The Doctor, travelling across a war-ravaged landscape, encounters a young boy trapped in a field of "handmines". After throwing the boy his sonic screwdriver so he can communicate with him, the Doctor encourages the boy and tries to save him, until he learns that the boy is
Davros, the future creator of the
Daleks, and as a result, abandons him. On present-day Earth, all the planes are frozen in mid-flight.
Clara is summoned to
UNIT headquarters to help contact the Doctor. While there, they are contacted by
Missy, who needed to get UNIT's attention to arrange a meeting with Clara. At a café, Missy asks Clara for help finding the Doctor as Missy had received his "confession dial", the
Time Lords' equivalent of a last
will and testament, and believes the Doctor may think he is dying. Clara helps Missy track down the Doctor to
Essex in 1138. Clara and Missy find the Doctor has spent the last three weeks partying. Colony Sarff, a composite being made from numerous snakes, and an agent of Davros, tells the Doctor that Davros is dying. Sarff presents the Doctor with the sonic screwdriver the Doctor gave to Davros years before. The Doctor feels shame for having abandoned Davros as a boy, and agrees to be taken away; Missy and Clara persuade Sarff to take them as well. As they leave, Bors is revealed to be a Dalek "
puppet" and secures the Doctor's
TARDIS for the Daleks. Sarff takes them to a
space station, and the Doctor is led alone to Davros, who shames the Doctor for his actions in the past. Meanwhile, Missy is suspicious of the gravity of the station, and shows Clara that the station is just an illusion, as they are on the planet
Skaro, the Dalek homeworld. They are captured by the Daleks and taken to a room where the TARDIS has been procured. The Doctor attempts to plead for their lives, but Davros says he has no control over the Daleks, and Missy, Clara, and the TARDIS are seemingly destroyed. Davros derides the Doctor's compassion as his "greatest indulgence" and wants him to confess, finally, that "compassion is wrong". On the battleground, the Doctor speaks to young Davros in the Doctor's personal future. The Doctor pulls out a Dalek weapon and vows to save his friend the only way he can.
Continuity A Kaled soldier is depicted armed with a bow and arrow; this is an allusion to a line spoken by
Harry Sullivan in
Genesis of the Daleks (1975): "they're going to finish off with bows and arrows". The scene features several returning aliens: the
Sycorax, the
Hath, the
Ood and a
Tivolian. The Shadow Proclamation, an intergalactic police force last appearing in 2008's "
The Stolen Earth", also briefly returns, featuring the Shadow Architect (from the same episode) and a
Judoon. UNIT seeks the Doctor using a computer algorithm, plotting on a map the locations of various crises at which he has been rumoured to have appeared. These correspond with locales for many of the Doctor's past adventures: San Martino (
The Masque of Mandragora); Most notably, he shows footage (from
Genesis of the Daleks) of the
Fourth Doctor asking the question "if someone who knew the future pointed out a child to you and told you that that child would grow up totally evil, to be a ruthless dictator who would destroy millions of lives, could you then kill that child?" The Doctor's playing
electric guitar and teaching medieval people the term "
dude" echoes the movies ''
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey'', films featuring two rocker teens who travel back in time – in a telephone call box – and teach historical figures their customs. ==Production==