Who Review: "Deep Breath"

The Doctor is Back!

But is he a good man? And was the premiere of season 8 actually any good?

All right, let's get one thing straight. I love Doctor Who. I've been watching the show in one form or another since I was six years old, it's always enthralled me. Even at its worst, Doctor Who is still my favorite bit of science fiction on television. No other show tells stories quite like the stories you get when you travel around with a centuries-old Time Lord who picks up stray humans (and the occasional human-looking alien or tin dog) and drags them through all of space and time in a rickety old time machine. The reruns of the old show on PBS in the 80s introduced me to concepts that blew my pre-teen mind. The new show, since 2005, has done the same for my adult brain.

With that in mind, then, I have to confess that "Deep Breath," the debut episode of Peter Capaldi, the 13th actor to play the Doctor on-screen (although he's still called the 12th Doctor because John Hurt's incarnation was a secret - come on, keep up!) was mostly lackluster. However, it did have some great bits that showcased Capaldi, Jenna Coleman as his assistant Clara, and the new tone for the series.

Episode Summary

We begin in Victorian London with the citizenry all a flutter at the appearance of a tyrannosaurus rex in the middle of the Thames. The Silurian detective Madame Vastra, her wife and assistant Jenny, and their Sontaran sidekick Strax arrive on the scene just in time to see the t-rex cough up the TARDIS. When the newly-regenerated Doctor emerges, he does not recognize his old friends, Clara, or even himself. After a few minutes of confused babbling, he passes out.

While the Doctor recovers from the trauma of becoming a new man, Vastra interrogates Clara to see if she is still worthy of travelling with the Doctor. To be fair, Clara is more than just a little freaked out. Although she interacted with two earlier versions of the Doctor in the 50th anniversary special "Day of the Doctor," she's still coming to grips with the fact that the very youthful Matt Smith 11th Doctor is now gray and wrinkled. After a bit of prodding from Vastra, Clara tells her to sod off because she's not a bimbo who only likes pretty boys.

The Doctor escapes from Vastra's spare bedroom through an open window ("Door. Boring. Not me."), and hears the t-rex calling out from the Thames, where its been contained by Vastra's Silurian technology. As he's apologizing to the old girl (he speaks dinosaur, after all), the great lizard explodes into flames. The Doctor steals a horse and rides off into the night to investigate, followed shortly by Clara, Vastra, and the gang. There's trouble afoot, and the Doctor and his friends put themselves at the heart of it.

The following day, the Doctor encounters a homeless man and rants a bit about how his face is familiar (Capaldi appeared back in the fourth season as a different character) before finding clues to other murders and disappearances in the newspaper. When Vastra uncovers similar evidence of murders covered by incinerations, Clara discovers an advertisement in the paper that she believes is a message from the Doctor for a meeting at a nearby restaurant.

She and the Doctor meet up, each believing that the other placed the ad for the rendezvous. While Clara tries to rip the Doctor a new one for changing and running off and generally being an ass to her, he points out that the other diners are not actually eating. Oh, yeah, and they don't breathe. ("How long can you hold your breath?")

In the basement of the restaurant, the pair discover what appear to be cyborgs. Upon examination, however, the Doctor realizes that these clockwork robots are trying to repair themselves with human parts. As the robots awaken, Clara and the Doctor try to escape, but Clara gets trapped in the room with the Doctor apparently abandoning her. When the head cyborg (the "Half-Face Man") threatens her to get her to tell him where the Doctor went, she calls his bluff and pumps him for information. Turns out these guys crashed their 51st-century time-travelling starship on Earth about 65 million years ago. They burned the t-rex and the murdered people to cover up the body parts they stole to repair themselves and their ship.

Just before the Half-Man Man makes good on his threat to kill Clara, the Doctor reappears, having disguised himself as one of the other cyborgs. Clara then summons Jenny, Strax, and Vastra to the rescue. They hold off the clockwork cyborgs while the Doctor pursues the Half-Face Man into the upper restaurant, which is in fact the ship's escape pod. The two bicker about who might kill whom while the Doctor's friends fight a desperate battle in the belly of the ship. The Doctor says he's protected the Earth and its people for a long time, and there's nothing he won't do to protect them now. The Half-Face Man winds up impaled on the top of a cathedral, although it's rather ambiguous as to whether he jumped or the Doctor pushed him.

Later, the Doctor and Clara set off in the TARDIS, with Clara admitting that she doesn't know if she wants to continue with him. He admits he's made mistakes and wants to correct them with her help. When they arrive back in 2014 Glasgow, Clara receives a call from the 11th Doctor - her Doctor, as she thinks of him - asking her to help the man he's about to become, that man with the old face standing right in front of her. After a tearful good-bye to her young-looking Doctor, Clara realizes that the 12th Doctor is almost as scared as she is and agrees to stick around. They then wander off for coffee, although the Doctor has no money.

