BBCWhen Peter Capaldi’s first full season of Doctor Who aired in 2014, it had only been one year since the series took its victory lap with the beloved 50th anniversary special, “The Day of the Doctor.” And so, despite its quality in retrospect, it’s possible that Season 8, the first 12th Doctor season, felt like a comedown from the jubilation of “The Day of the Doctor.” Capaldi’s take on the heroic Time Lord was much darker in Season 8, and the finale of that season not only brought back the Cybermen for the umpteenth time, but also hastily introduced Michelle Gomez’s new version of The Master, now known as “Missy.” In short, for all of its strengths, Season 8 felt rushed, and so, when Doctor Who came back a year later on September 19, 2015, with Season 9, it did something extremely smart. It slowed down.Instead of trying to match the frenetic pace of the Matt Smith or David Tennant eras, Season 9 is the moment when then-showrunner Steven Moffat figured out how to make Capaldi’s curmudgeonly take the Doctor the new default mode of the series, rather than a novelty that was simply in contrast with the previous incarnations. And the episode that set the tone for this methodical and nuanced storytelling approach was the Season 9 opener, a banger of an episode called “The Magician's Apprentice.” Here’s why, 10 years later, it represents the best opening of modern Doctor Who, ever.The first thing that makes “The Magician's Apprentice” notable is that, like most of the episodes in Doctor Who Season 9, it’s a two-parter. This fact alone represents the slower, more patient mode of storytelling, which, for the most part, made each concept in Season 9 a bit more believable and certainly more essential. “The Magician's Apprentice” begins with a great opening in which the Doctor is trying to rescue a child on a battlefield, only to realize that the child is Davros, creator of the Daleks. From that point on, Capaldi leaves the stage for a while, while Missy (Michelle Gomez) and Clara (Jenna Coleman) search for him, somewhere in all of time and space. About a third of the way into the episode, there’s a lot to love about this story: We’re wondering why the Doctor is running away, we’re trying to figure out what Davros “remembers” about the Doctor meeting him as a child, and we’re enjoying the hell out of the sudden buddy-comedy pairing between Missy and Clara. And so, when Capaldi makes his re-entrance, playing guitar, while riding a tank in a medieval arena, it’s like we’re seeing him for the first time.In fact, if someone has never watched the Peter Capaldi era of Doctor Who, this episode makes a good argument that one should start with “The Magician's Apprentice” rather than Season 8’s “Deep Breath.” The 12th Doctor, with wilder hair, playing the guitar, wearing cool-guy hoodies paired with his coat, feels closer to how we remember this version of the Doctor, as opposed to the slightly more buttoned-up version in Season 8. In real life, Capaldi is something of a rocker, having wanted to be a musician before he was an actor. So, as his version of the Doctor seemingly got closer to Capaldi’s own personality, the character became more dynamic and more fun. While the Season 8 12th Doctor was formidable, hilarious, and amazing, the Season 9, softly rebooted Capaldi Doctor was a guy you wanted to hang out with forever.Clara (Jenna Coleman) and the 12th Doctor (Peter Capaldi) at the start of Doctor Who Season 9. | BBCIf you’ve somehow not seen “The Magician's Apprentice” and its concluding episode, “The Witch's Familiar,” or it’s been a while, I’ll refrain from additional spoilers here, because revisiting the time travel element of this story, combined with larger reveals, is still thrilling, 10 years later. After “The Day of the Doctor,” it seemed difficult to imagine Doctor Who getting that epic ever again. And yet, with “The Magician's Apprentice,” the show kicked off a new era in which the hugeness of Doctor Who wouldn’t be entirely reliant on episodes having a massive scope. Instead, what makes “The Magician's Apprentice” and “The Witch's Familiar” so excellent is that, taken together, this is a story about the Doctor, rather than a story in which the Doctor merely appears as a character. The thematic and emotional intentions feel more personal and smaller. But, as all Doctor Who fans know, things that appear small are really much bigger on the inside.Doctor Who Season 9 is available for purchase on Prime Video and other platforms.