Deep Breath
Series Eight, Episode One
It's finally here! The first episode of Peter Capaldi – er, I mean Doctor Who: Series Eight. They've been hyping it like mad, World Tour and everything. So, does Deep Breath meet the hype?
Yes and no. Yes, Peter Capaldi is fantastic. No, it's not an exceptional episode. I've been frowning for days. I think I like it.
So, new titles. The clock stuff is cool. The TARDIS looks wibbly. Shame about the new theme, a.k.a. The Violin's Death Rattle. |
The Eleventh Hour is brilliant because it just gets on with what's new. No naps, no amnesia, no old characters and none of the usual post-regenerative gubbins. With that approach proving a barnstorming success, it's a tad disappointing to throw the lever the other way. One can only assume it's to ease us in, and assuage any fears about the (much older) guy they've picked to replace Matt Smith. Certainly the phone-call from Matt (filmed before he left) bluntly pleads with us to Give Pete A Chance. But as the rapturous World Tour attests, there's rarely been an actor more universally accepted in this role than Peter Capaldi, so why not let him do the talking? As much as I loved seeing Matt again, doesn't it detract from them both?
Most of the "old stuff" surrounding Peter is exactly what I was dying to get away from. It can be very silly; the episode opens with an abnormally large T-Rex barfing up the TARDIS. Despite being perfectly capable of delivering a funny line, and there are plenty of those, Peter Capaldi still has to do some very broad physical comedy, like getting a literal "bonk!" on the head, noisily serenading a dinosaur or talking to a horse. This stuff was rubbish when Matt Smith had to do it, and that's why I rather hoped we'd seen the back of it. Hands up who was quite happy with new stuff instead? I'm guessing, everybody?
Which brings us to the Paternoster Gang, who are as one-note as ever. What's the point bringing them back if they're going to be exactly the same every time? Certainly in a New Doctor Story, when we're all desperate to see what the new guy is like, it seems absolutely insane to devote precious minutes to Strax calling Clara a boy, or Jenny pointing out that she's married to Vastra, or Vastra making some clumsy Sherlock Holmes reference again and again and again. (I see Steven Moffat's still labouring under the delusion that his man-eating comedy lizard could have inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Of course that's pompous, but also nowhere near justified. I'm no detective, and even I figured out that a newspaper ad saying "Meet you on the other side" is probably referring to the other side of the paper. Duh!)
Next Week: Madam Vastra and the Case of the Slightly Troubling Crossword! |
There's noticeably very little plot here, which feels even more scarce for being scraped to feature length. When a T-Rex spontaneously combusts (how's that for an inciting incident?), it leads the new Doctor to a gang of robots harvesting human organs. The robots are something else we've seen before, cue Girl In The Fireplace references. They're seriously creepy, and they provide a sinister parallel for the Doctor's regeneration, although they are as disappointingly stupid as the Fireplace ones, if not worse. (They're fooled by holding your breath? Seriously?) The lead robot is compellingly understated, a refined turn from Peter Ferdinando. Underplaying it is a smart move, particularly when we're focussing all our attention on the Doctor. The plot works well enough, really; I just wish there was more of it and that it didn't take so long. (There's a bit where the Doctor realises "This isn't a man turning himself into a robot, this is a robot turning himself into a man," but by then I'd already figured that out. I'm no rocket scientist – it feels wrong to be a step ahead of so-called "genius" characters.)
Obviously this isn't meant to be a "plot" episode. (Which isn't to say you can't do those with a new Doctor, because The Eleventh Hour did it, but okay, I know, let it go already.) We're here for the new Doctor, and for the change in the Doctor/companion relationship that must come from that. This can only improve Clara's character, who – no disrespect to Jenna Coleman – has been a tangle of timey-wimey portents and no actual personality from the start.
Clara is struggling to accept that the Doctor has changed, even asking how they can change him back. That's an understandable reaction for most, see Rose, but it's an unfortunate fit for Clara, who has actually met all twelve Doctors and is aware of how regeneration works. Um...? Vastra makes a big deal of putting Clara in her place, and there's a very showy scene about how the Doctor's face is a veil to gain acceptance (and this new one means he trusts her), but the whole thing's built on Clara acting against what little we know about her. Besides her uneasiness with the Doctor, her personality is then drily summed up in lists, and that's even worse. Apparently she doesn't fancy young men, she's a big fan of Marcus Aurelius, she could "flirt with a mountain range" and blah blah blah. Why not show us? Oh, and she's "an egomaniac needy game-player". What the hell's that based on?
This is pretty much how I feel about Clara. |
Anywho, Jenna does a great job with the material, with Capaldi, and when it comes to facing down the bad-guy. Right or wrong, now all that character bumf is out of the way there's promise for the series ahead. And okay, speaking of promise... what's the Doctor like?
In one of his umpty-squillion interviews, Peter Capaldi said he doesn't want to find one way to play his Doctor and repeat it. I absolutely get and respect that. Too often David Tennant and Matt Smith were boxed in by scripts trying to anticipate them, and inadvertently squeezing the life out of them. And there are plenty of Scottish jokes and eyebrow jokes in here that hint at that, but you'd still be hard pressed to squeeze his portrayal into a few adjectives. Besides, this is a post-regen story complete with a blob of amnesia; it's not The Full Capaldi. Nonetheless he imbues it with great flavour. He's funny, vulnerable, rude, sympathetic, savage, childlike; there are shades of all your favourite Doctors if you look for them. Best of all, he's unexpected, at one point abandoning Clara to her doom – though as a friend of mine pointed out, even that's not unlike the calculating Sylvester McCoy, or the initially cowardly Colin Baker. But of course, he comes back. He's still the Doctor. We just don't know him very well yet.
Oh good, an arc plot. Care to guess? (DON'T DO IT!) |
Capaldi, as if there was ever any doubt, nails it. He even looks like the Doctor. I am very, very excited for where the series will take him, and us, and even Clara. But I cannot honestly say this episode is the best showcase for his talents, or for a longer run-time. The script totters around in much the same daze as a new Doctor, although in the end it gets itself together just the same.
Ace. We couldn't agree more.
ReplyDeleteHi guys! Thanks for that. I'd like to extend the same sentiment to your review. :)
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