The Magician's Apprentice Review

Warning: this article contains spoilers for the episode. Don't read unless you've seen the story. This is the case for most of my reviews.

The way I see it, there are three ways to save Missy and Clara. The first possibility is that the Doctor goes back in time and changes things. This risks a paradox. The second possibility is that Missy saves them both. She cheats death all the time, so some Daleks shouldn't be too big of a problem for her. She mentioned earlier in the episode that Clara's vortex manipulator is slaved to hers. That should make it easy for her to teleport somewhere then take Clara with her, though she'd have to have incredible timing. She could pop into the TARDIS, take Clara with her, then fly it away with the brakes off. The last possibility is that the Daleks never actually killed them and its some sort of trick on Davros' part.

I'm kinda wondering about Clara's line at the beginning about Jane Austen. She said that Jane is "a phenomenal kisser," which to me seems to imply they've kissed. It's quite possible that Clara tried to get over Danny by having a series of one night stands with her with favorite authors. Another possibility is that Jane just kissed her for some reason and it was good. Also, maybe one of the Claragangers kissed Jane Austen and Clara just has all their memories. Whatever the reason, I need more bisexual Clara (and maybe some fanfiction of the event leading to this line).

It seems Clara is doing more work for UNIT now. Since she has alien computer hacking skills and a limited knowledge of alien species, she seems like a good fit to defend the Earth against them. She's clearly not doing it full time as she wants to retain her job as a school teacher. I'm guessing her UNIT job is more like a consulting position where she only goes in during major crises (which in the Whoniverse is about every month). Later on in the season, she apparently gets to use a missile launcher, so it'd be interesting to see how that tied in.