Review - Deep Breath

The Doctor suffers the usual regeneration confusion in the first episode of Peter Capaldi's run, Deep Breath.

Series 8, Episode 1 - Deep Breath

Sorry for the delay on this one, but I've posted some initial thoughts over on Geek-O-Rama.net. Below is the same review, with my suggested fixes as always.

Much like previous regeneration episodes of the New Who, we spend most of the time seeing the doctor getting his head around who he is now. He spends much of the first half of the episode being confused and forgetful. At the same time Clara spends the first half of the episode not knowing how to handle The Doctor's change to an older form.

We touch again on the theme of Companion abandonment, both physical and emotional, as Clara comes to terms with The Doctor's wholesale change and later when he runs off, gets a taste of that "what now" feeling we've seen companions deal with before.

It's made clear fairly early on that there will be no hanky-panky with this Doctor, leading to the final scene in which he makes it emphatically clear that he is not Clara's boyfriend. Early on, Vastra lays it down wonderfully, putting Clara, and by proxy certain segments of the audience, in their place.

For all her protestations, much of Clara's issue with The Doctor's regeneration does seem to relate to physical looks, so that whole scene is quite gratifying in many ways. On the other hand, Clara's implication that she's into older blokes could be a worrying indication that we've not seen the end of Hunka Hunka Burning Doc.

But how could he possibly have adventures in space and time when he's so... grey?

Bringing the Clockwork Men back was an odd choice and I'm not sure how I feel about it. I always thought more could have been done with them, but this felt a bit ham-fisted. Why did they need to be from a sister ship? In The Girl In The Fireplace it was established that it was the destruction of the mission computer that caused the maintenance droids to start cannibalising the crew. Are we to believe this happened twice? I'd have rather seen this as the same group of droids that had all come through a time window and become trapped. I'd hesitate to file this under Needlessly Recurring Monsters as this was only their second outing, but they were clumsily brought back, which is a characteristic of that particular problem.

Sure, I could have harvested a whole face, but where's the fun in that?

The dinosaur was a bit of a nothingness though. It served almost no purpose in furthering the story, apart from a very public immolation. I suppose it did bring the Paternoster Gang there, but I suspect a blue box crashing into the middle of Victorian London would probably have done the same thing. Not exactly a Too Many Monsters type situation, but more of a red herring.

Don't look at me. I'm irrelevant.

This episode went to great lengths to show the parallels between The Doctor with his multiple regenerations and the Clockwork Man with the constant replacing of its own parts. The broom analogy was a good one, which coincidentally I had seen used only recently as I read Terry Pratchett's I Shall Wear Midnight. I'm not sure if the silver tray scene was taking this too far or not. I think I liked it though. I do worry that this "who am I" business will become a sub-plot that takes up too much of this season.

There are a few choice In-Who-Endos between Vastra and Jenny, but nothing excessively crude. I even chuckled at a few points. Sadly, by involving Clara in these, Vastra and Jenny's relationship is somehow marginalised. The cool thing about Vastra and Jenny's relationship was not that is was a cross-species same-sex one, but that it was seemingly strongly monogamous. By showing that Vastra is into other girls too, really ruins what was a lovely duo.

Please ignore my wife and get nekkid.

And finally The Doctor thinks to ask the question he should have done in The Bells of Saint John. Who gave Clara his number? This really is all the tease for the season arc that we need. Unfortunately that's not spoon-feeding us enough, so they elected to have an entire epilogue scene introducing Missy, the Gatekeeper of the Nethersphere. In a far more tragic turn of events, she refers to The Doctor as her boyfriend. Goddamnit!

A couple of other minor concerns, I noticed The Doctor said "that's not the question" a couple of times. I'm not sure if that's just a one-off for this episode, or if it will become his Annoying Catchphrase. If it does, it's not as bad as it could be, although I'll reserve judgement until I've seen it used a few more times. There was also a touch of Deus Ex Screwdriver with the revelation the sonic is voice activated now.

And I just need to take a second to comment on the new opening credits. Do. Not. Like. There's a hint of something interesting there, but all the cogs and clocks is just a bit too clichéd for me. There's nothing wrong with the good old time vortex with flying names. It's a classic for a reason.

As nice as it was to see Capaldi take on the mantle of The Doctor (and I think he did it well), this episode was just too riddled with issues to score particularly highly from me.

6/10

Can we fix it?

First up, some easy fixes. We dial back the innuendos from Vastra and Jenny a bit, and remove any hint that Vastra is hot for Clara. There's enough comedy in this episode without it. Also, completely remove the final scene with Missy. It was unnecessary and the episode was already significantly over time.

I've already alluded to some of the changes I'd make to the whole Clockwork Men thing. Replace the reference to them being from a sister ship of the SS Madame De Pompadour. It didn't help The Doctor to learn this, and was only there to explain their reappearance to the audience. I'd make them from the same ship, but they got caught outside a time window (or even halfway through) when The Doctor shut things down. This would mean they were hanging around, not for thousands of years, but only a century or so. Enough time to wear out and begin the process of replacing their own systems with human parts, but still retain some clockwork.

Their origin could be revealed during The Doctor's dialogue with the Control Node, removing the need for the naming of any ships. If it was scripted well enough, things could be relatively obscure, whilst at the same time making the audience aware of the link to the previous episode.

"We were seeking replacement parts to repair damage to our ship. Our time windows were destroyed, but our ship still awaits us. We determined to wait."

It makes little sense for the clockwork robots to harvest human parts to make anything when they are trapped in a resource-rich environment. It worked when they were trapped in space, but on Earth in any timeframe they would have access to raw materials they could fashion parts out of. By highlighting that they are attempting to remain hidden until such a time as they can return to their ship, they sort of justify this behaviour again.

