Review of Deep Breath
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

The new Doctor has officially arrived, and I can release the anticipatory breath. My biggest fear was that Capaldi would not live up to all my expectations. That one, at least, I can put to rest.

Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2014 BBC

As for the remainder of the episode… Well, let’s just say the more things change, the more they stay the same.

It’s a series opener, so we all knew before the list of titles, writers, and directors was released that this was going to be a Moffat story. I had my fingers crossed, but it came out true to form. On my first viewing, I really enjoyed it; certain details niggled at me, but I was able to ignore them and enjoy the ride. On second and later viewings, the flaws started to do more than niggle, and it became ever more difficult to enjoy certain scenes. That, for me, is the classic Moffat signature.

Before I go any further, let me be clear: I thought Capaldi’s Twelve was bloody brilliant. I love him already. He was everything I hoped for (with the possible exception of some overly friendly chatting up of a lonely female T. rex), and I can’t wait to see more of him.

Clara, however, was a mixed bag for me. On the one hand, she really stepped up her game, executing a very Doctor-ly bluff-calling when set against the Half-Face Man (more on that later) and standing up to Vastra. On the other, she—the Impossible Girl, who had saved the Doctor time and again in his many incarnations—couldn’t get over the fact that he wasn’t the same man anymore. On the whole, I think she came out net positive for me (her improvements outweighing the backsliding), and I’m hoping she continues to grow into a character I could miss.

Then there’s the Paternoster Gang. Much as I love Vastra, Jenny, and Strax themselves (especially that Neve McIntosh got to use her natural Scottish accent for a while), I am (1) getting tired of them and (2) acutely uncomfortable with the way Vastra and Jenny’s relationship was depicted here. Several times, we see Vastra make “wandering eyes” comments, objectify her wife (“Then why am I standing here posing?” “Art?”), and take advantage of a purportedly fictional power differential (“Doesn’t exactly explain why I’m pouring tea in private.”). Replace Vastra with a man, and it’s neither cute nor funny; nor is it when she’s a female Silurian. (Can we please get some women writers on this show?)

While I’m ranting, let’s get my other biggest gripe out of the way. Moffat has an infuriating habit of either over- or underestimating his audience. Either he does a hand-wavey, “oh, the audience are clever; they’ll figure it out, so I don’t have to explain it” thing (which leads to him having to explain it in interviews later—a failure for a writer, since the consumer cannot be assumed to have any interaction with anything but the story itself) or he beats us over the head with the same damn thing over and over again, as if we’re too dull to figure out the basics.

To me, his attempt at humor by having Twelve completely fail to remember where he’d seen mechanical beings scavenging parts from humans before—even when faced with the actual name of the location in which it had happened (and who stamps parts with the name of the ship, let alone adding its sister ship? What the actual fuck?)—fell utterly flat. And needing to suspend an involuntary bodily function to avoid getting killed by creepy creatures? One more thing I’ve seen before. Details like these merely emphasized the fact that Moffat only seems to have three ideas, and has to cannibalize them to create another working script (talk about meta).

The more time I spend writing my own fiction, though, the more I notice the problems Doctor Who writers face in getting everything they need into their scripts. For example, I loved that Clara drew on her experience as a teacher to thwart the Half-Face Man, but the flashback was inserted in such a random spot (why would she think of it just then, before the analogous situation arose?) it really threw me for a loop. From a narrative perspective, it’s a difficult puzzle: the audience needs the backstory of Clara’s first day teaching, but there’s no good way to introduce it into the story. Using a flashback like this can do the job, but as it comes to her at such an incongruous moment, it had a very “because the writer needs this” feel to it, which was jarring. Sadly, I don’t have a better solution.

Something I felt worked well, though, was the way that Deep Breath addressed the issue of the differences between Eleven and Twelve head-on.

“I’m not your boyfriend.”
“I never thought you were.”
“I never said it was your mistake.”

Throughout the story, Clara and the audience are both schooled in the ways that this new Doctor is not the flirty, acceptance-seeking man his predecessor (apparently) was. I’m down with that. I’m ready for more of a best-friend, or even merely avuncular, vibe. This is the kind of change I’ve been craving.

I’m also a fan of those “attack eyebrows.” Moffat may have had to “Pope in the pool” the scene by having the Doctor riffling through garbage with a tramp, but his obligatory “check out this new face” moment served a deeper purpose. Not only did we get to watch the Doctor react to his new incarnation—something almost required in a regeneration story—but we are now also privy to his own confusion about its familiarity. “Why’d I choose this one? It’s like I’m trying to make a point. But what is so important that I can’t just tell myself what I’m thinking?” This question, of course, sets up the first of the next long-term story arcs.

The other, of course, is the identity of “Missy,” the woman who greets the Half-Face Man in what she calls Heaven. Theories about her identity were zipping around the Internet within minutes of the episode’s conclusion, but none I’ve heard yet completely satisfy me. (Do check out the latest edition of The Corsair’s Closet podcast—on which I am a guest—though. The idea that “the AFOL Husband” floats at the end is worth further consideration. The episode airs on Krypton Radio today at 4pm Pacific time, or can later be found on the podcast’s archive page. [UPDATE: Episode 3.3 is now available.])

The only things that seem clear to me about Missy are that she’ll be back throughout the series (she’s clearly being set up as this season’s Big Bad), and that she must be “the woman in the shop.” That is, I assert it was Missy who gave Clara the Doctor’s phone number back in The Bells of Saint John, and she who put the “Impossible Girl” ad into the paper.

But what about the man of the hour (and a quarter)? What did I think of Twelve, and of Capaldi’s performance? Well, I can see why some have already said they thought he was over-hyped, and they felt underwhelmed by him, but I don’t share that opinion. I found him to be exactly the right combination of wacky, scary, and vulnerable, and I am really looking forward to seeing who he becomes once he’s no longer immediately post-regenerative.

Perhaps most telling of all, though, is the fact that unlike Matt Smith’s debut, I didn’t spend a single second wondering when I’d see the Doctor in the man on screen. In fact, it didn’t even occur to me until I sat down to coalesce my thoughts here that I might have done so. Capaldi simply was the Doctor to me—is the Doctor. And I can’t wait to follow him on his next adventure.

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