On a wartorn planet, the Doctor encounters a young boy who has stumbled into a lethal trap. However, when the Doctor realises that the planet is Skaro, and the child is Davros -- who will grow up to become the creator of the Daleks -- he abandons the boy to his fate. Appalled by his own actions, a recalcitrant Doctor goes into seclusion; he sends his confession dial, a Time Lord's last will and testament, to Missy. His old enemy recruits Clara to help track him down, but they are followed by a servant of Davros' called Colony Sarff. Davros is nearing the end of his life, and now remembers that fateful day on Skaro. But is he really seeking absolution, or has the Doctor become ensnared in a terrible deception?

When Doctor Who returned to television in 2005 under executive producer Russell T Davies, each season featured a number of standalone episodes interspersed with three two-part stories. When Steven Moffat succeeded Davies for the show's thirty-first season in 2010, he maintained this format. However, Moffat soon soured on multiple-episode serials: there was only a pair of them in Season Thirty-Two, while Season Thirty-Three included none at all. Moffat finally decided to revive the two-part story for Dark Water / Death In Heaven, the Season Thirty-Four finale which closed the curtains on Peter Capaldi's initial run as the Twelfth Doctor. Moffat was surprised to find himself revelling in the opportunities offered by the increased runtime, while also discovering that Capaldi's portrayal lent itself to longer-form narratives. As such, when it came time to plan Season Thirty-Five, Moffat decided that two-part stories would take on an unprecedented prominence.

This approach would begin with the season premiere, which Moffat wanted to imbue with the same blockbuster appeal that was normally reserved for the finale. Having long admired 1975's Genesis Of The Daleks -- the story which had introduced Davros -- he envisaged a sequel of sorts to coincide with its fortieth anniversary. At an early stage, Moffat hoped to convince Russell T Davies, his predecessor as Doctor Who's executive producer, to write the adventure, which he thought might involve Davros being placed on trial. Once Davies turned down the opportunity, Moffat decided that the new narrative should do more than just revisit the Dalek creator, who had not been seen since Journey's End in 2008. He imagined a dynamic confrontation between the two men, one which would allow him to invert the question asked by the Doctor about himself during Season Thirty-Four: “Am I a good man?”. The same words would now be placed on Davros' tongue, encapsulating his unshakeable belief that his development of the Daleks had been justified.

The involvement of so many different Daleks suggested their home planet, Skaro, as a key setting

Moffat also viewed such a story as an opportunity to resurrect a gimmick he had previously employed for Season Thirty-Three's Asylum Of The Daleks. His aim in that adventure had been to incorporate various Dalek casings from throughout their long history, but the plot had ultimately offered insufficient space to take advantage of their presence. Moffat thought that a two-part serial provided a chance to remedy this, and the involvement of so many different Daleks suggested their home planet, Skaro, as a key setting.

In developing his narrative, Moffat realised that the embers of reluctant friendship which glowed through the adversarial relationship between the Doctor and Davros were reminiscent of the Doctor's rapport with his Time Lord arch-nemesis, the Master. Moffat had revived the character in a female incarnation, known as Missy, during Season Thirty-Four, and although he had initially planned to wait a while before bringing her back to television, he now realised that her presence was perfectly suited the season premiere. During November 2014, actress Michelle Gomez confirmed that she was available to return to Doctor Who.

With Jenna Coleman having decided at a late stage to continue playing Clara Oswald beyond her planned departure in the 2014 holiday special, Last Christmas, the opening episodes of Season Thirty-Five would also have to reestablish the character's role in the series. Moffat envisaged Clara fully embracing her life as an adventurer in time and space to an extent she had previously resisted. Indeed, picking up on cues from episodes like Flatline and Death In Heaven, Clara would start to see herself as more Doctor-like, leading to behaviour that simultaneously exhibited greater confidence and recklessness.

To this end, Moffat wanted Clara to propel the narrative during the early stages of the season premiere, confronting Missy and then locating the Doctor. To support her, he decided to bring back Kate Stewart and the Unified Intelligence Taskforce (UNIT). This would also give him a chance to pair Kate with a new sidekick, Jac, following the death of Osgood at Missy's hands in Death In Heaven. Moffat knew that Osgood would actually be returning mid-season, and this would help make her reappearance all the more surprising for the audience.

Moffat began writing his scripts towards the end of 2014, by which time the first installment was already known as The Magician's Apprentice. An initial draft of the episode was completed in early January 2015, followed by part two, dubbed The Witch's Familiar, towards the end of the month. Both Moffat and Capaldi wanted to avoid having the Twelfth Doctor behave as a static character, and so the traditional sonic screwdriver was replaced with sonic shades. Having played guitar in the punk rock band The Dreamboys during his youth, Capaldi suggested that the Doctor should demonstrate a fondness for the instrument, and Moffat decided that it would be another recurring motif for the season.

