And so it begins. The second half-century, the Doctor's second regeneration cycle, the Twelfth Doctor's era, Series 8 or Season 34... it all begins here with Deep Breath. Following the massive success of the world dominating anniversary special simulcast, Moffat and the crew wanted to capitalise on the show's new found audience and set off on a twelve day world tour to give the first episode of the new series a cinematic preview with Q&A sessions in six countries across all five continents. They were struck by the scale of the show's popularity and recent news that lax security on a server in Miami had lead to the first few episodes leaking and the dubbing delays this lead to for German viewers all seemed like a drop in the ocean. Who fans are loyal and dedicated the whole world over and we don't want spoilers, we want to enjoy the ride. That is why the world tour worked and they were able to screen the first episode each time - the less fortunate majority would be happy to wait a few more days for the television broadcast (again simulcast in several countries) The only disappointment was missing out on the little prequel which we will presumably get to see on DVD/Blu-Ray...
Hopefully, the prequel will fill in the gap nicely, because we last saw the Doctor leaving Trensalore as he completed his regeneration and told Clara he didn't like the colour of his kidneys, then asked if she knew how to fly the TARDIS... we first see them in Deep Breath arriving in Victorian London courtesy of a giant dinosaur...
Victorian London can only mean one thing. The matter of Vastra, Jenny and Strax meeting the new Doctor was going to be addressed straight away. This makes sense because it can be a clumsy matter to deal with and getting it all out of the way in one episode means the series can progress normally from the next and there's no need to hang on to the past... something Steven Moffat needs to consider. I loved all the self references and echoes of the past in The Day Of The Doctor but using them too often is not a good idea especially if they are the same references. The line "You've redecorated. I don't like it" is a nice classic that works every few years (traditionally in anniversary stories) and it was correct to have the Tenth Doctor say it in The Day Of The Doctor, but having Clara repeat it just two episodes later when there isn't much 'redecorating' to actually notice felt clumsy and lazy. Similarly, the Doctor saying he used to like "the round things" of the TARDIS interior was clever and amusing the first time but wasn't worth repeating here unless the he were to go on to add more, which he didn't (or hasn't so far). Madam Vastra's "Well then, here we go again" is also a clear callback to the Brigadier's line as Jon Pertwee bowed out and regenerated into Tom Baker in Planet Of The Spiders, but was completely out of place coming from her unless we are to assume she had seen him change before.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed Deep Breath but it was over-thought and a little too 'clever' for its own good. There was an early 'signpost' (similar to the Seal Of The High Council in The Time Of The Doctor) that felt obvious but without meaning until we arrived at the relevant moment later and the whole episode seemed thick with veil and mask metaphors as well as references to change and replacement. All geared towards the final scene where Clara finally accepts the new Doctor as being the same Doctor she has been travelling with and the same as all the previous Doctors that her splintered self had met in his time-stream in The Name Of The Doctor. Because of all this, there are scenes that serve no purpose other than to lighten the mood or tease towards that final moment, but which bare little or no relevance to the story at the time. The main adventure itself is probably not much longer than a standard episode, but all this extra clever construction leads the episode to be an hour and fifteen minutes. When it finished, I was left with a feeling that it could have and possibly should have been ten or even twenty minutes shorter - a sentiment shared by Dan Martin who said in his review for The Guardian "In reality, it maybe could have done with being shaved down to an hour." Having watched it again I can see how these extra twenty minutes survived though, because it didn't feel so bad or obvious the second time around, but I did note the various moments that felt unnecessary and they add up to about 15 minutes and the main adventure is over at about 1:05 anyway, then Clara gets seven minutes of reassurance that the Doctor is still the Doctor. All this is followed by a mysterious two minute scene introducing, or rather teasing a new character called Missy...
