‘Doctor Who’ season 9 episode 2 plot news: Will Doctor save them?

A kid (Joey Price) trapped in a field of hands reaching out of the slime?

Time and time again, the one thing that Doctor Who overdoes is the Daleks. Only it’s not Earth – it’s Skaro, and what we’re seeing here is a breathtakingly casual sequel to the classic Doctor Who story, “Genesis of the Daleks”.

The tenth Doctor described them as an “outer space police”, whose responsibilities include upholding galactic law, usually via a complex register of conventions, articles and clauses.

Yet more callbacks to Who’s past were visible, with clips of past Doctors on the monitors around Davros’s cell/ward. We get Colony Sarff, an apparent humanoid who glides like he’s on roller skates, but who is actually a colony of snakes. The most shocking turn came from the apparent execution of both Missy and Clara, forcing The Doctor’s hand to return to the war and attempt to kill the boy before his rise to power.

The BBC has released the first episode of Doctor Who Series 9 “The Magician’s Apprentice” on YouTube, which can be watched above. Clara and Missy are, to our knowledge, dead (for now), and the Doctor is screwdriver and TARDIS-less.

Well, “lives” might be overstating it. Davros, it appears, is on his last legs.

The Fourth Doctor and Romana arrive on Skaro in the middle of a war between the Daleks and the robotic Movellans. In Season 3, we get “Blink” and the introduction of the Weeping Angels, one of the major (if not the most important) new monsters of the revived series. Programmed to recognise humanoid life as inferior, they eventually turned on their creator and embarked on a reign of terror across the universe.

The season’s potential was witnessed during its recent premiere, which had fans waiting for the second part of the premiere. When the Doctor hears the boy state his name, he has a borderline visible panic attack from not knowing what to do.

‘Death is for other people, dear’. Stars Peter Capaldi, Jenna Coleman, and Michelle Gomez have done an unbelievable amount of press interviews in the last few months, along with executive producer Steven Moffat.

This is a delicious exchange from beginning to end.

She also referred to herself as the Doctor’s best friend (and to Clara as the Doctor’s puppy). He is trying to talk the boy to safety – “your chances are a thousand to one”. But which two? In 1975, the show finally decides to expose the origin of the Daleks. He tells the Doctor that none of it would have happened if not for his indulgence to compassion.

Listen, if someone who knew the future, pointed out a child to you and told you that child would grow up to be totally evil, to be a ruthless dictator who would destroy millions of lives, could you then kill that child?

A true Whovian can only recite the mantra, “He never would”, knowing he couldn’t possibly murder anyone, especially a child, regardless of the circumstances. This will make “Doctor Who” companion-less in its next seasons, unless the network gives him another partner.

Which leaves us at the end of the episode in a truly apocalyptic situation. It also touches on Davros’ belief that it was all “meant to be” – his meeting with the Doctor, the creation of the Daleks, his return engagement with Sarah Jane Smith in The Stolen Earth and, now, in what seem to be his final hours, a reckoning with The Doctor himself.