Doctor: Peter Capaldi (Twelfth Doctor)
Companion: Jenna Coleman (Clara Oswald)
Others
Michelle Gomez – Missy
Julian Bleach – Davros
Jami Reid-Quarrell – Colony Sarff
Jemma Redgrave – Kate Stewart
Jaye Griffiths – Jac
Harki Bhambra – Mike
Daniel Hoffmann-Gill – Bors
Joey Price – Boy
Benjamin Cawley – Kanzo
Aaron Neil – Mr Dunlop
Clare Higgins – Ohila
Nicholas Briggs – Voice of the Daleks
Kelly Hunter – Shadow Architect
India Ria Amarteifio – Alison
Dasharn Anderson – Ryan
Stefan Adegbola, Shin-Fei Chen, Lucy Newman-Williams – Newsreaders
Barnaby Edwards, Nicholas Pegg – Daleks
Jonathon Ojinnaka – Soldier
Production
Directed by Hettie MacDonald
Written by Steven Moffat
Script editor David P Davis
Produced by Peter Bennett
Executive producer(s) Steven Moffat
Brian Minchin
Incidental music composer Murray Gold
Series Series 9
Length 1st of 2-part story, 50 minutes
Originally broadcast 19 September 2015
The Doctor, traveling across a war-ravaged battleground, encounters a young boy trapped in a field of "handmines". After throwing the boy his sonic screwdriver so he can communicate with him, the Doctor encourages the boy and tries to find a way to save him, until he learns that the boy is Davros, the future creator of the Daleks.
In the present, all the airplanes are frozen in mid-flight, and Clara is summoned by UNIT's Kate Stewart to help contact the Doctor. While there, they are contacted by Missy, who needed to get UNIT's attention to arrange a meeting with Clara. At a cafe, Missy asks Clara for help finding the Doctor as she had received his "confessional dial", the Time Lord's equivalent of a "last will and testament", and believes the Doctor may think he is dying. Clara helps Missy track down the Doctor to Essex in 1138, using vortex manipulators to travel there.
Davros on the Skaro set, on display at the Doctor Who Experience.
There, they find the Doctor has spent the last several weeks partying. They are approached by Colony Sarff, a composite being made from numerous snakes, who says he is an agent for Davros who has come to take the Doctor prisoner as Davros' dying wish, and presents the Doctor with the sonic screwdriver he gave him years before. The Doctor feels shame for having abandoned Davros as a boy, and agrees to be taken away; Missy and Clara coerce Sarff to take them as well. As they leave, one of the Doctor's friends is revealed to be a Dalek puppet and secures the Doctor's TARDIS for the Daleks.
Sarff takes them to a space station, and the Doctor is led alone to Davros, who shames the Doctor for his actions in the past. Meanwhile, Missy is suspicious of the gravity of the station, and shows Clara that the station is just an illusion, as they are on the planet Skaro, the Dalek homeworld. They are captured by Daleks and forced to the Doctor's TARDIS, to be executed in front of the Doctor. The Doctor attempts to plead for their lives, but Davros says he has no control over the Daleks, and Missy, Clara, and the TARDIS are seemingly destroyed. Davros derides the Doctor's compassion as his "greatest indulgence" and wants him to confess, finally, that "compassion is wrong".
The episode concludes with the Doctor speaking to young Davros. The Doctor pulls out a Dalek weapon and vows to save his friends the only way he can.
The Magician's Apprentice