The primary visual inspiration for the Dalek city was its portrayal in the comic strip adventures of TV Century 21

Although Moffat acknowledged the Dalek city as having originated in 1963's The Daleks, the primary visual inspiration was its portrayal in the comic strip adventures found in the pages of TV Century 21. Written by original Doctor Who story editor David Whitaker across more than one hundred issues between 1965 and 1967, the colourful stories had been drawn by artists Richard Jennings, Ron Turner and Eric Eden. Various other continuity references were littered throughout the scripts. When Jac reviewed incidents in the Earth's past which likely involved the Doctor, the earliest was initially “the development of fire” in reference to the very first Doctor Who story, 100,000 BC. Indeed, Moffat even included an acknowledgement that the Doctor appeared to have given up smoking following that adventure since the pipe he used in its second installment was never seen again.

The Sisterhood of Karn had first appeared in 1976's The Brain Of Morbius. Originally, Missy would have described them as “old friends” while a flashback demonstrated that this was a lie, depicting the Sisterhood threatening her with spears as they dropped the confession dial at her feet. Ohila, leader of the Sisterhood, returned from The Night Of The Doctor, a mini-episode released online during Doctor Who's fiftieth-anniversary festivities in 2013. There she had assisted the regeneration of the dying Eighth Doctor.

As first conceived, the story told by Missy at the start of The Witch's Familiar was intended to explain not only how she and Clara had escaped from extermination by the Daleks, but also how she had survived her apparent demise at the end of Death In Heaven. Mr Armitage, the headmaster of Coal Hill School who had played a minor role in several episodes during Season Thirty-Four, was meant to appear in The Magician's Apprentice but was later replaced by the deputy headmaster, Mr Dunlop.

For several years, a popular promotional tool for Doctor Who had been the online release of short prequels to accompany key episodes. This approach had been absent during Season Thirty-Four, but would be resurrected for The Magician's Apprentice / The Witch's Familiar. Originally called “The Knight's Disciple”, the corresponding mini-episode was eventually known as The Doctor's Meditation. Written by Moffat, it chronicled the Doctor's stay in 1138 Essex and provided more background for the ill-fated Bors.

The original design for Colony Sarff gave his face an emphatically bulbous, serpentine shape

The Magician's Apprentice / The Witch's Familiar was made as Block Two of the Season Thirty-Five production calendar. Its director was Hattie MacDonald, who had previously handled another of Moffat's Doctor Who scripts: 2007's Blink. In addition to Gomez, the cast included a number of familiar faces. Jemma Redgrave was back for a fourth story as Kate Stewart, while Julian Bleach portrayed Davros for a second time, having previously tackled the role in The Stolen Earth / Journey's End. Also returning from the same story was Kelly Hunter as the Shadow Architect. An actor new to Doctor Who was Jami Reid-Quarrell, playing Colony Sarff. To achieve the alien's unnaturally smooth gait, it was decided that Reid-Quarrell would ride a Segway hidden beneath his robes. The original design for Sarff developed by Millennium FX gave his face an emphatically bulbous, serpentine shape; a more conventionally human appearance was eventually settled upon, to avoid giving away Sarff's true nature.

As with Asylum Of The Daleks, the Dalek casings which appeared in The Magician's Apprentice / The Witch's Familiar were obtained from various sources. Four bronze Daleks, of the type introduced in 2005's Dalek, still survived from the early years of Doctor Who's twenty-first-century revival, as did the Supreme Dalek built for The Stolen Earth / Journey's End. Many of these Daleks had been built by Specialist Models, who now provided another bronze casing that they had retained for their own use. Eight more bronze Daleks had been assembled for Asylum Of The Daleks itself, including two distressed versions which were not suitable for the new production. Of the remaining six, only three were available; one had been heavily modified to serve as Rusty in Season Thirty-Four's Into The Dalek, another had been damaged during the making of 2013's The Day Of The Doctor, and a third was committed to the Doctor Who Experience, a museum and interactive exhibit on Cardiff Bay.

Many of the other Daleks were actually replicas constructed by This Planet Earth, a manufacturer of high-end screen-accurate Dalek props. Having previously supplied a casing of the type created for The Daleks and a Throne Room Dalek from 1967's The Evil Of The Daleks, longtime fan Andrew Beech now donated two of each, although one of the Throne Room Daleks had its black dome repainted to more closely resemble the standard Sixties colour scheme. Another fan, David Hobday, granted the use of a Renegade Dalek from 1988's Remembrance Of The Daleks; he would also serve as one of the Dalek operators. A charity organiser which supplied Daleks for fundraising opportunities loaned a bronze Dalek, a black Dalek in the style of Dalek Sec from 2006's Army Of Ghosts / Doomsday, and a Special Weapons Dalek as seen in Remembrance Of The Daleks. Two additional bronze Daleks came from the Doctor Who Experience, and a third from BBC Worldwide, the Corporation's commercial arm.

