Deep Breath (2014) Review

Boy, was I desperate to see this epiosde.

NOTE: This is my original review of the Series 8 premiere that I made on GateWorld Forum back in 2014, before the episode was even released(yeah, I was one of those twats who watched the crappy early version). Sorry for the rough review style.

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"I'm the Doctor. I'm over 2000 years old and not all of them good. I've made mistakes. It's about time I did something about that."

I thought it was suitably grand as Capaldi's premiere, but suffered somewhat from unnecessarily using Madame Vastra and co(whose origins are still unknown btw). There was a definite Matt Smith feel to it, even in the writing.

Peter Capaldi is hard to define as the Twelfth Doctor. He retains Eleventh's non-sense of comedic timing, but other than that, is mainly characterised by being an enigma. Then again, it IS only his first story. All I can say is that he's slightly grouchy and definitely Scottish(screw London, we got Glasgow!)

Fortunately, my fears of this being a Christmas Invasion rip-off did not come true. The Doctor quickly gets out of bed and on to business, even if he's more delusional than ever. Nor was Clara's "he's someone else" thing badly written. She had a genuine reason for being confused.

The story is this: the TARDIS crashes in Victorian London and brings along a giant dinosaur somehow. Vastra and co find a pissed off Clara and a crazed Doctor tumbling out of the ship and give them a place to stay. Soon however, the Doctor's interest is piqued by the giant dinosaur and he goes wandering off. He and Clara find a newspaper add that leads them together in a restaurant which is controlled by the clockwork robots from Pompadour's sister ship(how convenient) and stop them.

And there's a fourth River Song in it at the end.

It's clunky and doesn't make a lot of sense, but the continuity is at least nice, I guess. Still, it's probably the worst New Who introduction ep. The story's just so lightweight. And yes, I said grand. It feels grand, but it's a wee bit hollow inside. Plus, there's no oomph! moment where the actor establishes himself as the character, which is probably the worst crime.

My favorite(and in true Moffat fashion, continuity bending) scene of the episode was Matt Smith's cameo. What a brilliant idea executed brilliantly. More of that, please(the ideas, not phone calls from Smith).

So overall, grand-ish, but simplistic. Looking forward to seeing it for real.

They mopped up the dinosaur story real fast, didn't they? How come it was never recorded in history? It's like The Next Doctor all over again.