Doctor Who Discussion: “The Magician’s Apprentice”

We’ll run a review when the story concludes. The big news? The Doctor is back, with an episode that revisits quite a few old enemies and episodes (perhaps a few too many):

-The Doctor encounters a young Davros
-Someone snakes around spacetime looking for the Doctor
-Planes on contemporary earth stop and hover, midflight. UNIT contacts Clara.
-A certain character receives the Time-Lord equivalent of a Last Will and Testament, indicating the Doctor believes he is going to die.
-There is a space station that isn’t what it appears to be, and two major characters die.

What do we think?

10 replies on “Doctor Who Discussion: “The Magician’s Apprentice””

  1. I was disappointed in some of the sloppy writing. For example, if you’re going to do something like bring Missy back from the dead, it really isn’t a huge amount of work to come up with an explanation instead of just hand-waving it. And having Bors be a Delak was especially ridiculous, especially given the prologue…

    Other than that, I thought it was okay. The humor (what little there was) was cute and silly.

    The archaeologist that digs up that tank is going to have some issues… :-)

    • But just hand-waving it is exactly what the old series always did with that problem. I think it’s perfect to never explain it. It’s not something our characters know, so it’s not something that has to be explained. The universe is still full of mysteries.

  2. Totally LOVED this episode!
    Loved the Flashback. (I remember that episode!!)
    Remember, back in those days, they left things unsaid and just determined that the audience was smart enough to figure things out without shoving it down our throats?
    Those were the good old days….

  3. My wife and I binged all of the new run (Starting with Eccleston) since neither of us had seen any Doctor Who and we had some friends who were into it. We made it all the way through just in time for the premiere, and then it turns out that despite BBC America being listed in our channel guide, we don’t actually get it.

    It’s good that they put this up on Youtube but unfortunately it’s just for the premiere. Supposedly they’re putting them up on their own site after they air but it’s not so easy to get that onto a TV as it is to get Youtube on there.

      • Not a clue, I have to find a time to call and ask and I’ve been super busy this week. It’s listed on their site as part of a tier we already have, and yet it’s gone from the lineup on the TiVo and nothing comes up when I attempt to tune it in. It may be that they dropped it entirely, unfortunately. Usually even if it’s a channel we don’t pay for it shows up on the DVR but tells us it’s unauthorized when tuned in, this just has nothing there.

        I may have to get “creative” with obtaining the episodes since I don’t have any other choices here for programming — too many tall trees on neighboring properties for any satellite TV provider to function.

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