“The Witch’s Familiar”
So overall, I’m glad I slept on it before writing up this
review. My initial notes had phrases like “best opening story since “The
Impossible Astronaut/ Day of the Moon”. And I could probably still make a case for that statement: “Asylum of the
Daleks” and “Deep Breath” are both good but not great, but then, my eventual
feelings about this story were that it was… good but not great. It feels like
“Deep Breath” provides the best comparison out of previous opening stories, as the
contrast between that story and this one gets at my biggest problem with “The
Magician’s Apprentice/ The Witch’s Familiar”. “Deep Breath” has pacing issues,
and flails around for its first two acts, anchored only by its performances,
and its strong focus on the Clara’s reaction to the Doctor changing. But from
the restauraunt scene, the last half hour of the episode crackles with
confidence and possibility, with the sense that something new and exciting,
something filled with potential, has started. By contrast, “The Magician’s
Apprentice/ The Witch’s Familiar” never quite captured the sense of surprise
that drove the previous series opener, even though it felt considerably more
sure footed than its predecessor (part one in particular). Ultimately, this was
a story I liked, but never really a story that I loved.
Still, let’s start by focussing on what I enjoyed this week,
because there was a lot that I enjoyed.
What I really liked about the episode was pretty much
established in the opening scenes, which instantly change the direction the
story hints at in the cliffhanger of “The Magician’s Apprentice”. That
cliffhanger hints that the second part of the story will be a piece where a
rage filled Doctor does terrible things to bring Clara and Missy, effectively
made damsels distress, back from the dead. Instead, the episode immediately
established that Clara and Missy were still alive, immediately giving them an
active role in the story: instead of waiting to be rescued by the Doctor, they
are head out to rescue him (and I was quite pleased that I guessed correctly
about the explanation of their survival also being the way Missy survived her
death in “Death in Heaven”). On top of this, the Doctor’s attempt at exacting
terrible revenge to bring Clara back involves him zooming around in Davros’s
chair, while delivering the episode’s funniest line: “Come on, you’ve all had this exact nightmare.” There’s a wonderful
refusal to make the Doctor a brooding, Dark Knight-esque hero that I love about
that sequence. As a result, the episode rejects the most boring, ugly story
last week’s cliffhanger feints at setting up, and sets about telling a
different one.
So what sort of story ends up being told? Well, “The Witch’s
Familiar” becomes an episode of two halves, the first being Clara and Missy’s twisted
buddy cop movie plot thread. It remains as fun a pairing as it was last week,
continuing the dynamic where Clara become’s Missy’s companion, only with the
sense that Missy might betray or kill her at any moment. If I have one
complaint about this dynamic, it’s that I’d like to have seen Clara assert
herself against Missy at some point (like in the “make me believe” scene from “The
Magician’s Apprentice” rather than basically being belittled by Missy for an
episode. But Gomez and Coleman are a ton of fun together, and overall it was a
pairing worth having.
The second half of the episode comes in the form of the
story’s central draw the long conversation between Doctor and Davros. Having
them in a room together for an extended amount of time produces some wonderful
moments: my personal favourite is the subversion of the scene where Davros tries
to tempt the Doctor to try wiping out the Daleks in cold blood. It’s a further
echo of “Genesis”, where the Doctor and Davros debate about releasing a virus
that would wipe out the universe, and Davros concludes “yes… I would do it!
That power would set me up above the Gods!”. This time, the Doctor is tempted
with that power, with Davros urging him to “Become a God”, but this debate is
cast aside, rejected, in favour of the Doctor’s compassion, as he tells Davros
that the Doctor is just a story he made up, that he didn’t come out of shame at
abandoning Davros, but out of a desire to help him, and that it is that desire
to help that makes him the Doctor. It is perhaps a shame that the scenes
between the Doctor and Davros wrap up in the most obvious way possible: with
Davros betraying the Doctor to increase his lifespan, and the Doctor tricking
Davros back to gain a small victory (although I love the line “your sewers are
revolting!”). But overall, the brilliant moments make the exercise a worthwhile
one.
Also marvellous is the scene where the Doctor confronts
Clara while she is in the Dalek. While shoving Clara in a Dalek for the
majority of an episode isn’t the most interesting thing you can do with her
character, Coleman plays Clara’s desperation brilliantly. And the scene lifts
the story by giving its conclusion some genuine emotional weight: Clara’s attempts
to tell the Doctor how much she means to him being twisted into words of hatred
really captures the terrifying nature of the Daleks. And it makes their
friendship key to the episode’s resolution, which is nice.
Because the resolution to the story doesn’t come in the form
of the Doctor starting a revolution with the Sewer Daleks, but through the
episode’s final subversion of last week’s cliffhanger. The invocation of the
“Do I have the right?” speech at the end of “The Magician’s apprentice” was
ultimately misdirection to hide the true nature of the cliffhanger scene. This story
is not ultimately about whether it’s right to kill a child who will become a
Dictator, but is instead about the moment where the line between friend and
enemy doesn’t matter, where mercy and compassion can save something precious.
The serial wasn’t without flaws for me: Clara felt
underutilised, particularly in the second part of the story: she started off
well, but by the end of the two parter, I couldn’t help feeling that this is
the first time since series seven where Coleman has had to outperform the
material she was given. Also not quite working was the “Doctor facing his
death” plotline. I don’t mind as such that this is a bit of a repeat of the
plots from season six and Matt Smith’s regeneration. The doctor does face
deadly danger a lot, so he’ll naturally come close to death more often than
most, but this episode never sold me on the idea the Doctor was facing his death.
The plot thread mostly felt used for the sake of introducing the Confession
dial, which will doubtless be vital to the Season’s overarching plot, but
nonetheless felt a bit tacked on here. Finally, I still feel nagged by a
general sense that the subversion of last week’s cliffhanger was a bit too
obvious, that confronting the question of whether it is right to kill a child
who would grow to kill entire civilisations is pointless when we know what the answer
will be: Doctor Who is never going to show its protagonist killing a child. Even
if they sidestepped it neatly, I can’t help but feel like there was a more
interesting story to tell here without raising the question at all.
Overall, however, I enjoyed this opening two parter. It has
some interesting ideas, uses most of its characters well, and is brilliantly
acted: all the main cast give a top notch performance. For all that it had an
interesting central conceit and some great character interactions, I was left
wanting something a bit fresher, a bit more vital and surprising. But nonetheless,
it was fun enough to make me excited for the rest of this season, and intrigued
to see where they go from here. It’s not a perfect beginning, but this season’s
still shaping up nicely.
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