We’re now just over one week away from the highly anticipated premiere of Doctor Who‘s ninth series (they’re all highly anticipated, though, aren’t they?) and as yet we’ve only seen trailers of the 1 minute or 30 second variety, on Friday we were given something slightly more substantial but still pretty vague. What fun would it be otherwise? The BBC released what will apparently be the first of multiple (maybe just two) prologues to the Series premiere, “The Magician’s Apprentice,” and it recalls “The Day of the Doctor.”

Let’s go back to 2013 with the lead up to the 50th Anniversary special; there was one of the coolest things ever in the form of a short mini-prologue entitled “The Night of the Doctor” which depicted the Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann) failing to save someone due to her hatred of the Time Lords during the Time War and crashing on the planet Karn. Karn had only been seen in the 1976 story “The Brain of Morbius,” and some of the planet’s inhabitants were the Sisterhood of Karn, a group of witches who had found the secret to eternal life. In “Night,” the head sister (Claire Higgins) assists the dying Eighth Doctor in regenerating into the War Doctor.

We’d previously heard Higgins would be returning and many (including myself) assumed she’d be playing that same sister, Ohila, from the short. And it would appear from the above prologue that that is the case. We see the Twelfth Doctor (Peter Capaldi) learning that “he” has asked to see the Doctor and “his servants” are looking for him. He gives Ohila something—the disc that Missy has in the episode teaser—and seems he’s going to see “that creature” which would end in his destruction.

Could they be talking about the Master? It seems unlikely to me since it would appear Missy and Clara are the ones who are coming to look for him. Also, the Doctor and Ohila keep referring to the unnamed thing as a “him,” and though the Master had been male for most of the time the Doctor knew him, now he’s a she and I doubt they’d play the prologue game like that. She also says they’ve been enemies for all the time they’ve known each other, and we know the Doctor and Missy/the Master were friends once (and maybe still are deep down).

I’m going to have a wild conjecture, given that some of the premiere episode takes place on Skaro, that they’re talking about Davros, the Daleks’ sadistic creator. I feel like that’s probably not going to be the case, but like I said, wild conjecture.

Who do you think the Doctor and Ohila are talking about? Let me know your theories in the comments below!

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HT: BBC
Image Credit: BBC

Kyle Anderson is the Weekend Editor and a film and TV critic for Nerdist.com. He’s also the resident Whovian, so follow him on Twitter!