This would also mean the Control Node would have to have a whole face. If he absolutely needed to have half a face to show his mechanical nature, he should have a reason for that such as damage to the skin, as well as try to conceal it. To this end, I'd have his first on-screen victim be shown to claw at his face tearing some of the skin off. After that he would be seen wearing a Phantom of the Opera style half mask, which would harken back to the original appearance in Season 2.

With some further explanation from the Control Node about how over time they found their systems began failing. They originally manufactured mechanical replacements but started using human parts in order to blend in. Stories had begun to circulate amongst the lower classes about murderous and ghoulish nobles who would steal your flesh and couldn't be killed. At this point they fled France, but it didn't stop the revolutionaries cutting the heads off of a lot of nobles. But the human bits have a short lifespan, and need more regular replacement., leading to the harvest restaurant.

Everything else could play out the same way, even the flying escape pod and the cheesy impalement on Big Ben.

Honestly though, these guys better not show up again. They are supposed to be unique enough to make The Doctor geek out over them. Let's keep them that way.

Review - The Girl in the Fireplace

The Doctor learns how to "dance" with the first in a long line of female historical figures in The Girl in the Fireplace.

Season 2, Episode 4 - The Girl in the Fireplace

Yo Dawg! I heard you like time travel, so I put some more time travel into your time travel show. This episode makes extra special use of time travel. The idea of one participant in the story taking the long road whilst the other skips ahead is very interesting. Of course the episode is apparently loosely based on The Time Traveller's Wife, so we cant award too many points for that. We do get more touches of the culture shock theme, with Reinette having that same "left behind" experience. She handles it much better than Rose or Sarah Jane though.

We skip between a space ship in the far future that's been repaired using bits of its crew, and pre-revolutionary France. I liked the way the characters were split between the timelines. It gave Rose and Mickey a chance to prove themselves without The Doctor. This opportunity could have been exploited a lot more than it was though, as the episode was squarely focussed on The Doctor, almost the complete opposite of The Companion Show featuring The Doctor. Strangely this is almost as bad as focusing on the Companion more than The Doctor. There really does need to be a good balance.

You stay here. I've got to sort someone out.

THING!

Sort something out.

Our main monster is the Clockwork Robots, who again fit the mould of advance slowly and be creepy. They work in this story though, despite no explanation of why they are made of clockwork. I mean a teleport, no matter how short-range, must require a power source beyond mere clockwork.

As if the French aristocracy wasn't creepy enough.

The whole episode is pure Hunka hunka burning Doc though. Reinette jumps The Doctor's bones with little more than two brief meetings when she was a little girl and a five minute conversation under her belt. Moffat keeps the dance metaphor going strongly in this story, dropping a very strong implication that The Doctor and Reinette had sex.

The relationship is solidly written though, and for whatever reason I can accept this sexualisation of The Doctor more than any other instance in the show. Perhaps this is a testament to Moffat's writing. I can believe that this girl successfully got through the layers and seduced The Doctor through a combination of her natural charm and his innate need to protect. 

Not to mention being face-meltingly hot.

The pacing of this episode is spot on. The short-range teleports combined with the nature of the time windows and the Clockwork Men's mission means they can be easily fended off with little fear of them returning until much later. This gives us little bursts of action amongst the talking and flirting. It was nice to see Rose get her comeuppance though. At least she had Mickey as a fall-back.

The climax of the episode was great, with The Doctor not only risking all and stranding himself in the past (albeit with a smoking hot lover) but doing so by riding in on a white charger. Not the only fairy tale parallel in this episode, but definitely the coolest.

Of course there couldn't be a happily ever after in this situation. What we did get was perfect though.

I've just got something in my eye... Again.

Despite the whole episode being pretty much all about The Doctor falling in love and someone falling in love with him, I enjoyed it. Removing this episode from the context of ongoing instances of Hunka hunka burning Doc, it works as that one time a girl managed to turn his head. It is significantly diminished by all the other times it happens (or is implied to happen) though.

Still, a very watchable episode, with much more of an historical feel about it despite its quite solid sci-fi core.

8/10

Can we fix it?

I'm sure many would be expecting me to demand less Doctor love here, but in all honesty in the context of this episode, I'm fine with it. All of the bits with The Doctor and Reinette are great. But when you look past that the rest seems a tad light on. 

I feel if we had a bit more meat on the bones of the Rose and Mickey side of this story, we could have found out more about how the ship and its attendant robots got into the state they did.

The way I see it, the ship originally only had a small group of maintenance droids. These robots cannibalised themselves for parts first, replacing higher tech systems used in repairs to the ship with hastily manufactured clockwork facsimiles. Having used up their own parts, they turned on the crew, replacing their bits with clockwork too. A nice Tin Man parallel to go with some of the other fairy tale stuff in this episode. The clockwork is clearly a unique design, with The Doctor fawning all over it. That could be the reason why. 

This information could be revealed to Mickey and Rose through Mickey using his awesome computer hacking skills to unearth fragments of video logs from the Captain. This makes the Rose and Mickey section a bit more than wandering the halls waiting for The Doctor to get back so that they can tell him things they've seen and let him figure it out.

These recordings could also hint that the reason the crew couldn't fight the Clockwork Men off or order them to not use them as spares was because they only respond directly to the mission computer. This would be there as an early clue for the audience who realise they only respond to Reinette. When The Doctor finds out he of course puts two and two together without having to interrogate the Clockworks to get it.

We could even go so far as to hint that the original problem with the ship was limited just to the mission computer, and that the repairs made by the droids were purely to create the time windows. They cannibalised the ship to create the time windows, and cannibalised the crew to keep the ship running.

We can still leave the name of the ship as a mystery, but I think this fleshes the ship side of the story out a bit and gives Rose and Mickey something more to do.