The presence of a tank meant that the Doctor's party in 1138 could not be shot at a real castle

The first two recording days for The Magician's Apprentice / The Witch's Familiar were February 12th and 13th. The venue was Caerphilly Castle in Caerphilly; the chief focus was scenes at UNIT headquarters, although MacDonald also taped Bors' discovery of the TARDIS there. Following the weekend, material at Coal Hill School was filmed on the 16th at Tonyrefail School in Tonyrefail. February 17th was spent at Roath Lock Studios in Cardiff, where the Drum gallery set constructed for Under The Lake / Before The Flood, made as Block One, had now been transformed into the hospital waiting area. Next on MacDonald's itinerary was the Doctor's party in 1138. The presence of a tank meant that shooting could not proceed at a real castle due to the risk of damage, so the environment was instead constructed at MOD St Athan. Work there spanned February 18th to 20th, with time on the last day also devoted to material aboard Sarff's spaceship. The latter part of the 20th saw the completion of a scene in which Clara stopped her motorcycle en route to UNIT headquarters to discuss the frozen aeroplane with a Coal Hill student. Recorded at Howard Gardens in Cardiff, it wound up on the cutting room floor.

Eager to provide an exotic milieu for both the wastelands of Skaro and Clara's initial meeting with Missy, the production team decided to return to Spain's Canary Islands, off the coast of Morocco. The previous year, location filming for Kill The Moon had taken place on Lanzarote, at the archipelago's extreme east. For The Magician's Apprentice / The Witch's Familiar, the venue would instead be Tenerife, the largest of the islands. Essential cast and crew flew there after the weekend, on February 23rd. Scenes on the surface of Skaro were recorded on the 24th and 25th in the volcanic environs of the Minas de San José near the centre of the Parque Nacional del Teide. No Daleks were brought to Tenerife; instead, a computer-animated casing would confront Clara and Missy. On February 26th and 27th, MacDonald's team relocated to Garachico, along the island's northern coast. There, the Glorieta de San Francisco was the square at which Clara confronted Missy. Capaldi had already returned to the United Kingdom by this time, while his colleagues left Tenerife on the 28th.

After a day off on Sunday, March 1st, domestic shooting resumed on the 2nd at Taff's Well Quarry in Taff's Well, which posed as the surface of Karn. The rest of the week, from March 3rd to 6th, was spent at Roath Lock, principally on the set for the caves beneath the Dalek city. Part of the 5th saw cameras rolling in the Dalek control room, which was repurposed from the hangar built for Under The Lake / Before The Flood. Much of March 6th saw MacDonald move over to Davros' chamber, with Bleach returning to the role of the Dalek creator after a gap of seven years. He wore a new mask for The Magician's Apprentice / The Witch's Familiar, which was sculpted to appear more aged than the version created for The Stolen Earth / Journey's End. Davros' chair still survived from the earlier story, and required only minor refurbishment.

The week of March 9th to 13th was confined to Roath Lock, with the first four days concentrating on the remaining material in Davros' chamber and the adjacent corridor. The scene of Davros opening his eyes was recorded on the 11th, for which Bleach donned a modified mask and consented to have his eyelashes trimmed so that make-up could be glued onto his eyelids. It was back to the Dalek control room on March 13th, prior to a break for the weekend.

March 16th and 17th were studio days, with the Dalek control room the focus of the first day, followed by the hospital corridor and then the sequence of Clara and Missy entering the cave on the second day. Work on the 18th started with more footage at Howard Gardens for the ultimately-deleted scene of Clara on her motorcycle. Subsequently, the green screen effect of Clara and Missy seemingly emerging from the hospital into space was filmed at Roath Lock, alongside more shots in the waiting area and inserts of Clara trapped inside the Dalek.

Of the main cast, only Gomez was required at Roath Lock on March 19th, for material involving Missy in both the waiting room and a Dalek city corridor, plus several pick-up shots. Later that day, the Old Custom House in Cardiff served as the Maldovarium. Various Doctor Who aliens were present, including a Sycorax (introduced in The Christmas Invasion), Ood (The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit), Hath (The Doctor's Daughter), a Kahler (A Town Called Mercy), a Blowfish (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, an episode of the spin-off series Torchwood), and a Skullion (The Man Who Never Was, the final story of the spin-off series The Sarah Jane Adventures). The tale which Missy spun about the Doctor at the start of The Witch's Familiar was dramatised at Margam Country Park in Margam on the 20th.

