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Doctor Who, "Deep Breath"
Aug. 25th, 2014 12:56 pmWe have a new Doctor! A new start! Alas, it seems like my disconnect from recent Doctor Who was due to showrunner more than actor playing the Doctor, and that hasn't changed. Still, this was an okay episode with some things I very much enjoyed in this episode in addition to the things that I disliked.
The Good
-Peter Capaldi as the Doctor. He is every bit as good as I'd hoped.One thing I'm especially excited about is that he can bring the Oncoming Storm with all the ferocity and gravitas that aspect of the Doctor demands. Matt Smith brought a lot of wonderful things to his portrayal of the Doctor, but I never really found his Oncoming Storm to be convincing. When he shouted, he sounded more petulant than frightening. (Eleven could be very scary, but he was scariest in cold and quiet ways, like outright lying to his companions, or when seemingly jolly and triumphant, like transforming every human who watched the moon landing into a killer.) Eyebrows and insults to humans are both things I'm glad to have from the Doctor. I will be interested to see him when he's not still rattled by regeneration, because scaring random tramps for no good reason may be taking things a little too far.
-Madame Vastra, Jenny, and Strax automatically double the awesome of any episode they are in. I was especially excited when they mentioned the Paternoster Irregulars being out on the case. We didn't see these irregulars, but I'm going to go ahead and assume it's a gang of street urchins. IT WOULD BE SO NATURAL TO GIVE VASTRA AND JENNY A SPINOFF AIMED AT KIDS. I also love that when appropriate they actually call the police to help them deal with stuff.
-The pacing of the episode was much less irritatingly manic than a lot of the recent era of Doctor Who. It felt like an appropriate amount of story for the time allotted, not trying to cram in an incredibly convoluted plot (not to mention every possible cheap joke) into too small a time. That was such a relief!
-The moment in the restaurant when they realize that the other diners are all automatons was intensely creepy and cool.
-While it was clearly one of those things that Moffat wrote because he thought it would be neat rather than because it made sense, I did rather like the dinosaur appearing in Victorian London and then spitting out the TARDIS.
-Scottish Doctor gets to complain about things and naturally gravitates towards Glasgow.
The Bad
-Why the hell is Clara, supposedly the one companion who has known the Doctor in EVERY SINGLE ONE of his lives, so thrown by his regeneration? My impression was that she remembered at least aspects of that whole saving the Doctor across many lives thing. Her panic makes no sense. Like, I can understand being deeply sad that the Doctor she knows from her real, original life is gone, but this degree of doubt and fear is super inconsistent with her character. If Moffat felt the need for an audience surrogate to express viewers' distress and confusion at the Doctor's change, well, we never saw Vastra and Jenny interact with any Doctor besides Eleven, so they haven't personally experienced a regeneration. Let Jenny be the one who's doubtful and upset on behalf of the audience! Or just trust that your audience is aware of how this regeneration thing works.
-On the subject of inconsistent and weird Clara characterization, the Doctor basically called her an egomaniac childish game-player, and other than maaaaaybe being childish I can't really see how that describes her. Maybe because the episodes with Modern Clara focused so much on her Impossible Girl status that they never really bothered to develop all that much of a personality for her beyond Generic Plucky Companion. Or possibly the fault is with me for missing the signs that she's an egomaniac childish game-player because lately I've been so meh about current Doctor Who that I don't think I've watched any of Clara's episodes more than once. With no disrespect to Jenna Coleman (who does a pretty good job with what she's given), I honestly don't care about Clara. And that's a very bad thing for the show when it can't make me give a rat's ass one way or the other about the companion.
-Vastra and Jenny are married, but we still only watch them lock lips for a contrived sharing oxygen moment? Moffat, if you are trying to do better about representation, it isn't working.
