.

The Doctor then reveals to Davros that he understood his plan a while back and allowed it, as Davros hadn't foreseen the consequences. In reaching every Dalek on the planet, the regeneration energy simultaneously revitalises the decaying Daleks in the sewers, who break through the city's surface and attack the functional Daleks in revenge. Upon fleeing, the Doctor and Missy run into Clara, still inside the Dalek casing. Missy lies to the Doctor, telling him that Clara was murdered by the Dalek in front of him and insists that he kill it in retaliation. Clara attempts to tell the Doctor who she is, but the speech system still translates her words into "I am a Dalek". But, when the Dalek/Clara pleads for mercy, the Doctor becomes puzzled – Daleks shouldn't have a concept of mercy. He directs the "Dalek" to open its casing, and Clara is released. The Doctor simply orders Missy to run. As she does, she is confronted by a group of Daleks and states that she's just had "a very clever idea".

After summoning the TARDIS back to them – which had avoided destruction through its Hostile Action Dispersal System (HADS) – with his new 'sonic sunglasses', the Doctor and Clara watch from afar as the city is destroyed. The Doctor wonders again why the Dalek asked for mercy. He then realises what he has to do. Using the TARDIS, he returns to the young Davros stranded in the battlefield and shoots the 'hand mines' surrounding him using a Dalek gun. When the boy asks him which side he's fighting for, the Doctor takes him away from the battlefield, declaring that it doesn't matter what side he's on, so long as there is always mercy.

Continuity

Missy and Clara teleport out of the city using the energy emitted by the Daleks, revealing how Missy survived after being shot by the Brigadier at the end of "Death in Heaven". The Fourth and First Doctors make brief appearances during Missy's exposition of her account of the Doctor's fight with 50 android assassins.^[5]

Among the past Dalek designs shown in this episode is the Special Weapons Dalek that first appeared in Remembrance of the Daleks.^[5][6]

The scene where Clara is being put into the Dalek mirrors a scene from her debut episode, "Asylum of the Daleks."^[7] A similar tactic was used by Ian Chesterton in The Daleks, the first Dalek serial of the original Doctor Who series,^[6] and again by Rebec, a Thal, in the Third Doctor serial Planet of the Daleks.^[8]

Davros informs the Doctor that he has been given 'the only other chair on Skaro...' This references the first Dalek adventure; the Doctor's companion Barbara comments that on the Daleks' world, 'there wasn't any furniture, now I come to think about it...'^[6]

The Doctor lost his original sonic screwdriver when it was destroyed in the Fifth Doctor story The Visitation. It wasn't replaced until the Seventh Doctor produced one in the 1996 Doctor Who movie. It remained a part of the Doctor's arsenal ever since, until this two-part episode.^[6]

When Davros tempts the Doctor with killing every Dalek on Skaro, knowingly committing genocide, he asks "Are you ready to be a god?" This echoes the debate the Fourth Doctor has with Davros in Genesis of the Daleks; when the Doctor asks him whether he would knowingly unleash a virus that would destroy all life in the universe, Davros is intrigued at the concept: "Yes... I would do it. That power would set me up above the gods!" It also refers back to the climax of Genesis, when the Doctor agonizes over whether he has the moral right to destroy the newly created Daleks, ultimately deciding against genocide.^[6]

Davros' question to the Doctor – "Am I a good man? – is the same one the Doctor himself asks Clara in "Into the Dalek".^[6]

Previously, a Hostile Action Displacement System has been referred to as being on the TARDIS. In the Eleventh Doctor story "Cold War", it caused the TARDIS to leave the area.^[6] The system was first used in the Second Doctor story The Krotons, also making the TARDIS dematerialize to avoid destruction.^[9]

Outside references

Missy tells a Dalek to inform the Supreme Dalek that "the bitch is back". This is an allusion to the Elton John song, "The Bitch Is Back".^[10][11]

The Doctor and Davros laughing over Davros' joke is similar to a scene in Alan Moore and Brian Bolland's graphic novel Batman: The Killing Joke, with the Joker and Batman laughing together at one of the Joker's jokes.^[11][12]

Promotion

Cinema screenings

A screening for the opening two-parter took place on 10 September 2015 in Cardiff.^[13]

Broadcast and reception

The episode was watched by 3.71 million viewers overnight in the UK, the lowest overnight figure of any episode since the show returned in 2005. The final consolidated ratings were 5.71 million viewers.^[14] The lower-than-expected ratings were likely due in part to competition from the England-Wales match in the 2015 Rugby World Cup, which aired the same evening.^[15] It received an Appreciation Index score of 83.^[16] In America, the episode had 1.12 million viewers on the night.^[17]

Critical reception

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
Rotten Tomatoes (Tomatometer)	94%[18]
Rotten Tomatoes (Average Score)	8.6[18]
The A.V Club	A-[19]
Paste Magazine	9.0[20]
SFX Magazine	[21]
TV Fanatic	[22]
IndieWire	A+[23]
IGN	8.9[24]
New York Magazine	[25]
Daily Telegraph	[26]
Radio Times	[27]

"The Witch's Familiar" received critical acclaim, particularity praising Michelle Gomez's performance as Missy and the interaction between the Doctor and Davros. The episode received a score of 94% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 17 reviews, with an average score of 8.6. The site's consensus reads ""The Witch's Familiar" is proof that Doctor Who is back on target, ending the two-part season opener with a revealing, meaningful, and twist-driven conclusion".^[28]

Patrick Mulkern, writing for the Radio Times, called it a "shining example" of the series, praising it as "underpinned by emotional intelligence" and noting the "excellent" performances of the four leads in "protracted dialogue scenes that test their mettle and demand audience attention", awarding the episode a full five stars out of five.^[29] Michael Hogan of The Daily Telegraph also enjoyed the episode, awarding it four stars out of five, commenting "plenty of twists and a brilliant Missy made for a very fun episode". In particular, he praised Michelle Gomez's performance – "[she] continued to excel as Missy, whirling around dementedly while chewing on dialogue with real relish", and closed his review by summarising that "it packed more ideas into 50 minutes than most shows manage in an entire series".^[30]

Scott Collura of IGN also lavished praise on the episode, awarding it a score of 8.9, deemed "great". To him, while the episode "had the deck stacked against it", it succeeded and was "exciting and touching". He praised Missy as a character and her interaction with Clara within the Dalek as "amusing", though "actually quite dark", in addition to acclaiming the dialogue between the Doctor and Davros.^[31] Alasdair Wilkins of The A.V. Club responded very positively to the episode, awarding it an A- grade. He especially praised the Doctor and Davros' exchange, finding it "by far the best use the TV series has made of the [latter] character since Genesis Of The Daleks". He also believed having Davros open his eyes "a particularly brilliant touch" and went on to praise the moment as "insightfully written, beautifully shot, and brilliantly acted".^[32]

References

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Twelfth Doctor

• "The Witch's Familiar" at the BBC Doctor Who homepage
• "The Witch's Familiar" on TARDIS Data Core, an external wiki
• "The Magician's Apprentice" / "The Witch's Familiar" at Doctor Who: A Brief History of Time (Travel)
• "The Witch's Familiar" at the Internet Movie Database