Take a Deep Breath

I can remember settling down in December 1974 to watch the first part of the new Doctor Who serial Robot. This was the first time we had seen Tom Baker acting in the role and I was eagerly anticipating what he would make of the part. I was glad the show was back on telly but I wasn’t that fussed about the new guy. He was acting odd, dressing in weird clothes and I really wanted the old one back. Introducing a new Doctor is a tricky business and finding the right balance between new and old is going to be a fine line. As it was, I did take to Tom Baker and the following serial, The Arc in Space, still rates as one of my all-time favourites.

I’ve been looking forward to the new series of Doctor Who for weeks but I knew I wouldn’t be able to see it until Sunday night as we were taking my mother out for a birthday celebration on the 23^rd. That meant pretty much blocking out any internet connection and avoiding all news media for the following 24 hours in a Likely Lads type plan to avoid hearing the result. It wasn’t until Sunday afternoon that I was able to settle down with the kids in front of the TV to watch some new Doctor Who but in that case it was Jon Pertwee in The Mind of Fear – LoveFilm had finally come up trumps with the DVD so I was able to see the only serial of 1970s Doctor Who that I had never seen before. And very agreeable it was as well.

Finally to Sunday night and I was finally able to watch Peter Capaldi’s debut as Doctor Who in Deep Breath. There seems to have been blanket media coverage of the episode and one of my friends had even seen it at the Cardiff debut several weeks before. Somehow I had managed to avoid all the spoilers of the episode save for knowing that the new Doctor was going to be older and Scottish. So what did I make of it? Well, given the Godzilla sized dinosaur that greeted the opening sequence I wondered whether I’d tuned into the wrong show – until it spat out the TARDIS: typical Steven Moffat humour.

Unlike the previous regeneration episode, Eleventh Hour, this story reverted to the convention of introducing a discombobulated Doctor for the first part of the episode which allowed for much of the humour. The Doctor’s recovery then leads into the mystery to be solved and we get to learn more about the Doctor’s new personality. To be perfectly honest, I preferred the approach used with Matt Smith. He was largely unknown as an actor but by the end of the episode we had got to know him more as the Doctor. Peter Capaldi is very well known as an actor but there is one part he is particularly associated with, Malcolm Tucker, and it is important that his interpretation of the Doctor takes precedence over any preconceived ideas that the audience may have about him.

That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy the episode. I really did and I think Capaldi’s interpretation is much closer to the original concept of the Doctor. I had wondered whether he would be more like Pertwee’s interpretation and I can definitely see some of that in there. There is also much of the first Doctor’s terseness and the fact that we are not entirely sure whether he can be trusted as well as some of Christopher Eccleston’s idiot intolerance. I think it will take time for the character to fully develop but he has stated that he doesn’t want to find a formula and stick to it which is why I think Matt Smith left us wanting more – he somehow constantly found something new about the character in every episode. It was nice to see his cameo at the end even if it did feel as if he was stealing Capaldi’s thunder somewhat.

Aside from the MacGuffin dinosaur I was pleased to see the return of the clockwork robots from The Girl in the Fireplace. On the face of it these are not the most threatening of adversaries but their complete lack of empathy makes them far more frightening than a Dalek or Cyberman. They aren’t evil. It is difficult even to describe them as amoral as their mechanical simplicity makes them the grotesque consequence of technology gone wrong. It is this unreasoning menace that makes them so effective and certainly the only monster that has genuinely frightened my daughter (at least as far as she will admit). That simply leaves us with the strange Coda and the mysterious “Missy”. I’m sure this will be explained later in the series but could it be that Missy = Mistress = Master? We’ll have to see.

Reconnecting to the internet on Monday morning I took a deep breath and waited to see what the rest of the world thought of it? Given that I had enjoyed it so much I was rather taken aback by some of the reaction. Some people liked it, others didn’t. Of those, some don’t like Doctor Who full stop (their loss) and others still wanted Matt Smith in the role (fair enough). Quite a few people objected to having an older Scottish actor in the role which seems vaguely ageist and/or racist and it may surprise some to know that when Tom Baker was cast, Fulton Mackay had originally been suggested. Some seemed to complain that they couldn’t follow the plot (seriously?) or that it was too slow (having given up on several acclaimed US series that turned into dreary soaps, I find this surprising). Amongst fandom the views seem to be split but most fans objections relate to the fact that they aren’t writing the whole thing themselves.  I can only suggest avoiding the hype and avoiding the spoilers – for some reason this appears to have vastly improved my enjoyment. Anyway, next week we have Daleks and I have Saturday night free.