‘Doctor Who’ season 9, episode 2 review: Did a Dalek learn ‘mercy’ in ‘The Witch’s Familiar’?
“Am I a good man?”
At some point during many of its episodes, “Doctor Who” does like to ask itself these deep, philosophical questions. During “The Witch’s Familiar,” this is a question that Davros asked himself, and we have a pretty easy answer to that question: Not so much. He is responsible for creating the Daleks! Just to make matters worse, he thought that he had come up with a way in order to make both himself and his creation all the more powerful.
While The Doctor is not always right, nor does he always win, he certainly did this time around as a way to bring back generations of Daleks … and the sewers. You gotta love the twists of this show!
Just in case this was not enough, you also had the status of Clara Oswald, who nearly fell victim to one of Missy’s plans. For the most part, The Master was a friend to The Doctor and Clara during the episode, but only for the sake of her own self-preservation. Sure, she is evil and she try to have The Doctor destroy Clara while she was trapped within the casing of a Dalek, but she was also thoroughly entertaining and funny through most of this. We don’t want her to win, but we also do not want her to go away permanently. Unfortunately, we’re not sure just when we are going to get a chance to see her again after this installment.
One intriguing mystery certainly does still remain: How did the Dalek learn mercy, and what does this mean for the story of these beings moving forward? We’re much more confident about a return appearance for them in the near future than Missy, so we shall see.
Ultimately, we found “The Witch’s Familiar” to be a fantastic conclusion to the Davros storyline and the first two episodes as a whole. We love the Daleks as an adversary by and large, just as we love the cat-and-mouse stories where our Time Lord somehow manages to persevere despite the odds being completely against him. For this episode, we certainly had that and then some. Grade: A-.
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