Three thoughts about "The Witch's Familiar"

[pedanther]

Three thoughts about this week's episode of Doctor Who, "The Witch's Familiar":


It looks like I was right last week about Moffat knowing that nobody would really believe Clara and Missy were vaporised, since he doesn't even try to drag out the suspense on that point.

[edit to add: And a belated thought, continuing on the theme: After telling the audience all the way through the season break and last episode that he likes it when the Master comes back from the dead with no explanation, he's actually given us that explanation, but after the audience stopped expecting it and while they thought he was talking about something else. Moffat likes playing with our expectations.]

I was pretty much completely wrong last week about what Davros was planning, largely because I assumed this episode would be more timey-wimey than it turned out to be. In my defence, I don't think it was possible to predict Davros's plan without information that we were only given in this episode. (There was, I admit, a moment when I thought they were genuinely going with the "Davros and the Doctor put aside their differences at the last and watch the sun come up" ending, but I'm glad they didn't because that would have been awfully twee. Dad, on the other hand, wasn't fooled for a moment, and loudly announced that he thought Davros was laying it on too thick.)

I'm sure I can't be the only person who thought of a certain earlier Moffat work when it turned out that this episode involved not only Daleks and the Doctor's best enemy but also a trek through the sewers...

Comments

[john_amend_all]

Re your last point: I was convinced that at the end, Missy would escape the Daleks by a vertical drop into the sewers, and then, on her next appearance, complain it took her 300 years to get out again.

[rdmasters.livejournal.com]

Has anyone else noticed just how much of Missy's dialogue is made up of pop-culture references?

Case in point - last line of this episode "I've just had a brilliant idea". Last time I heard that line it was in a bus load of gold hanging over a cliff-edge!