'The Magician’s Apprentice' (Story Code 9.01) by Steven Moffat

“It’s a Confession Dial… In your terms a will. The last will and testament of the Time Lord known as the Doctor, to be delivered according to ancient tradition to his closest friend on the eve of his final day.” – Missy

On a smoke-shrouded battlefield, in a war fought by soldiers armed with a strange mixture of old and new technology, a young lost boy runs for his life. He is stopped by a soldier named Kanzo, who warns him that he has stumbled into a field of ‘hand mines’. But as the boy looks at him, Kanzo is grabbed by one of the mines and pulled into the ground to his death. As more hands grow up from the ground, their bizarre eyes staring out from their palms, the boy desperately calls out for help. To his relief his cries are answered, as a wand-like device files through the air to fall at his feet. The device belongs to a strange man crouching nearby in front of a tall blue box, who talks of going to a bookshop but ending up there. The boy tells him his name: Davros. In response, the man just looks at him in horror…

At the Maldovarium, a mysterious hooded figure glides into the premises and demands the whereabouts of the Doctor; when no one answers him, the man kills everyone present. He then visits the Shadow Proclamation, but the Shadow Architect and her Judoon escort refuse to help, knowing their intruder has been sent by the war criminal called Davros. Continuing his search, the man, Colony Sarff, journeys to the planet Karn to question the Sisterhood of the Flame; when the order’s matriarch, Ohila, refuses to give up the Doctor’s location, Sarff leaves a message for the missing Time Lord from his master: “Davros knows. Davros remembers… He must face Davros one last time.” After Colony Sarff has left, the frightened Doctor emerges from hiding…

Some time later, a dying Davros sits slumped in his wheelchair surrounded by a mass of medical tubes and wires. With Sarff unable to locate his old enemy, Davros hands his servant the ancient sonic screwdriver and instructs him to find the Doctor’s friends instead…

At Coal Hill School on Earth, Clara’s English lesson comes to an abrupt halt when she looks out of a window and see a plane seemingly frozen in the sky overhead. Switching on the news, she and her pupils hear how all the world’s aircraft has just stopped in mid-air. Receiving a summons from UNIT, Clara jumps onto her motorbike and speeds off to the Tower of London, where she meets Kate Stewart and her new assistant, Jac. With over four thousand planes seemingly frozen in time and the Doctor not answering his calls, Kate is understandably concerned – even more so when a call comes in over the Doctor’s channel, from none other than the renegade Time Lady Missy. The Doctor’s arch nemesis is still very much alive, and has stopped all the planes to get Clara’s attention – she wants them to meet for coffee. Clara agrees, and under heavy protection from bodyguards and armed snipers, she is transported through a safe air corridor to meet the insane Missy at an outdoor café in the Middle East. After moving a plane to create some shade, Missy shows Clara a Gallifreyan Confession Dial: the Doctor’s last will and testament, given to his closest friend on the eve of his final day. When Clara becomes put out that the Doctor sees Missy as his closest friend and not her, the evil Time Lady shoots dead several of Clara’s bodyguards to assure her that she has not turned good. But Missy needs Clara to help find the Doctor, and she agrees to release the world’s aircraft from her time stop in return for Clara’s assistance. With the aid of a laptop, Jac’s expertise and UNIT’s search algorithms Clara tracks the Doctor’s exploits across history in order to find where he is creating the most noise without a crisis: a castle in Essex, in the year 1138 AD. Missy immediately grabs Clara and puts a vortex manipulator on her wrist too, transporting them both to the location identified; here they find the Doctor in the middle of a three-week party held in truly in anachronistic style, wielding an electric guitar atop a military tank in an ‘Axe-fight’ against his new-found warrior pal, Bors. Seeing Clara and Missy on the battlements overlooking the castle’s courtyard, the Doctor breaks into a rendition of ‘Pretty Woman’ before introducing them to the assembled medieval audience. After scaring Clara with a hug the Doctor turns to Missy, but is interrupted as Bors keels over from a snake bite. Just then Colony Sarff slithers onto the scene, his body unravelling into a mass of writhing snakes; at their centre is a huge serpent, who gives the Doctor his master’s summons on his last day alive. Colony Sarff then reconstitutes himself and passes the Doctor his sonic screwdriver, now weathered with age. His face falling in shame, the Doctor recalls his greatest mistake: he chose to leave the young Davros to his fate on the minefield. Knowing he will be walking into a trap, the Doctor bids goodbye to Clara and Missy, but his friends insist that they go too. Binding their hands with serpents, Colony Sarff teleports them to his ship. Elsewhere, Bors’ corpse has become a Dalek puppet – and he has now found the Doctor’s TARDIS for his masters…

