Doctor Who: 10 Easter Eggs, In-Jokes And References In The Magician's Apprentice
AKA The Genesis Of Genesis Of The Daleks
The ninth series of Doctor Who finally materialised on our screens this Saturday with The Magician's Apprentice. And, as you would expect for an episode that featured Missy, the Daleks and two versions of Davros, it was an episode that wore its Doctor Who-ness on its sleeve.
In fact, the whole plot was one big reference. As well as being a twist on that old question of would you go back in time and kill Hitler as a baby, it was drawn from a famous scene from the seminal Genesis Of The Daleks when the Fourth Doctor asks Sarah Jane "if someone... told you that that child would grow up to be totally evil... could you then kill that child?" The story doesn't even try to hide its main influence, with the scene in question featuring in the episode itself.
In other areas, The Magician's Apprentice was jam-packed with both gentle kisses to Doctor Who's past and great big smackers on the lips - as well as featuring references to such diverse topics as King Arthur and David Bowie. Here we run through ten easter eggs, in-jokes and references to be found in the episode that can easily be missed amongst all the excitement and shocks.
10. The Kaled-Thal War
The episode opens in spectacular fashion as we land on a misty battlefield where a soldier tries to shoot down a biplane with nothing more than a bow and arrow.
Though we are not told where we are at first, some fans may have recognised it from the off as the battlefield is extremely reminiscent of the one we see in the opening of Genesis Of The Daleks.
While the Doctor later explains the significance of the war being the impetus for Davros' creation of the Daleks, it is not explicitly stated on screen that the war in question is the Kaled-Thal War, a thousand-year conflict between the two groups of people native to the planet Skaro - the length of the war degenerating technology to the likes of bows and arrows.
We saw the outcome of the war in the Daleks' introductory story, er, The Daleks in which Skaro has been left a lifeless husk.