Yup. Was so disappointed not to see her yet 
And I’m so disappointed with myself not to have instantly recognised the “YOU SO FINE” text as heralding the arrival of Missy, given the amount of times I’ve linked the “oh missy, you so fine!” fan video here!
I’ll have to rewatch it as my in-laws spoke over a lot, but overall, a good start, with some good one-liners (battling with daffodils? Dude!) and Missy is my role model.
QUESTION:
If the ax guy/Dalek was already at the renaissance fair thing, doesn’t that mean Davros actually already knew where the doctor was???
Hubbie thought ax guy/Bors had only been daleked when snake guy turned up and bit him during the tournament, ie just as Davros was finding out where The Doctor was.
Lots falls apart on close examination in Who, including in this ep, but not this so much so.
The Tardis is known to often place The Doctor where she feels he needs to be more than where he pilots her to go. One can ask why she felt he needed to be there but her ways are inscrutable.
Having never knowingly met or known of a Time Lord thinking that Davros would put together, many many years later, that someone who looked and sounded very different was the same person … nah.
OTOH Davros and his minion did not know where The Doctor was, right? The point of the “Where isss The Doctor?” bit. So then how the heck was a camouflaged Dalek already embedded as an axe-wielding fighter in order to procure the Tardis?
Decent ep but structured more like modern super hero movie where the ride is the point and you are better off not thinking much.
Then no need to be camo’ed.
oh…
and here was going to say “wibbly wobbly, timey wimey”
QUESTION
Why was The Doctor convinced he had only one day to live?
Not answered yet? I’m not sure.
My guess: because he knew Davros was looking for him, knew he had to go see Davros, and knew it was probably going to kill him.
When the Doctor reacted to Missy, Clara and the Tardis’s “deaths” I thought Capaldi’s performance was very hammy, but I have a fanwank for that. It’s not Capaldi being hammy. It’s the Doctor being hammy. Because he knows as well as we do that it’s all a big psyche.
HOW, I’m not sure. Probably because he’s set it all up from the beginning. Like, Missy and Clara are fakebots or something. I dunno, I’m not in the habit of creating Gambit Pileups, but it’s the sort of thing the Doctor does in his sleep now.
Gosh, anyone would think I’m getting a little fatigued with Moffat’s plots.
Yeah… but
That first 5 minutes were… WOW
There’s always the Tesselecta
Oh, don’t misunderstand, I LIKED it, as I like pretty much like all Doctor Who that doesn’t have egg-moons and Earth-coddling-forests. Just feeling that it’s high time Moffat realised people are finding this “everything blows up and everyone dies AGAIN” tic really boring and stopped doing it.
Meanwhile, I just went back to TVtropes to see if I remembered the concept of the Gambit Pileup properly. Oh, look what the largest entry is in the TV section. Just fancy that.
ETA: oh, yeah the Tesselecta, that’s what I meant by ‘fakebots’.
While this isn’t directly about last night’s premiere episode, broadcast on BBC America, I was pleased to see that in today’s lineup of The Doctor’s Finest Moments Marathon that they’re actually showing episodes from the Doctor’s series prior to this century. Granted, it’s part of a “Breakfast with Baker” bit, still, it’s nice to see some of the original series get some airtime.
And in keeping with last night’s premiere theme, they just ran Genesis of the Daleks which was the first appearance of Davros.
And LEGALLY, by BBC America. Have they done that before?
Exactly. When Missy and Clara got “EX-TER-MIN-ATE!”-ed (which I assume is the only correct verb for death-by-Dalek), I thought “…eh.” I knew it was a fake, as we all did. Hell, I started thinking that as soon as Missy figured out that the space station was an illusion.
Speaking of Missy, I’m loving seeing her back, but I am afraid that Moffatt will do to her what he did to the Weeping Angels and - according to some but not me - to River Song; use them so often that they become camp versions of themselves.
The intro scene, however, was fantastic. And the hand mines are the creepiest thing Moff’s come up with since the Silence.
Why was Skaro even there, albeit painted invisible? The 6th Doctor gamed Davros into blowing it up at the end of Remembrance of the Daleks*? Did he put it back?
*an awesome story, and Sylvester McCoy at his finest.
I think they have, actually.
What Moffatt does excel at is crafting dialogue for the right actor to create the perfect character: he doesn’t always get the combination right - see River Song - but when he does, you get Sally Sparrow, Rory Williams, and Michelle Gomez as Missy. Her take on the Master is perfect, and you have to listen closely to catch all her quips:
Shall we make jam?
I’ll scratch his eye out!
What Moffatt and Gomez have created might be the best screen Joker of all time, and any other flaws in the writing aside, I’ll watch the show to enjoy her witheringly explaining to Clara why she’s the pet dog, before disintegrating random pedestrians to point out that she hasn’t turned good. And then breaking into a soft-shoe shuffle.