-Moffat sure loves recycling his ideas, doesn't he? Here we have the need to refrain from a basic biological function so monsters can't get you (previously blinking, now breathing) and the clockwork droids from The Girl in the Fireplace. I was seriously dubious about the whole "hold your breath and the robots think you're one of them!" thing, when the people were showing so many other signs of not being robots. It doesn't make a lick of logical sense, but it does make a sort of nightmare-sense, so I'm not too annoyed at that. However, I wasn't a fan of the clockwork droids being reused in this way. They were great the first time, but I thought they made less sense in this context. Like, there are all sorts of materials they could have used in Victorian London that would have been a hell of a lot easier than setting up a fake restaurant to trap humans. (Context in which reusing the clockwork droids could have been cool: start off on a fully-functioning 51st-century spaceship with all the humans aboard very proud of their new clockwork-biological-digital hybrid technology. The Doctor shows up informs them that this technology is a terrible idea, but nobody listens until sure enough something goes wrong and the droids start picking off the crew one by one in some creepy space-horror.)
-"You can't see me, can you? You look at me and you can't see me. Do you have any idea what that's like?" Hey Doctor, remember all that time you looked at Clara and saw her Dalek and Victorian doppelgangers, seeing the mystery but not really her, Clara Oswald the real 21st-century woman? I think she knows very well what that's like, you ass.
-They killed the dinosaur. :( :( :(
Things About Which I Have Conflicting or Undecided Feelings
-The phone call from Eleven. I didn't know that was coming, and even as someone who was happy to see him regenerate it still hit in the feels. However, I also think it was unnecessary emotional manipulation.
-The mystery woman who appeared with the revived droid captain at the end. I didn't catch it from the show, but apparently she's called Missy. Missy could be short for Mistress, which could mean that she's the newest regeneration of the Master. While I would kinda prefer to leave the Master character alone for a while longer, I could potentially get behind the Master as Evil Mary Poppins (especially if they make it clear that the Master always thought of the Doctor in a boyfriend way, even before regenerating female). If she turns out to be a regeneration of River Song I will throw things. Mostly I think I'd be glad if she's a new character.
-At the very end, the Doctor suggests that he and Clara go out for chips or coffee. She tells him that he's buying, but he claims that he doesn't have any money. This is a very clear callback to Nine and Rose's conversation in "The End of the World," a moment I absolutely loved. I can't decide how I feel about it being used here. It hits me in the feels, and is a nice reminder that some things about the Doctor stay constant even across many regenerations. On the other hand, part of me wants Moffat to keep his grubby typing fingers off of the era when I consistently loved Doctor Who, to build his own characters and not just manipulate the audience's heartstrings with what came before. Mostly, it makes me want to rewatch Nine and Rose.
In conclusion, RIP dinosaur.
The Good
-Peter Capaldi as the Doctor. He is every bit as good as I'd hoped.
-Madame Vastra, Jenny, and Strax automatically double the awesome of any episode they are in. I was especially excited when they mentioned the Paternoster Irregulars being out on the case. We didn't see these irregulars, but I'm going to go ahead and assume it's a gang of street urchins. IT WOULD BE SO NATURAL TO GIVE VASTRA AND JENNY A SPINOFF AIMED AT KIDS. I also love that when appropriate they actually call the police to help them deal with stuff.
-The pacing of the episode was much less irritatingly manic than a lot of the recent era of Doctor Who. It felt like an appropriate amount of story for the time allotted, not trying to cram in an incredibly convoluted plot (not to mention every possible cheap joke) into too small a time. That was such a relief!
-The moment in the restaurant when they realize that the other diners are all automatons was intensely creepy and cool.
-While it was clearly one of those things that Moffat wrote because he thought it would be neat rather than because it made sense, I did rather like the dinosaur appearing in Victorian London and then spitting out the TARDIS.
-Scottish Doctor gets to complain about things and naturally gravitates towards Glasgow.
