S8E1: Deep Breath (SPOILERS)

Evil Monkey Pope wrote:

This was so much better than the previous episode!
Capaldi is great. He seems a bit like Tom Baker.
This episode was all about how Clara sucks ... & it worked? It acknowledged that saying how special Clara is without demonstrating why did not make for a good character while meta-criticizing fans who freaked out over an old Doctor. I liked how she was able to call the automaton's ultimatum bluff.
This was a well directed episode in how kinetic everything felt.
Strax whacking Clara with the paper & plotting to boil the Doctor in oil was the best.
The skin blimp was creepy & elegant.
I'm thinking Missyster is the Ma.

hmmmm that's a really neat guess my first thought was the rani, but the master would be more interesting.

Rani is not as manic as Missy was presented. She does have a particularly Simm-ish bent in the few minutes we get with her.

I really love this episode. I cant stop thinking about what his extended dialogue about his face is going to materialize into. is it as simple as the lesson he learned in pompei, or is there some valyard implication. hmmm find that really interesting.

I do enjoy that we didn't SEE the Doctor push the clockwork man out of the balloon, leaving some ambiguity to this new Doctor...but really, how is it that fans have such a REMARKABLE capacity for forgetting how many times we've seen the Doctor kill? The devastation of Skaro? That time he shot Ogrons with a blaster? For crying out loud, Ten killed the Sycorax leader in his very first episode, so it's not as if we have to dig into pre-NuWho history to find an example. Even the n00bs should remember that in a pinch, even our outwardly pacifistic Doctor is a pragmatist. It's just weird that people forget so easily.

I enjoyed the episode...it was good. I look forward to the next one more, though: with the exception of The Eleventh Hour, most regeneration episodes don't give you a very good sense of just who the new Doctor really is. I'm looking forward to getting to know this one! And I'm digging the serious tone. I loved Smith, but I'd have hated to see someone trying to take Smith's schtick to the next level; this radical departure was a much better idea. I wonder how it'll affect ratings...

TinDogRory wrote:

I'm not certain he pushed him. I could see The Doctor convincing the robot to kill itself.

I think this is what happened, honestly I like the idea of him using his mind and not his muscles to kill. more creepy!

Oh yeah, I know the Doctor has killed. But I feel the point of not showing him push the Clockwork Captain is to suggest there's something more to him. As Hitman says, it's creepier to think the Doctor was able to make the robot circumvent it's programming through mental acuity than just raw power.

I am pretty sure that Missy is "the woman in the shop" but beyond that, I don't know. I thought there was not going to be an on going plot thread this season, but I must have misremembered reading that.....

TinDogRory wrote:

Something about... "Point of being adult if you can't be childish sometimes."

Emphasis on "sometimes" though. Smith's Doctor unfortunately was childish every episode, all episode.

I'm glad the Doctor is back to his grown-up self as said by others. I love all our NuWho Docs, but I'm looking forward to a more serious and Classic Doctor who is just childish "sometimes." It was okay to begin with; 9 was childish sometimes, 10 was childish often, but 11 was childish all the time. It was fun to begin with but with 11 I think it just became very grating and alienating, personally. I've felt very out of touch with NuWho during Smith's tenure - not that I didn't enjoy 11 at all, but I'm definitely glad that the Doctor is his grown-up pre-Time War self again.

Rust wrote:

I don't see how the scene with the Doctor and the Captain is ambiguous at all.

The Captain states he cannot self-terminate.

The Doctor states he is not a murderer...then goes on to state one of them is lying, to which the Captain agrees.


We're talking about a character who cosigned the Family of Blood to eternal torments and drowned the Rachni newborns while their mother screamed. There is no ambiguity.

The Doctor pushed him.

"Do you have it in you to murder me?"

"Look at those people down there. They're never small to me. Don't make assumptions about how far I will go to protect them because I've already come a very long way. And unlike you, I don't expect to reach the promised land... You realise of course one of us is lying about our basic programming. And I think we both know who that is."

It was definitely the Doctor. Besides, would an android/robot lie? Seems illogical to me.

Scary wrote:

It was definitely the Doctor. Besides, would an android/robot lie? Seems illogical to me.

Eh. The point with the Captain was he was more man then machine. I think the Captain could lie...even if that lie was only the ones he kept telling himself.