First to be tackled after the weekend were the sequences on the Skaro battlefield, which were taped at Dragon Studios in Llanilid on March 23rd and 24th. Work on the 25th started with more action in the Dalek control room at Roath Lock, before Cardiff City Hall provided space suitable for the Shadow Proclamation. The next two days saw MacDonald's team back at Roath Lock. Material shot on March 26th was set in the TARDIS, the Dalek city corridor and the waiting area, with cameras also capturing modelwork and green screen shots to place Daleks and the TARDIS on the surface of Skaro. More effects and model shots were completed on the 27th, as was the footage of the newsreaders for the early part of The Magician's Apprentice, plus more inserts.

The Imperial War Museum in Duxford, Cambridgeshire provided the biplane seen in the battle on ancient Skaro

The last day of principal photography was March 30th, which again saw the Doctor Who team travelling beyond the borders of Wales -- albeit only as far as England. The first shot of the day was Clara's arrival at the Tower of London in St Katherine's & Wapping. MacDonald then relocated to Duxford, Cambridgeshire where the Imperial War Museum provided the biplane seen in the battle on ancient Skaro. Various inserts for The Magician's Apprentice / The Witch's Familiar were filmed at Roath Lock on May 22nd. On May 27th, cast and crew returned to Caerphilly Castle to record The Doctor's Meditation. It was directed by Ed Bazalgette, who had just completed work on Block Three -- The Girl Who Died and The Woman Who Lived -- and the opportunity was also taken to capture pick-up and establishing shots for The Magician's Apprentice. Additional inserts involving Bors were then taped at Roath Lock on July 27th.

Both episodes were granted fifty-minute timeslots, which would now be a regular alternative to the forty-five minutes which had been standard since 2005. Nonetheless, The Magician's Apprentice / The Witch's Familiar still required a number of trims. Amongst them was the scene in which the Doctor gave Ohila his confession dial, which would be repackaged to form a second prequel for the serial. The dialogue in this sequence included one line -- “Look after the universe for me; I've put a lot of work into it” -- which Moffat borrowed from The Curse Of Fatal Death, a spoof he had written for the 1999 edition of the Comic Relief charity appeal.

Running one hundred and seventeen seconds, the prologue on Karn was released to the public on September 11th. The Doctor's Meditation initially emerged in a very different manner, being paired with Dark Water / Death In Heaven for a series of 3-D cinema screenings on September 15th and 16th. Unusually, this meant that the mini-episode was briefly available only to fans outside the United Kingdom, since the special showings were limited to theatres in Canada, Denmark, Russia and the United States. The Doctor's Meditation was finally placed online for British audiences on the 17th.

The Magician's Apprentice was transmitted on September 19th at 7.40pm, a slot that had most recently been occupied on a regular basis by rebroadcasts of the Indiana Jones series of adventure films. Pointless Celebrities led into Doctor Who, while The National Lottery: In It To Win It aired immediately afterwards. Unfortunately, shortly before the episode began, BBC Two inadvertently aired a trailer for The Witch's Familiar, spoiling the involvement of Davros for viewers who had not yet switched over to BBC One.

On September 19th, Doctor Who attracted publicity with a reenactment of the iconic cover of the Beatles' Abbey Road

Earlier on the 19th, Doctor Who attracted considerable publicity when the show's social media accounts posted a reenactment of the iconic cover of the Beatles' 1969 album Abbey Road. Held just that morning, the photoshoot featured Capaldi and Coleman on the famous crosswalk alongside two bronze Daleks. In a nod to the myth that a licence plate number visible in the Abbey Road picture held cryptic clues to the purported death of Beatles member Paul McCartney, a car with licence “DWW291F” could be seen in the Doctor Who image. This was intended to convey the message “Doctor Who weeps” in reference to the apparent death of Clara later in the season; she would have been “29 if” she had lived.

The Witch's Familiar was broadcast in the same timeslot on September 26th, albeit with Strictly Come Dancing now taking over as its lead-in. Unfortunately, it soon became clear that, from a ratings perspective, Season Thirty-Four was off to a more muted start than its predecessors. For the first time since the opening episode of 1989's Battlefield, a Doctor Who season premiere fell outside the week's top ten programmes, with The Magician's Apprentice registering at number thirteen. The Witch's Familiar then logged only 5.7 million viewers: a new low for Doctor Who since its return to television in 2005. In part, these figures could be attributed to the increasing fragmentation of the television landscape, with streaming services like Netflix beginning to attract heightened attention as they began to offer original content. However, it also seemed clear that the red-hot popularity which Doctor Who had enjoyed ever since 2005 was finally beginning to cool.

• Dalek 63·88, edited by Jon Green and Gavin Rymill.
• Doctor Who Magazine #551, June 2020, “Showrunner Showdown” by Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat, Panini UK Ltd
• Doctor Who: The Complete History #80, 2018, “Story 254: The Magician's Apprentice / The Witch's Familiar”, edited by Mark Wright, Hachette Partworks Ltd.