The Half-Face Man awakens in a paradisiacal garden to be confronted by "Missy," who claims that he has found the Promised Land of Heaven. She refers to the Doctor as her boyfriend and implies that she's the one who sent the mysterious coded message to bring the Doctor and Clara together at the restaurant...

The Not-So Good

So, let's get this part out of the way. The story itself was a confused mess. So much of it was either cool ideas that had no real bearing on the rest of the tale (A t-rex in Victorian London? That could have been an episode in itself!) or recycled from previous episodes by writer and show-runner Steven Moffat. (The Clockwork Robots appeared in the second season episode "Girl in the Fireplace," which was a delightfully creepy romp.) The restaurant idea is clever, but you'd think that even in Victorian London, the cops would notice that no one who went in ever came out.

Vastra's questioning of Clara likewise comes across as something that could have been a great bit of character development for both, but it just makes Vastra appear condescending of Clara's hurt and confusion. Of course, it might have been meant to show that Vastra's Silurian perspective on the matter of the Doctor's regeneration is not a human one. As old she is, she's seen a lot of change. However, the scene just comes off as Vastra being snotty and Clara saying she had the hots for Marcus Aurelius, which is really odd because previous companion Amy Pond also had a thing for Romans. And Strax's examination of Clara doesn't ring true for a warrior with a humanoid form. He should not be confusing Clara's eye and her mouth, and the rest of that scene is just as bad.

And speaking of Clara, I'm still not enamored of her as a companion. I have yet to figure out who she is as a person in the show. Sarah Jane Smith, Rose Tyler, Tegan, Nyssa, Susan, Ian, Barbara, Peri, Donna, even the rather annoying Mel all had distinct personalities, even if you didn't necessarily like them. On the other hand, Clara is likable enough, but she never comes across as more than just some pretty girl who travels with the Doctor. She has some spunk and a little wit, but so did Amy Pond. In fact, Clara has felt so much like "Amy Pond Lite" that you can't help wondering if the writers hated to let Karen Gillan leave the show. Vastra's criticisms of Clara don't seem all that unfounded to me because, really, she's just another pretty face. This is no fault of Jenna Coleman who does the best she can with what she's got to work, and she's had some good chemistry with Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi. But she just hasn't worked as a character for me yet.

Also? The sonic screwdriver to the crotch was a bit much and not at all funny.

The Good

Holy crap, is Peter Capaldi compelling as the Doctor! He dominates every scene he's in with a dark and dangerous sort of charm. When he leaves Clara to the Clockwork Cyborgs, you genuinely wonder what he's thinking. You don't know if he's planning on coming back or not. And that rests largely on Capaldi because we know that of course the Doctor will find a way to save Clara. Yet Peter Capaldi gives us that uncertainty that makes him such a thrill to watch.

With the two most recent Doctors, Matt Smith and David Tennant, you could relate to them on a human level. They wanted to be liked, so they came across as young-ish men with quirky, snarky vibes. Capaldi's Doctor, while certainly quirky, tends to eschew snark and deliberate humor. Instead, the humor derives from his alien perceptions of situations, his egocentric world-view, such as when he accuses Clara of being that exact same sort of person. He speaks directly, making clear his threats to the Half-Face Man by saying he needs a drink before he kills the cyborg. And we are left with an ambiguous resolution to the Doctor's confrontation with the Half-Face Man: Did he jump from the escape pod or did the Doctor push him?

Yet for all his darkness and unusual perceptions, Peter Capaldi's Doctor demonstrates a surprising vulnerability. Clara's not the only one freaked out by his change. This regeneration frightens even him. He's woken up with a face that he recognizes, but he's not sure why. He needs help figuring out who he is and what is going on inside his own mind. He's so scared, in fact, that his previous incarnation felt the need to phone Clara from the past to plead for help rediscovering himself.

I also like the new title sequence using the clocks and integrating time as well as space into the opening of the show. It's a subtle touch, but it's a nice change.

The Verdict

The Doctor is an alien from another world and another time, but lately he's been much more human. This much more alien version of the Doctor promises to take the Doctor back to his roots as an unknown quantity cut from the same cloth as William Hartnell, Tom Baker, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, and even Christopher Eccleston. If the writing staff can keep up with Peter Capaldi's performance and give him stories worthy of this new, darker Doctor. More than ever before, I want to see the new Doctor stick around for a long time.