-Why the hell is Clara, supposedly the one companion who has known the Doctor in EVERY SINGLE ONE of his lives, so thrown by his regeneration? My impression was that she remembered at least aspects of that whole saving the Doctor across many lives thing. Her panic makes no sense. Like, I can understand being deeply sad that the Doctor she knows from her real, original life is gone, but this degree of doubt and fear is super inconsistent with her character. If Moffat felt the need for an audience surrogate to express viewers' distress and confusion at the Doctor's change, well, we never saw Vastra and Jenny interact with any Doctor besides Eleven, so they haven't personally experienced a regeneration. Let Jenny be the one who's doubtful and upset on behalf of the audience! Or just trust that your audience is aware of how this regeneration thing works.
-On the subject of inconsistent and weird Clara characterization, the Doctor basically called her an egomaniac childish game-player, and other than maaaaaybe being childish I can't really see how that describes her. Maybe because the episodes with Modern Clara focused so much on her Impossible Girl status that they never really bothered to develop all that much of a personality for her beyond Generic Plucky Companion. Or possibly the fault is with me for missing the signs that she's an egomaniac childish game-player because lately I've been so meh about current Doctor Who that I don't think I've watched any of Clara's episodes more than once. With no disrespect to Jenna Coleman (who does a pretty good job with what she's given), I honestly don't care about Clara. And that's a very bad thing for the show when it can't make me give a rat's ass one way or the other about the companion.
-Vastra and Jenny are married, but we still only watch them lock lips for a contrived sharing oxygen moment? Moffat, if you are trying to do better about representation, it isn't working.
-Moffat sure loves recycling his ideas, doesn't he? Here we have the need to refrain from a basic biological function so monsters can't get you (previously blinking, now breathing) and the clockwork droids from The Girl in the Fireplace. I was seriously dubious about the whole "hold your breath and the robots think you're one of them!" thing, when the people were showing so many other signs of not being robots. It doesn't make a lick of logical sense, but it does make a sort of nightmare-sense, so I'm not too annoyed at that. However, I wasn't a fan of the clockwork droids being reused in this way. They were great the first time, but I thought they made less sense in this context. Like, there are all sorts of materials they could have used in Victorian London that would have been a hell of a lot easier than setting up a fake restaurant to trap humans. (Context in which reusing the clockwork droids could have been cool: start off on a fully-functioning 51st-century spaceship with all the humans aboard very proud of their new clockwork-biological-digital hybrid technology. The Doctor shows up informs them that this technology is a terrible idea, but nobody listens until sure enough something goes wrong and the droids start picking off the crew one by one in some creepy space-horror.)
-"You can't see me, can you? You look at me and you can't see me. Do you have any idea what that's like?" Hey Doctor, remember all that time you looked at Clara and saw her Dalek and Victorian doppelgangers, seeing the mystery but not really her, Clara Oswald the real 21st-century woman? I think she knows very well what that's like, you ass.
-They killed the dinosaur. :( :( :(
-The phone call from Eleven. I didn't know that was coming, and even as someone who was happy to see him regenerate it still hit in the feels. However, I also think it was unnecessary emotional manipulation.
-The mystery woman who appeared with the revived droid captain at the end. I didn't catch it from the show, but apparently she's called Missy. Missy could be short for Mistress, which could mean that she's the newest regeneration of the Master. While I would kinda prefer to leave the Master character alone for a while longer, I could potentially get behind the Master as Evil Mary Poppins (especially if they make it clear that the Master always thought of the Doctor in a boyfriend way, even before regenerating female). If she turns out to be a regeneration of River Song I will throw things. Mostly I think I'd be glad if she's a new character.
-At the very end, the Doctor suggests that he and Clara go out for chips or coffee. She tells him that he's buying, but he claims that he doesn't have any money. This is a very clear callback to Nine and Rose's conversation in "The End of the World," a moment I absolutely loved. I can't decide how I feel about it being used here. It hits me in the feels, and is a nice reminder that some things about the Doctor stay constant even across many regenerations. On the other hand, part of me wants Moffat to keep his grubby typing fingers off of the era when I consistently loved Doctor Who, to build his own characters and not just manipulate the audience's heartstrings with what came before. Mostly, it makes me want to rewatch Nine and Rose.
In conclusion, RIP dinosaur.