Headscratchers / Doctor Who S35 E2 "The Witch's Familiar"

• The episode treats Dalek voices as though they were synthetic, produced by the Dalek casings. …What? First, Rusty spoke to the Doctor from inside the casing in Into the Dalek, and for the record, his voice there showed a great deal of emotion, quite unlike Dalek-Clara's Dalek voice which repeats I am a Dalek in exactly the same tone, like a broken record or — indeed — a synthetic voice-box. Second, we've seen Daleks talking while out of their shell, like Dalek Caan — whose voice sounded less metallic because it wasn't muffled by the armor, but still very much like the usual Dalek voice.
  • The travel machine probably serves mostly as an amplifier when it's transmitting vocabulary typical of Daleks, which is necessary because the Kaled mutant inside doesn't have enough lung power to project its voice through all that armor. It's only if the words spoken are something the travel machine's processors aren't equipped to translate that the phrases spoken would be swapped out for something Dalek-appropriate.
  • One of the Technical Manuals states that a device translates the Dalek's thoughts into speech.
• The Doctor decides to go back and save kid-Davros hoping to instill him with the quality of mercy so he can in turn pass it onto the Daleks, which in turn means that Clara is able to get the Doctor to realise that it's her in the travel machine, not a Dalek (as nonsensical as that is, as the machine and the controlling mutant are separate entities, unless the Doctor meant that passing it onto the Daleks would result in them adding it to the programming of the travel machine's interface). But previously it has been shown that they don't understand the concept ("Genesis of the Daleks"). It can't be a case of the Doctor altering the past, as he does it to create a stable time loop, not to purposely alter things or by accident. Or was it something Davros forgot about but later came to subconsciously remember and implement (accounting for why the Dalek in 'The Big Bang' begged River for mercy rather than her being scary/badass enough to make it beg even when it's not capable)?
  • In "Genesis of the Daleks", it was said that the Daleks did not know the meaning of pity, not mercy. A Dalek can understand mercy, in the general sense of sparing someone's life, e.g. not killing Adelaide Brook as a child because she'll be a 'fixed point' as an adult. What it can't comprehend is doing so because you feel sorry for the one whose life you're sparing.
  • Also, these Daleks are made specifically from and by him, as opposed to, say, "Genesis of the Daleks", where they're made from mutated Kaleds, or "Revelation of the Daleks", where they're made from mutated humans.

• Davros insists that the Doctor tell him the "true" reason he left Gallifrey. But the reason was so that the First Doctor could hide the Hand of Omega in "primitive" 20th century Earth. Thanks to the clips in the previous episode, we know that for Davros, TWF is after Remembrance. Question: Why doesn't Davros remember the Hand?
  • It may not have been the only, or most important, reason he left, whatever he may have claimed at the time.
  • If he just needed to hide it, he could have done it and then come back. Instead, he left for real, and never turned back for long.

• So, the Daleks stole quite a lot of the Doctor's regeneration energy, enough to rejuvenate the whole race... Does this mean the Doctor can't regenerate anymore? Or that he now has less regenerations than the normal twelve?
  • He now has [Insert Plot Convenient Number Here] regenerations left.
  • It is revealed that the Doctor Out-Gambitted Davros, meaning he EXPECTED Davros to try to steal his regeneration energy. Maybe he visited the Sisterhood of Karn so they could give him some "Energy Lite" for Davros to steal. As if, Davros thought he was stealing "vodka" but all he actually got was "water."

