(801) Deep Breath

So now I embark on the final stage of my marathon. Two weeks tonight I will be wondering what to do with my Saturday nights. At least I will be safe in the knowledge that I only have about six or seven weeks to wait until the new series. By the time this episode had aired, Peter Capaldi had been Doctor for 241 days which is longer than Christopher Eccleston had been which is a weird stat for me. This was another Doctor Who episode that was aired at the cinema however unlike the 50^th Anniversary special, I decided not to spend the money on the trip to the cinema. At the end of the episode I was sort of glad that I hadn’t paid £12 or whatever it was for the ticket.

The subject of age is something that was raised when Peter Capaldi was named as the Doctor. Capaldi is the same age (roughly) as William Hartnell when he became the Doctor and some people said they would stop watching Doctor Who because the Doctor was old. Well all I can say to that is good. If you’re the sort of person who stops watching a show because someone is too old then you can quite frankly p**s off and go and watch Eastenders or something equally brain numbing. Capaldi is young enough to be the Doctor and shows it in this episode.

The first shot of the episode was rather tame compared to previous first shots of new Doctor stories. The first shot is of a T-Rex in London. It might seem like the T-Rex would in the story for a while but lasts about twenty minutes after it from a distant burns into flames.

Capaldi’s first proper scene is rather good cause it gets all the mad bonkers stuff out of the way quite quickly. It was quite funny cause he gets Clara and Strax confused and calls Clara the ‘not me one’. I immediately liked Capaldi’s Doctor as it wasn’t the crazy sort that we have become use to since 2005. There was a moment where the Doctor seemed to abandon Clara and I thought that this isn’t something that Smith’s Doctor would have done. His best scene comes with his final scene with the Half-Face Man and there is a nice question as to whether the Half Face Man jumped two his death or did the Doctor push him. It nice that we don’t get a definitive answer about this. Jenna Coleman gives another solid performance although it is still frustrating that we have another companion who witnesses a regeneration and still doesn’t believe that the new Doctor is their Doctor. It was what Rose did in The Christmas Invasion. Matt Smith makes a surprising cameo in this episode and it was a clever move of Moffat to keep us guessing about that. It was a nice moment because it meant we got one final solid speech from Smith and it was basically the Doctor telling Clara to help the new Doctor. This is the closest that Steven Moffat has got to being RTD in the slushy scenes department.

There is a new theme tune and a new title sequence and they are two things that I wasn’t 100% keen on at first but it has grown on me. There is a minor tweak to the console room with roundels being put on the walls (sort of). There is a nice joke about having round things before but not knowing where they went.

I find it amusing how the Doctor assumes that everyone who doesn’t talk Scottish isn’t talking normal. He seems to definelty be a Scottish Doctor and there is a nice bit where he seems to make reference to the Scottish Referendum which was still about a month away when this was transmitted in August 2014.

This still being a Doctor Who episode, it had to actually have a plot and the one that Steven Moffat went with didn’t have an in your face narrative but a slow and inventive one. They are after human parts

The visual effects used to create the clockwork heads is very good and almost looks real. The Clockwork  men are a reused creation from a previous Steven Moffat story (The Girl in the Fireplace) which I thought was a nice nod and an unexpected one.

There is a nice cameo from the widow of Elisabeth Sladen. He plays a tramp and I thought it was a lovely moment and one that Elisabeth Sladen would have liked very much. There is a bit where Vastra and Jenny kiss and there were complaints saying that the BBC had a blatant gay agenda which made me chuckle. One is a human and the other is a lizard so the blatant gay agenda is a bit stupid really.

The bit where the Impossible Girl ad is placed in the newspaper is the start of the Missy storyarc. Its good that Clara thinks that it’s the Doctor but its not. There is talk from one of the clockwork people about the promised land which is a term I think that is used a few times in the series. The final scene of the episode sees the appearance of Missy played by Michelle Gomez and as Missy she refers to her boyfriend implying the Doctor. Missy is a very good and I knew when I watched it (weird that it was last year) and knew she would be a good addition to the cast.

Ben Wheatley directs his first Doctor Who and does a very good job. He manages to make the whole story move along at the sort of pace it needs to at different times. Wheatley is a movie director that somehow has been lured to Doctor Who and his abilities as a good director have allowed this story to have a different feel and I enjoyed the directing immensely.

Despite being glad that I didn’t pay £12, I did enjoy this episode very much. The longer running time was something that allowed things to settle down and for Capaldi to show us just how good of a Doctor he could be. He isn’t going to be the happy cheery running around Doctor like Matt Smith or David Tennant but his Doctor is very similar to Colin Baker and I think that it’s the Timothy Dalton/Daniel Craig thing because Dalton’s Bond is very serious and the films are tough which is what Craig’s Bond and films are like but Dalton wasn’t appreciated at the time and I think that Colin Baker’s Doctor wasn’t appreciated at the time and Capaldi should be able to show that you can have a slightly grumpy Doctor but the trick will be towing the fine line between grumpy and downright bleak. It’s never wise to judge the state of things after one episode but this era of the show is already showing signs of promise.