Also is anyone else curious what exactly the restaurant's children's menu was?


Finally, I'm guessing Missy arranged the Doctor and Clara to go to the restaurant, but that makes me wonder the reasoning? What's so special about the Captain to go to the trouble of arranging a means in which to acquire him?

I know I said earlier that I believe Missy is the Master, but there is another possibility.

Missy is the new, post-temporal fracturing Great Intelligence.

These Missy theories are getting even more whacky in every post...

Well, it beat the obvious answer in that she's yet another of Moffat's disposable mystery women who will vanish out of the plot the moment even a inkling of their motivations is made known. Madam Kavo-whatsherface and Mother Superior Dalekpuppetzombie come forcibly to mind.

Rust wrote:

Well, it beat the obvious answer in that she's yet another of Moffat's disposable mystery women who will vanish out of the plot the moment even a inkling of their motivations is made known. Madam Kavo-whatsherface and Mother Superior Dalekpuppetzombie come forcibly to mind.

Agreed, I guess. I don't really like the idea of her being the Master or something like that, but at least it would be more interesting than yet another wishy-washy mysterious gal that copies the same character blueprint as Amy's, River's, Clara's, Kovarian's, and that other woman. Still really peeved that Kovarian wasn't more interesting; unfortunately I fell for the build up and the hype...

I hope Missy is an incarnation of River, personally. Although I wouldn't want Alex Kingston to go, I really like the character and want her to carry on past Kingston's departure.

Given what we're presented in the episode, Missy is more than likely the woman the who gave Clara the Doctor's number and is more than likely the person who placed the ad. (Or, y'know, an intermediary.) I thought it was a weird logical jump that of everything the Doctor remembers - not, y'know, falling in love with Madame de Pompadour - he recalls a random woman giving his number to Clara. And then he goes on to assume it's a woman plotting it all. I mean, Nine couldn't even put together Bad Wolf!

You're not wrong, Scary. I was being facetious with that. But it seemed like the argument being made was "ANY HUMOR IS CHILDISH."

Can I just say that I've really missed discussing an episode like this. It's good to have new epsiodes of Doctor Who back!!

To be entirely fair to the Doctor, he also now has to be dodgy around the years of 1558 and 1604 because of a marriage to Elizabeth I. Forgetting a whirlwind romance with Madame de Pompadour, especially in the span of a thousand years give or take the odd century, is entirely possible.

I just want him to run into Cameca again. That's the continuity hill I will die on.

one of the reasons I think it might make sense for her to be the master is so they can do a dry run with an established character to see how a potential gender swap with the doctor might go for the future.

Scary wrote:

Can I just say that I've really missed discussing an episode like this. It's good to have new epsiodes of Doctor Who back!!

yes you may!

I liked it.

hitman hart wrote:

one of the reasons I think it might make sense for her to be the master  is so they can do a dry run with an established character to see how a potential gender swap with the doctor might go for the future.

Forget the gender swap for a second and consider the Doctor has done a accent swap... he is no longer presumed to be English, he is now presumably Scottish.... dose this mean an american actor can now play the role, or Irish or Australian lol

Hey, he was apparently half-human one time. ;-)

Opening the door for humans to play the Doctor was a huge mistake.
That was a lot of T-Rex to incinerate. How many Londoners did the free dinosaur barbecue feed?

timewarrior wrote:

I liked it.  

So deep, moving and descriptive. Love it  

Slow start, great second half. Loved everything.

I am still slightly disappointed we didn't get a Jamie reference out of his accent shift.

Also, the thing about the T-Rex that bugged me was how little it bothered Victorian era Londoners. I'm sorry, these are the folks that rioted when the first top hat was introduced to the public. Yet in Doctor Who, they seem to get abnormally dumped on when it comes to the strange and bizarre, to the point even Madam Vastra is getting free and loose with her veil. I mean, at least with The Talons of Weing-Chiang they kept the strange hidden from public view.

Evil Monkey Pope wrote:

That was a lot of T-Rex to incinerate. How many Londoners did the free dinosaur barbecue feed?

"A dinosaur is burning in the heart of London. Nothing left but smoke and flame."

Going along with the spontaneous combustion myths, there should be literally nothing left except some oily ashes. Kind of like when my wife does steak tips on the grill.