Doctor Who season 9, episode 2 airs tonight and we’ll get to see exactly what happens between the Doctor and his long-term nemesis, Davros.
Last week we left off with a cliffhanger. Part two airs tonight and is called “The Witch’s Familiar.” The Doctor, if we believe the notoriously misleading cliffhanger clip and the preview clip found below, has gone back in time and killed the child version of Davros. Supposedly he does it with the adult Davros’ own creation, the arm stalk of a Dalek.
As we pointed out in our TV Quotes of the Week, it’s a bit of the Doctor’s past coming back to haunt him. It’s the ultimate moral quandary. Does the Doctor go back in time to kill a genocidal lunatic while that lunatic is still a child? Is the life of one innocent child less valuable than the lives of multiple innocent victims? Even if the answer to that first question is “yes,” can the Doctor bring himself to be the executioner of an innocent child?
We have even more unanswered questions, like what happened to Clara and Missy? Even if this is Jenna Coleman’s last season on the TARDIS traveling with the Doctor, it seems pretty unlikely that they’d just zap her unceremoniously with a Dalek the very first episode of the season.
Our money is on Missy having impeccable timing, and using her vortex manipulator to transport her and Clara away just in the nick of time, making it look like they were exterminated. This, of course leads to the question of where and when they escaped to? The two of them are unwilling partners. As soon as either decides that they no longer need the other, both their lives are in danger. They both have to be on their guard not only against the Daleks, but against each other.
Our last question centers around the title of this week’s episode, “The Witch’s Familiar.” We assume it refers to the Doctor and Davros, but which one of them symbolizes the witch and which one of them symbolizes the familiar? Who is the ultimate powerbroker and who is the one being manipulated? For that matter, does it refer to Clara and Missy? Are they the familiars of the Doctor and Davros respectively?
We’ll find out tonight when Doctor Who airs on BBC America at 9:00 p.m.