Series 9, Episode 1 | 1 part | First broadcast: 19 September 2015 | Writer: Steven Moffat | Director: Hettie MacDonald
Cast
- Peter Capaldi as the Twelfth Doctor
- Jenna Coleman as Clara Oswald
- Michelle Gomez as Missy
- Jami Reid-Quarrell as Colony Sarff
- Julian Bleach as Davros
- Jemma Redgrave as Kate Stewart
- Jaye Griffiths as Jac
- Clare Higgins as Ohila
- Joey Price as the Boy (young Davros)
Summary
On a war-torn alien battlefield, the Doctor encounters a terrified boy trapped in a field of deadly “handmines,” only to abandon him in horror upon learning the child is the future creator of the Daleks, Davros. In the present, all the world’s aeroplanes freeze in mid-air as the Doctor vanishes, having left his “confession dial” with his oldest friend and enemy, Missy, who is presumed dead but very much alive. Missy and Clara Oswald track the Doctor down to Essex in 1138, where he has been living it up for weeks, playing electric guitar atop a tank. They are found by Colony Sarff, a serpentine composite creature acting on behalf of the dying Davros, who wants to see the Doctor one final time. Sarff transports the trio to what appears to be a space station but is revealed to be the Dalek homeworld of Skaro, where a shamed, guilt-ridden Doctor is forced to confront Davros and the horrifying possibility that he must finally answer for the choice he made as a young man on that battlefield.
Interesting Facts
- This episode opens Series 9 by directly revisiting a scene from 1975’s “Genesis of the Daleks,” recreating the Fourth Doctor’s famous “could you then kill that child” dilemma by having the Twelfth Doctor actually meet the young Davros on the battlefield.
- Several classic Dalek casing designs spanning the show’s history appear throughout the episode, including the very first blue-and-silver Dalek model debuted in 1963, alongside the Special Weapons Dalek from “Remembrance of the Daleks.”
- Peter Capaldi, a former punk rocker with the 1980s band the Dreamboys (alongside future chat-show host Craig Ferguson), performed the electric guitar work himself for the Doctor’s medieval “rock star” introduction.
- The episode marks the returning appearance of Clare Higgins as Ohila of the Sisterhood of Karn, previously seen in the 50th-anniversary minisode “The Night of the Doctor,” and Julian Bleach reprising Davros from “The Stolen Earth”/”Journey’s End.”
- It is the first half of a two-part story concluding in “The Witch’s Familiar,” and the confession dial introduced here becomes a major plot device recurring later in the series, in “Face the Raven,” “Heaven Sent,” and “Hell Bent.”
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