Doctor Who: Deep Breath: Review

Every nerd’s favourite TV show, Doctor Who, is back on our screens now featuring Peter Capaldi as the thirteenth incarnation of the Doctor.

‘Deep Breath’ was aired to an audience of around 6.8 million as viewers tuned in to watch Capaldi’s first episode. Written by Steven Moffat, the first show in the series of twelve was not as painful to watch as some of his previous episodes starring Matt Smith as the Doctor.

The script was wise, as it addressed how ‘old’ the Doctor looks now as Capaldi, 56, is no visual match to his predecessor, Smith, aged 31. It also touched up on how the new Doctor is nothing like the old one; in fact, he’s the complete opposite. Towards the end of the episode when Clara, played by Jenna Louise Coleman, gets a phone call from ‘her Doctor’, we get our first (and probably last) glimpse of this Doctor’s soft side as he pleads with Clara to stay with him as he’s ‘more scared than anything [she] can imagine’.

After the Doctor has argued with a robot who attempted to clone himself into a human, we also see Capaldi’s incarnation become dark. The mystery of whether he pushed the robot to its death or whether he jumped is something that predictable Moffat will more than likely reveal in an episode to come.

Overall, I think the episode lacked the excitement that Russell T Davies’ era of Who used to have. It also lacked the tension and humour that makes little children hide behind their sofas and fall in love with Doctor Who for the first time. What the show really needs is a new team of writers as Capaldi’s performance was flawless and he done the best he could with the Moffat-infected script he was given.