En route aboard Sarff’s ship, the Doctor explains the Daleks’ origins to Clara: the evil creatures were created by Davros, and it now seems that Davros was created by the Doctor. The ship comes out of hyperspace to arrive at a hospital station in deep space. After several hours of waiting with Clara and Missy, the Doctor is finally escorted by Sarff to meet with Davros. Left behind, Missy tells Clara that the local gravity is not that of a space station, more like that of a planet – and to prove her point, she breaks free of her bonds and then opens the nearest air lock. Entering Davros’ hospital room, the Doctor comes face-to-face with his old enemy. Davros plays back some old recordings of their encounters, concentrating on the occasion when the Time Lord had the option of destroying the Daleks at the time of their creation – ironically when he and his companions debated the moral dilemma of killing a future dictator when they were but a child. As an alert sounds to warn Davros that his captives have escaped, he and the Doctor watch as Missy and Clara step out of the airlock, seemingly into space. However, Missy knows that she and Clara are standing on an invisible planet. Around them their surroundings fade into view – and to Missy’s horror, she learns that they are on the Dalek home world of Skaro, on the outskirts of the evil creatures’ city. Watching this revelation over the monitor, the Doctor realises that Davros has come to die with his children. Missy and Clara are captured by Daleks and taken to their control room, where they find the TARDIS surrounded by the Dalek Supreme and his minions. Hearing that the Supreme wants to destroy the TARDIS using all the weaponry available, Missy tries to bargain for her life and that of the time-space vessel; but the Supreme is uninterested, and Missy is promptly exterminated. As the Daleks train their weapons on Clara, the Doctor tries to beg for her life, but Davros ignored him. Clara tries to run, but she too is callously gunned down. The Doctor is devastated, and can only look on helplessly as Davros claims his final victory and the TARDIS is atomised before his eyes…

On the battlefield, the young Davros is confused by the sudden reappearance of the stranger. Declaring that he has come back to save his friend, the Doctor raises a Dalek gun and announces that he will exterminate Davros…



Peter Capaldi (The Doctor), Jenna Coleman (Clara), Michelle Gomez (Missy), Jami Reid-Quarrell (Colony Sarff), Julian Bleach (Davros), Jemma Redgrave (Kate Stewart), Jaye Griffiths (Jac), Harki Bhambra (Mike), Daniel Hoffman-Gill (Bors), Joey Price (Boy [Young Davros]), Benjamin Cawley (Kanzo), Aaron Neil (Mr Dunlop), Clare Higgins (Ohila), Nicholas Briggs (Voice of the Daleks), Kelly Hunter (Shadow Architect), India Ria Amarteifio (Alison), Dasharn Anderson (Ryan), Stefan Adegbola (Newsreader), Shin-Fei Chen (Newsreader), Lucy Newman-Williams (Newsreader), Demi Papaminas (School Girl), Barnaby Edwards (Dalek), Nicholas Pegg (Dalek), Jonathon Ojinnaka (Soldier)

Directed by Hettie MacDonald
Produced by Peter Bennett
Executive Producers Steven Moffat and Brian Minchin
A BBC Wales production

TX (BBC 1 & BBC 1 HD):
19th September 2015 @ 7.40 pm


Notes:
*Featuring the Twelfth Doctor and Clara

*This episode runs at fifty minutes long

*The BBC managed to spoiler some viewers by transmitting a trailer to the next part of the story, 'The Witch's Familiar, at 7.25 am on BBC2 - some twelve hours before this first part was broadcast!

*A special compilation of 'The Magician's Apprentice' and 'The Witch's Familiar' was shown the following week, on 27th September at 3.15 pm on BBC 1 and BBC 1 HD