History Fridge / DoctorWhoS35E2TheWitchsFamiliar

* When Clara is hooked up to the Dalek travel machine, her more benign statements get dubbed into phrases like "I AM A DALEK" and "EXTERMINATE!" One wonders if the travel machines are meant to [[{{Gaslighting}} gaslight]] any [[TokenHeroicOrc "deviant"]] Daleks into compliance. If a Dalek starts to question the need for endless war, he'll feel all alone in the world, especially if his questions about how he feels are censored by his source of mobility and protection, leading them to questioning their own sanity and conforming as a coping mechanism. You got to wonder how many "good" Daleks The Doctor has killed because he had no way of knowing about these sentiments.

* All the way back in [[Recap/BigFinishDoctorWho048Davros "Davros"]], half a lifetime ago for both of them, Davros told the Sixth Doctor that he considered him, in a strange way, the only thing like a friend he had - his intellectual equal, the only person he's able to ''talk'' with. Ol' Sixie was ''not'' happy. ("We're ''not friends'', Davros.") But it does make you think that when Davros tells the Doctor he's happy he has his people back, and shares a joke with him, [[FriendshipMoment he's not lying.]] Sure, he's a sadistic megalomaniac who is trying to trick him into something, but that doesn't mean he's not telling the truth. And in a gesture of kindness to a dying enemy, Twelve quietly accepts it this time without argument.

* All the way back in [[Recap/BigFinishDoctorWho048Davros "Davros"]], half a lifetime ago for both of them, Davros told the Sixth Doctor that he considered him, in a strange way, the only thing like a friend he had - his intellectual equal, the only person he's able to ''talk'' with. Ol' Sixie was ''not'' happy. ("We're ''not friends'', Davros.") But it does make you think that when Davros tells the Doctor he's happy he has his people back, and shares a joke with him, ''[[FriendshipMoment he's not lying.]] Sure, he's a sadistic megalomaniac who is trying to trick him into something, but that doesn't mean he's not telling the truth. And in a gesture of kindness to a dying enemy, Twelve quietly accepts it this time without argument.

* All the way back in [[Recap/BigFinishDoctorWho048Davros "Davros"]], half a lifetime ago for both of them, Davros told the Sixth Doctor that he considered him, in a strange way, the only thing like a friend he had - his intellectual equal, the only person he's able to ''talk'' with. Ol' Sixie was ''not'' happy. ("We're ''not friends'', Davros.) But it does make you think that when Davros tells the Doctor he's happy he has his people back, and shares a joke with him, ''[[FriendshipMoment he's not lying.]] Sure, he's a sadistic megalomaniac who is trying to trick him into something, but that doesn't mean he's not telling the truth. And in a gesture of kindness to a dying enemy, Twelve quietly accepts it this time without argument.

* TheReveal that the Master had a daughter and the Doctor knew her may also help explain the noticeably increased contempt the JohnSimms Master incarnation showed towards the Doctor in previous series, to the point of refusing to regenerate and letting himself die rather than give the Doctor the comfort of knowing he wasn't the LastOfHisKind; if the Doctor knew the Master's daughter and she lived on Gallifrey at the end of the Last Time War, she would have presumably been among those the Doctor and the Master both ''thought'' he'd killed when he destroyed Gallifrey. This may be a factor in why the Tenth Doctor was so reluctant to harm the Master, as he would've been guilt-stricken at the thought of having murdered his oldest friend's child and having to face him after. Missy, the next Master, knew Gallifrey hadn't been destroyed as previously thought, and was more forgiving towards the Doctor.
* Following that, it also makes sense that Missy is the first Master shown to wear the brooch a previous Doctor had given a previous Master after something involving her/his daughter, and is even willing to mention her daughter, when previous Masters hadn't worn the brooch or mentioned their daughter at all; Missy has proven to be a more sentimental incarnation of the Master in trying to regain the Doctor's friendship, so she is both wearing the brooch to [[EvenEvilHasLovedOnes remember her daughter and to remind the Doctor of their past together everytime he looks at her]].

** It's possible that he has infinite regenerations now, though, thanks to the events of "The Time of the Doctor".

* This one is very subtle and is almost a YMMV case depending on how one considers the relationship between Clara and the Doctor. Missy makes a point out of getting Clara to say "I love you" while in the Dalek, which comes out as "EXTERMINATE!" Considering that she is well aware of the bond the Doctor and Clara share (whether platonic or non-platonic is irrelevant in this context), a fact later referenced in "Hell Bent," and that her ploy involves tricking the Doctor into killing Clara, what better way than to have Clara - as a Dalek - come out and say
"EXTERMINATE!" - a word the Doctor has been hard-wired to react to with force? If Clara had said "I love you" inside the Dalek, she would have been killed without thought by the Doctor. Instead, Clara [[TakeAThirdOption takes a third option]] and gets the Dalek to say "mercy" instead, which prevents this from happening - by expressing her feelings for the Doctor in another way. Recall that in "Death in Heaven," Clara promised Danny she'd never say "I love you" to anyone else (her utterance at Missy's request doesn't count as saying it ''to'' anyone). So of course she would have said something else in order to keep her promise to Danny.

* The Doctor comments that the little spark of regeneration energy he's going to share with Davros may cost him a limb down the line. What will the ''much'' larger amount of energy Davros stole from him end up costing the Doctor? Perhaps being unsure of how much regeneration energy the Metcrisis had used up was a reason for Eleven checking on whether he had all his limbs after he regenerated.

* The Doctor says, when he goes back to get Young Davros out of the hand minefield, "I'm saving my friend, the only way I know how." He's not just talking about physically saving the boy from getting killed. He's talking about saving him from becoming an irredeemable villain, about showing him that mercy can be a good thing, an important thing, something worth passing on to his "children."
** He wasn't talking about saving Davros at all. He was talking about saving Clara.

* Colony Sarff spends much of this episode hanging from the wires in Davros' infirmary, including the scenes where Davros attempts to persuade the Doctor to use those same wires to commit genocide on the Daleks. We see later that Sarff is there mainly to restrain the Doctor, making these earlier scenes a bit of FridgeBrilliance for Davros for trying to dissuade the Doctor from his compassion for all life, toward Davros' own pragmatism, while having arranged everything in advance so that even if the Doctor did agree to destroy the Dalek race, there would be no danger at all of that actually happening. Davros would have made his point about the Doctor, and Sarff would have kept the Daleks alive anyway.

* The reason why the Doctor sent his will to Missy: he knew he was going to be sacrificing regenerations to the Daleks, with no idea how many it would take, probably *all* of them, which left him with the desire to send a will. HE didn't do it at the end of 11's run because he had no idea another Gallifreyan was around (Missy) to do it.
** He didn't have to know the details of Davros's plans to want to send his will; he just had to figure he wasn't likely to get out of their meeting alive, remaining regenerations or no remaining regenerations. Daleks know how to make Time Lord deaths stick.