Final Thoughts from the Doctor Who Episode "The Witch's Familiar"

1. I kind of figured Clara and Missy weren't dead, despite the apparent evidence to the contrary. Her trick was pretty clever. But, I'm not really sure Missy needed to recount the long story about how the Doctor used a similar method to escape a bad situation.

2. Speaking of Missy, the more we watch her, the more my wife and I become fans. The Master was an OK bad guy. The female version of the Master is considerably better, especially the way she seems to take great joy in being evil/insane.

3. Along those same lines, I'm fairly certain she'll find a way to escape the Daleks again. I highly doubt this will be the last time we see her on this series.

4. The Dalek sewers were admittedly unique and pretty creepy. When Missy described them as being alive, I wasn't really sure what she meant. I definitely wasn't expecting the sewer to be made up of still-living, decaying Daleks. In fact, when I went to bed last night, I couldn't help but wonder if Clara felt the need to change her shoes afterwards.

5. So, was I the only one who had flashbacks to "Asylum of the Daleks" when Clara became part of that Dalek armor? Since Coleman has already announced she will be leaving the series at the end of this season, I can't help but wonder if maybe this was a precursor to how her character gets written off the series.

6. Speaking of familiar scenes, that interaction between the Doctor and Davros reminded me a lot of Star Wars with Davros trying to convince the Doctor to join the dark side. Even Davros talking about how he wanted to see the Doctor with his own eyes sounded like the line Darth Vader says in "Return of the Jedi."

7. One thing I did find I liked about that part of this episode, however, is how the Doctor seemed to return, at least partially, to his normal self by tricking Davros into believing he had tricked the Doctor. I thought that was pretty fantastic considering, for a while, I was very disappointed the Doctor would fall into an obvious trap.

8. I am, however, a bit curious what happened to Davros' serpent-like servant Colony Sarff. I certainly hope he isn't dead because he's an interesting character that has a lot of potential as an enemy. I hope we get to see more of him in the future.

I, admittedly, had some doubts about this new season after last week's "The Magician's Apprentice." However, this episode proved to be very entertaining and renewed my enthusiasm for this series going forward.

My Grade: A