Doctor Who Season 9 premieres tonight on BBC One and BBC America. Through earlier Doctor Who preview trailers we’ve been given a taste of what to expect in Season 9. We’re excited to see both old and new villains in the new series. Missy is also returning, and it will be interesting to see how much she is a villain and how much she is a friend to the Doctor. The Master has always been skilled at being both. Steven Moffat has whet our appetites with both a prologue to the season and a longer prequel called “The Doctor’s Meditation.” We might be getting a bit spoiled with all these fun Doctor Who extras.

In the prologue the Doctor returns to Karn. The last we saw of Karn was in the mini-episode “The Night of the Doctor,” when the Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann) regenerated into the War Doctor (John Hurt), with some help from the Sisters of Karn. In the Season 9 prologue the Doctor tells Ohila (Clare Higgins), the High Priestess of the Sisterhood of Karn, “An enemy’s just a friend you don’t really know yet,” possibly referring to his relationship with the Master or another old nemesis he has had yet to convert. The Doctor always tries to find some kind of accord with the aliens that place Earth and other parts of the universe in danger, until of course there is no common ground to be found. Ohila tells him, “Anyone can hide from an enemy, no one from a friend.”

Following his visit to Karn, the Doctor finds himself thinking about an old friend who is very ill in the Series 9 prequel “The Doctor’s Meditation.” The Doctor talks to comrade Bors (Daniel Hoffmann-Gill) about needing to meditate before determining if he will go to see “someone I’ve known a very long time.” “The Doctor’s Meditation” takes place in a medieval setting, and reminds us of the lighter side of the Doctor, which Peter Capaldi plays with great fun.