But what of the actual contents? It's all very familiar yet different. The danger with yet another return to Victorian London is the potential weakening of the Paternoster characters (though it is equally possible that they will grow, possibly too much) and the shadow of the excessive events seen in The Next Doctor - which came first? As if to rival the Cyber King seen in The Next Doctor, Deep Breath opened with an apparently oversized dinosaur rampaging up the Thames with Vastra setting out special 'lanterns' to "incline it to remain within their circumference" and the local policeman accepting this as just another quirky incident solution. The dinosaur coughs up the TARDIS and we first see the Twelfth Doctor as he emerges briefly from within and sushes Strax. When he finally steps out, he is completely out of sorts, disoriented and struggling to remember who everyone is - though he recognises them all. The music at this point is dramatic and clock-like with little tick-tock riffs. Capaldi is brilliant but this clearly isn't the finished product. Unsurprisingly, it's been a turbulent regeneration and he doesn't even understand the concept of a bedroom... then he becomes aware of everyone else's accents - that is to say, unlike him they don't sound Scottish (a theme the Moffat revels in and gets as much mileage out of as he can later on) We get a deeper insight into Vastra and Jenny's relationship, a statement that they are married (which later is revealed to be a private matter wile publicly Jenny is seen as Madam Vastra's maid) Clara questions the Doctor's new 'old' face while Vastra questions Clara's cynicism. It's hard to tell what the adventure is for the first half hour, so much focus on the regeneration elements, a dinosaur and a brief scene with a man with half a face and clockwork insides. The Doctor runs off to investigate once the Dinosaur spontaneously combusts but we are left with the domestic scenes of the morning after, Strax fetching the TARDIS and a news paper, Clara dressing in period costume, Jenny updating her on the day's plans while Vastra concludes another case. The next time we see the Doctor, he is still coming to terms with his new face and is 'attack eyebrows' and confirming his Scottishness with a vagrant before finally fixing on a news paper article about a fourth spontaneous combustion case. It's takes Clara and three others another three minutes of screen time to decrypt a message from him and the adventure is finally on...
The major change in this episode, and presumably the rest of the series will be similar, is the use of longer scenes, giving the characters time to breath and draw the viewers in. Having said that, the less relevant scenes allow the viewers to drift and start to lose interest. There are even stylisticly slow motion moments a couple of times that feel 'nice' but frustrating, as are the Doctor's slow moments as he tries to connect what he is seeing with what he remembers... clockwork robots harvesting human organs for repairs, an ancient spaceship crashed, buried and incorporated into a building. Very familiar yet different. He's remembering The Girl In The Fireplace and Closing Time, two unrelated stories but the clockwork robots are especially relevant, only this time they are repairing themselves with organic matter rather than their ship. The half faced man asks the Doctor how he [the Doctor] can kill him [the droid]... cut to the others fighting droids that refuse to 'stay dead', but the Doctor takes the question as one of ethics rather than capability. Either way, we don't really get an answer, neither the droid nor the Doctor are 'programmed' to kill yet only one of them survives...
Which brings me to the final scene. The half faced man, though incapacitated has been revived and 'wakes' to meet Missy who asks if he fell or if her boyfriend pushed him... She goes on to refer to the Doctor's characteristics without naming him directly so we are left wondering who she really is as well as whether the droid was pushed or not (though we were given a dramatic look-to-camera by the Doctor as if to say "Yes,I did it. Not what you'd expect eh?"
There are some great moments within the episode, including some of the silly slapstick and clever writing. There are also not so good moments including some of the slapstick and some heavy handed writing - Vastra and Jenny seem to have a telepathic conversation to give them an excuse to kiss, explained narratively as an exchange of breath but just as gratuitous as the twack sound effect when Vastra tricked the Doctor to sleep. A line somewhere between the good and the not so good was a clever twist on the previous Doctor's catchphrase "Geronimo!" A word I never liked from the first moment it was used after his regeneration, it was used this time as a signal from Clara to Castra, Jenny and Strax but she was reluctant to say it and the Doctor didn't seem too pleased when he worked out what it would be so perhaps this was Moffat acknowledging it's mixed reception among fans and giving it one last outing. And speaking of the previous Doctor; as Capaldi made a surprise appearance at the end of The Day Of The Doctor, so too did Matt Smith at the end of Deep Breath - explaining why the telephone was hanging off the hook at the end of The Time Of The Doctor... he was phoning Clara in the future to reassure her!
To summarise my feelings of the whole episode: Capaldi was excellent, Coleman was adorably brilliant, the visual effects were stunning, music was top notch, the adventure was a mix of two stories with a heavy focus on the regeneration side and slightly let down by excessive but nice padding. I haven't even mentioned the new title sequence and theme tune! The new variation on the tune slipped through almost unnoticed, it's sufficiently similar whist being different and the visuals were a mix of the traditional time tunnel/vortex and clock elements as designed and posted on YouTube last year by a fan of the show and officially commissioned, practically unchanged. Fortunately, although I hadn't liked it a great deal on first viewing, I had seen it shortly after it went online so I already knew what to expect when it appeared in the show and it fitted perfectly with the clockwork droids of the episode as well. I like it better that the previous amalgam of organic nebulae and the appearance of Capaldi's eyes are far more prominent than the glimpse of Smith's face that we had before, finally getting back the tradition started with Patrick Troughton (and would have been used for William Hartnell had the effect not seemed too scary on the first attempt)
All in all a great regeneration episode, just a little too much of it. The series proper begins tonight as we go Into The Dalek...
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