With the first episode of the Ninth season of the revived Doctor Who, we are offered the first of what is at least a two-part story. I'm pleased to see a return to the longer form because we are given a heck of a cliff hanger on top of the return of Davros and the Master.
After what I consider a botched ending to the last season, I am again filled with a sense of hope. Some of my issues with the Twelfth Doctor stories have been caused by the exigencies of character establishment. It's been a concern since Patrick Troughton took over the role in 1966. It's not simply nostalgia for what came before and fear that the future will not live up to the past. We, the audience, must learn to care about this new Doctor before his adventures can touch us emotionally. So we have to spend several episodes in character establishment.
One of the strengths -- and weaknesses -- of Steven Moffat's term as show-runner has been producing a complex, alien Doctor. The Doctor is an alien who is several thousand years old. He should be both. That, however, makes him difficult to understand and hard to like. We need to see him through the eyes of more understandable intermediaries: friends and enemies.
That's what this episode offers us: Clara, the Master and Davros. Friends and enemies, although how they stack up may surprise you.
It's all very interesting, but I am not yet willing to declare this episode a success. It's a two-part story. I'll get around to that next week...assuming that's when this particular story ends.