• So how much regeneration energy did Davros take? Sure, the Doctor saw it coming and Out-Gambitted Davros, but he certainly didn't look like he was in control of the energy when it was being taken. This then raises another question people have been asking for a while: How many regenerations was the Doctor given on Trenzalore by the Time Lords through the crack? If it was only one cycle, it's likely gone now, which seems pretty pointless considering Steven Moffat set up the plot of "Day of the Doctor" to ensure the show could work around the regeneration limit. Was the Doctor given more or less infinite regenerations then?
  • Enough to rejuvenate every Dalek on Skaro. I imagine the Time Lords gave him a whole new set of regenerations. They did it for the Master, I don't know why they wouldn't for the Doctor. The Doctor has as many regenerations as the writers want him to have. Maybe three. Maybe 8. Maybe all 12. Maybe infinite.
  • One thing I thought of a while after posting the first bullet was that the Doctor's regenerations seem to be becoming more...volatile. If the last regeneration was enough to effectively nuke a Dalek fleet, it's entirely possible that only a fraction of a regeneration could power the Dalek race a little.
  • Bear in mind, Eleven had no regenerations left, and yet still had enough residual energy to heal River's broken wrist. And in "Kill the Moon", Twelve made an offhand remark that he didn't think he'd ever stop regenerating, which means a good deal to the audience, but nothing to the astronauts he was actually addressing in that scene.
  • Remember that the Doctor is the other Time Lords' only hope of ever returning to the universe. If it's within their power to give him an unlimited number of regenerations, they'd surely have done so, if only to ensure the silly sod doesn't get himself killed before he can retrieve them from their Cup-O-Soup.
  • I doubt the Time Lords would be capable of giving unlimited regenerations somehow. It may be a plot point later how much was taken, or it may not be.
    • Why not? We know that the Time Lords can bestow additional regeneration cycles on members of their race. Even if there is a finite number of regenerations they can give the Doctor for his second cycle, what's stopping them from giving him a third cycle, then a fourth, and so on, once they sense he is running low on regenerations? Doing this repeatedly will practically equal a functionally infinite number of regenerations.
  • As of "Hell Bent" Rassilon suggests that even he doesn't know exactly how many regenerations he gave The Doctor in "Time of the Doctor", but implied that it was a goodly many, because he says he can spend "all night" killing The Doctor to force him to give up information on The Hybrid. Given how quickly we saw the General Regenerate, and recover, on Gallifrey, and bearing in mind that Regeneration is supposed to be far less traumatic on Gallifrey, that means that Rassilon would have had a lot of Regenerations to go through.
  • The Time Lords can NOT grant infinite regenerations. That was explicitly stated in the Five Doctors.
    • No, but there doesn't seem to be a hard limit on how many regeneration cycles they can grant. Simply give the Doctor a third cycle after he runs out of regenerations in his second cycle, and then repeat this again when he comes close to exhausting his lives for said third cycle. Rinse and repeat. This would effectively mean that you are giving the Doctor an infinite number of regenerations so long as you are willing to do so.
  • Actually no, the entire point of "The Five Doctors" was that Rassilon had figured out immortality, but that it was not something he felt anybody else (besides him) should have. It would appear that the Time Lord hard stop at 12 regenerations is a cultural thing, not an absolute limitation. Of course, this only makes sense. A species that can control Time itself and has the proven ability to recharge the regeneration battery could absolutely achieve unlimited regenerations. But they seem to have a psychological problem with the idea. That or maybe their society really is so dull that they get bored enough to want an end eventually?
  • With the changes in "The Timeless Children", this may not matter or apply, at least for the Doctor.

• Missy used her brooch to puncture holes in the Dalek enough for the Sludge!Daleks to enter and neutralize the mutant inside. Then the armor exploded. Next scene, the armor's perfectly fine and whole. What happened?
  • Self-repair systems? We've seen hints of that in at least two episodes: "Dalek" (where the Dalek completely restores its trashed casing) and "Into the Dalek" (which have antibody/nanobots which might, when they're not exterminating foreign microorganisms, be reasonably pressed into service making repairs to the Dalek shell, whether or not the Dalek is still alive within).
  • Explosions don't always do that much damage to inorganic matter. It could just have been the armor purging the intrusion from its system. Although, it did sure look like quite a damaging explosion...
  • We've seen the Doctor's sonic screwdriver do things like re-fuse barbed wire perfectly. Possibly Missy had a similar tool on her person, and patched up the travel machine off-camera.

