Saturday we met the Twelfth Doctor for the first time. As I’ve declared this official Doctor Who week on if all else fails… in honour of the new Doctor, I can hardly let the actual episode pass without comment, now can I?
I must point out there will be spoilers in this post, so if you haven’t yet watched Deep Breath you might want to bookmark this post for now and come back later after you’ve seen the episode.
Synopsis
Madam Vastra, Jenny and Strax, the Victorian-era investigative trio, are summoned when a dinosaur mysteriously appears walking around in the middle of the Thames. They arrive just in time to see it vomit up the TARDIS. Clara and the Doctor exits, though the Doctor apparently has no idea who he is and appears to be under the impression the dinosaur is in love with him. Oh, and there’s a cyborg harvesting body parts from living people.
Very first impressions
I don’t like the new title sequence. For nine years we’ve seen the TARDIS flying through the time vortex and to now see it flying through animated clock-faces seems downright weird and more than a little tacky. They also did something to the title music. It didn’t sound right. For now, I’m putting that down to that knee-jerk reaction we all have to change.
The opening visuals of the episode itself also felt off. As Victorian London no longer exists one would expect some computer graphics, but good CG never looks like CG, and this did. And it happened more than once.
The Story and Characters
There were some scenes that did not quite fit. I don’t know what was the point of the scene where Strax gave Clara a medical scan. It was funny, sure, but completely irrelevant to the plot. And there was this weird confrontation between Clara and Madam Vastra that felt more like an attempt at social commentary than storytelling.
What is more, these scenes broke the pacing of what could have been a successful thriller. As it were, the climax fell flat as there wasn’t a sufficient build-up of tension throughout the episode. And don’t get me started on the shoddy choreography (that is, there wasn’t any) of the action scenes.
On the other hand, we got to know Clara, Madam Vastra and Jenny a bit better (Strax is just Strax), and it was an interesting experience to see the detective and her maid/wife provide comic relief – as Matt Smith was more than ample comic relief on his own they tended to play a much more serious role when cast opposite him. Not with this Doctor.
The Doctor
Capaldi’s Doctor was an interesting experience. For one, he’s Scottish (the actor and the character). Very Scottish. I found this rather interesting, as David Tennant, also a Scotsman, used an English accent for the role. I don’t mind – I rather like a Scottish accent – I just though it a noteworthy change.
But this Doctor is also remarkably different in other respects. We never saw the ninth immediately after regeneration, so we don’t know how he dealt with the change, but both ten and eleven, after going through a brief physical re-adjustment, were immediately fighting-fit and ready to go. Number Twelve (or Thirteen or Fourteen depending on how you choose to think of him) was completely disoriented, and not until almost the end of the episode did he start identifying himself as the Doctor. Even then it was tentative, as if he wasn’t completely sure about that.
This Doctor has to discover himself, and this makes him a bit of a dark horse. He still expresses his fondness of humanity and his desire to protect us, but more than once he does something completely unexpected and out of character (if we consider the universal attributes of the last three Doctors), almost making one wonder if he is finally growing senile in his old age (he is two millennia old, after all).
I think this is positive after the cocky self-assurance of the previous three.This Doctor isn’t our friend. As he tells Clara at one point, he’s not her (our) boyfriend. In this episode, at least, he gets the job done, and other people come after that.
The Ending
And right at the end Clara receives a phone call from the Doctor from moments before he regenerated on Trenzalore, reminding her that he’s the Doctor, and then the new Doctor asks Clara to stick with him and help him because he can’t do it without her. This, along with very definite references to the tenth and eleventh Doctors scattered through the episode, felt like nothing more than a heavy-handed attempt to manipulate fans to accept the new Doctor, probably born out of the realisation that his extreme differentness might lose some. If the story is good enough, this shouldn’t be necessary.
Final Verdict?
I can’t say that I liked the episode very much. It felt forced, the pacing was off and the focus was clearly on other stuff more than on telling the story. But I like the new Doctor. He is not as predictably unpredictable as the previous two and has the potential to truly surprise us. His uncertainty also invites us along on a brand new journey of discovery. But I’m starting to wonder if I’m not letting myself have false hope again…
Related articles
Some excellent reviews and analyses of Deep Breath (most of which appear to disagree with me). I guess that’s the difference between doing this for a living and doing this for fun 😉
if all else fails...use a hammer 
Do do you think having a Scottish Doctor is an attempt to get Scotland to vote against secession? And what will the writers do if Scotland does secede?
LikeLike
As for you second question, Steven Moffatt, the showrunner and lead writer is also Scottish, so my money’s on the Doctor rescuing William Wallace 😉
As for the first, I did not even know secession of Scotland was on the table. I don’t really follow UK and European news that closely, what with all the shenanigans going on in SA at present.
LikeLike
I used to be a huge Dr Who fan but really lost interest during the last series ( due to plot lines not acting). I watched Saturday but felt it was padded out and think the stories are going to be over complicated (and inconsistent) again. Good cast but time for a new writer I feel.
LikeLike
We can’t put all the blame on Moffat. He has several other writers working with him, after all. There’s a pingback in the comments to my post from Saturday that makes the, I think, valid observation that Moffatt wrote some excellent episodes when Russel T. Davies was the showrunner, but he’s allowed some shoddy writing through since he took over and I more and more feel he’s more worried about pleasing the fans than telling a good story. And the lack of continuity is a problem, but then those in the trade have taken to speaking of “pulling a Moffatt” – everything works out because time travel. Not going to get consistency if that’s how things work.
LikeLike
I appreciate there is a team. I think Moffat is an excellent writer. Sherlock needs to be complicated and works well for instance, but he doesn’t, for me, gel with overseeing Dr Who.
LikeLike
Don’t taunt me! Aaaaargh! I haven’t seen it yet… 🙂 Shows this Sunday in NZ…
LikeLike
I’d love to hear what you think about it.
LikeLike
Have now caught up with it – managed to miss the first moments but saw the bulk of it. To me, classic Who – just the right amount of humour, cheesiness, drama and ‘scare factor’. That said, it wasn’t quite stand-alone; it really made sense, I think, only to people who’d been following the series and knew what to expect, particularly from a regeneration. I suppose that reflects the serial nature of the show. It really has become an institution. And the story lacked a certain amount of punch – it was diffused: was the focus dealing with the clockwork robots, or was it about the doctor regenerating and re-finding himself? But a promising start. We’ll see where the series goes. I’ll certainly be watching it.
LikeLike
Classic Who, you say? I really need to get hold of the classic episodes somewhere.
Something I didn’t mention was that epilogue. A little weird if you ask me.
LikeLike