Last Saturday, every game of ‘Magic: The Gathering’ took a one hour pause as nerds everywhere took a time out to tune in to the Series Nine premier of ‘Doctor Who’, entitled ‘The Magician’s Apprentice.’ Things keep right on rolling this coming weekend, when the second episode ‘The Witch’s Familiar’ debuts.
Here is the description:
Written by Steven Moffat
Directed by Hettie MacDonald
“The Doctor is trapped. He’s a prisoner of the creatures who hate him most in the universe. Between us and him is everything the greatest warrior race in history can throw at us. We, on the other hand, have a pointy stick.”
Though vague, we can now accurately state that the “creatures who hate him most” are the Daleks. In ‘The Magician’s Apprentice’, the Doctor encountered a young version of the man who would eventually create the Daleks, Davros (played by Joey Price), and had to grapple with what action to take while running the risk of irreversibly damaging the space-time continuum.
As Doctor Who himself, Peter Capaldi said:
“It’s always exciting as Doctor Who when you get to work with an old enemy but when that enemy is Davros, it’s especially exciting. He’s quite terrifying. The right mix of gothic threat and macabre deligh… This is a particularly compelling confrontation between the Doctor and Davros. It is their final time together.”
In the next episode, Davros is once again played by Julian Bleach, who had portrayed the villain since the show was rebooted in 2008. The first clip released by the BBC features a tense tête-à-tête between the two men:
And presumably from later in the episode, we see the Dalek’s springing into action at Davros’ command to apprehend The Doctor:
‘Doctor Who’ airs every Saturday at 9/8c on BBC America.