• We know that "humanoid female" and "impossible" are both within a Dalek's vocabulary banks, because the one that found Clara in the sewers identified her as the former, and countless Daleks throughout the series have claimed that some brilliant move by the Doctor wasn't possible. So why couldn't Clara, upon realizing the travel-machine wouldn't relay her actual name, simply have fallen back on her Doctor-bestowed nickname and proclaimed "I am the Impossible Girl"?
  • Because it wouldn't work; the travel machine isn't translating all names into "I am a Dalek", it's taking the thought of self and expressing it as "I am a Dalek." Clara could have spent years exhausting every possible combination of words to express herself but as long as she was thinking about identifying herself the travel machine would translate those thoughts into "I am a Dalek."
  • Except even if that's the case, she still ought to have been able to say "Impossible" and "Girl", one after the other, like they were separate one-word sentences. Heck, even something that's not directly self-identifying, like "Clara is here", should've slipped past the travel machine's vocabulary-editor.
  • Come to think of it, this would also have prevented Clara to express anything relevant, such as a common memory. "I travel with you" would most likely become "I fight you" for instance. She might have succeeded if she had managed to convince herself that she only wanted to coldly convey information (such as thinking of her name as just a word with no emotional baggage and say something like "Clara Oswald is alive, Clara Oswald is a prisoner, Clara Oswald is a Dalek"), but she probably was not in the right frame of mind to do so.
  • Clara was rather in a tight situation and seemed extremely distressed. Sure, it's easy for the viewer, sitting on the sofa at home to, to come up with some phrase that probably would make it past the Dalek's filters, but Clara had no such luxury. She was in the path of the Oncoming Storm, about to be blown up. Plus, she's trapped in Dalek armor. You'll have to forgive her if she's a little flustered.
  • Heck, who's to say Missy didn't muck around with the travel machine's vocabulary-conversion functions a bit, to cut off some of the above options...?

• In the Series 1 episode "Dalek" we see that the Daleks are relatively tiny◊ compared to humans, and there definitely isn't enough room inside a Dalek shell for a grown human to fit there... So how come Clara is able to do that in this episode?
  • Fully grown humans have been shown to fit inside Daleks travel machines all the way back in their the first story 'The Daleks'. And it can't be because that was a different model of travel machine because we saw a Dalek and human fit inside a modern one in "Daleks in Manhatten". Also, if you look at the interface Missy wires her up to, it's similar to what we saw in the flashbacks in 'Asylum of the Daleks' that Oswin was hooked up to (Fridge Horror for that ep in hind sight - Oswin may still have been human!).
  • For that matter, there's no reason to assume Missy didn't remove some of the travel machine's parts to make room for Clara, who wouldn't need the complete life-support functions of the device. Indeed, she'd probably have to take out whatever component houses and directs those antibodies from "Into The Dalek", else they'd most likely have attacked Clara on a microscopic level because she's obviously not a Kaled mutant.
  • Maybe they're just Bigger on the Inside?

• I get why Clara fell 20 feet onto a stone floor and never even got bruised: Beauty Is Never Tarnished. But how did MISSY get down there?
  • She probably glided down on her parasol again.
  • Except Colony Sarff didn't bring her parasol along, he/they not being stupid.
  • Or she jumped, but made sure she'd land on Clara.
  • Time Lords are stronger and faster than humans, a 20 foot drop is probably not a big deal for her.
  • Time Lords are powered by plot armour. The fourth doctor falls a great height? Dies. The tenth doctor falls a great height from a spaceship? Mildly bruised.
  • Possibly Skaro's gravity is somewhat lighter than Earth's, which would explain why Clara wasn't badly hurt. As for that example, it's possible the Gate had a rejuvenative effect on him just by being nearby. And/or the glass ceiling slowed his fall.

• Missy's busily sharpening a stick so she could go hunting; Clara's strung up in case there's nothing to hunt. Where was she keeping that rope? (Pockets!)

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