August 26, 2014

Doctor Who: Deep Breath (8x01)

I think I have a problem, and that problem is this: it's impossible for me to attain objectivity. I see everything that Moffat writes through this veil of dislike now, and it's like even when he does something good, I can't stop nitpicking at it. But I'm going to try and be fair in this review. As fair as I possibly can be.

Let's start with the plot.

In Victorian London, a giant dinosaur is walking around. Madame Vastra, Jenny, and Strax all see this, and then they see the dinosaur spit up the TARDIS. When the Doctor emerges, they immediately notice that he is volatile and not doing so well.

While he rests, Clara tearfully asks how they can put him back to how he was, and laments the lines on his face, since it's brand new. Vastra does not take kindly to Clara, thinking she's being shallow. However, Clara is simply struggling with all of this change. The Doctor wakes up and goes looking for the dinosaur. He finds that it has been killed. Clara and the others catch up with him, and he notices a suspicious man walking away from the spectacle of the dead dinosaur. He also learns that there have been other cases of mysterious deaths recently. He leaves, and Clara goes back with the Paternoster Gang.

Clara receives a message to "the impossible girl" in a newspaper and shows up for lunch at a restaurant. While there, the Doctor reveals that he thought Clara was the one to send the message. Since neither of them did, something fishy is going on. They then notice that all of the other patrons of the restaurant are not eating - or breathing. They learn that their waiter is wearing someone else's face, and that his other body parts are recycled from humans, too. Turns out, Clara and the Doctor are what's on the menu.

They're dropped down through a chute into an ancient space craft below the restaurant, where they find more of the cyborgs. The Doctor appears to abandon Clara, and she tries to get away, but is caught by the main cyborg guy. She refuses to tell him where the Doctor has gone, correctly assuming that her life will be useless to them without that information. Turns out, the Doctor was there the whole time, disguised as a cyborg. Clara uses a code word, "Geronimo" to summon the Paternosters, who come in to save the day.

As Clara and the others fight their way out, the Doctor goes to talk to the main cyborg, lamenting that he has to die. Apparently, this ancient space craft is the sister ship to the SS Madame de Pompadour from "The Girl in the Fireplace." They are trying to rebuild themselves again and again to reach the promised land. As the leader seems to be in despair, the Doctor tells him he needs to end his life. The cyborg says that self destruction is against his basic programming, and the Doctor tells him that murder is against his. We never get to see if the Cyborg jumps or is pushed, but he falls to his death, impaled atop a tower.

The Doctor vanishes again, and Clara isn't sure if he'll come back. Vastra seems convinced that he will, and tells Clara to be there for him. Later, when in the TARDIS, Clara says she's not sure if she knows who the Doctor is anymore, and doesn't know if she can stay with him. At this point, Clara's phone rings. She goes outside to answer, and it's... the Doctor! (Matt Smith's version, anyway.) He says goodbye to Clara and asks her to please help him - him in the here and now, because he's scared. Clara still isn't sure, and the Doctor laments that she can't see him, even though he's right in front of her. Clara takes a good long look, and then hugs him. The Doctor and Clara go off to get some chips and coffee.

In an odd epilogue, we see the cyborg leader talking to a mysterious woman named Missy who claims that she knows the Doctor. She tells the cyborg that he has reached Heaven!

This episode was good. It had a lot of interesting things to say about the Doctor, about who he is over-all, about his relationship with Clara, and about the direction this show will be taking. It had some moments of real strength. Some great suspense. Great dialogue in some moments. A creative premise. A surprising link to a previous Doctor Who episode. Great, great acting from Capaldi in his debut, and from Coleman in an interesting new challenge for her character.

This episode was annoying. It was all about the Doctor and his psyche. It was all about what he needed, and about what Clara can offer him. Jenny and Vastra's relationship was played for laughs on numerous occasions, and the dinosaur was there just to make things look grand. Moffat clearly has an ego-trip problem - bringing back an episode from the Russel T. Davis era that Moffat himself wrote (an episode, incidentally, that involves a girl sitting around and waiting for the Doctor to return to her, even though Madame de Pompadour kicks ass in real life. Seriously, in Moffat's eyes, every girl just wants the Doctor. I think de Pompadour was the prototypical Amy Pond: the Girl Who Waited).

Do you see what I mean? There were great things, but also a lot of annoying things that I can't seem to look past, no matter how hard I try. Let's try and separate these out and talk about them a bit more clearly. Starting with the negative.

Madame Vastra and Jenny's relationship. Not all bad, and I'll get to that in a second, but did anyone else feel like this was just extra, extra exploitative, like: woo look at me, I'm inclusive, here are some lesbians! They brought up the fact that they were married like ten times more often than was necessary to remind the audience, made jokes about how "men are monkeys," had scenes where Jenny (admittedly looking very smokin' hot) posed for Vastra, and made lots of references to checking Clara out. It's like... yep, they're lesbians! Good job! Now let them be more than that. I also get really uncomfortable about Jenny's subservient position to Vastra. I know they say it's to cover up the truth, but doesn't it look like Jenny's always the one being pushed around? And one other thing - did they have some sort of weird telepathic link when being attacked by the cyborgs? And how is the two of them kissing and "sharing breath" supposed to trick the cyborgs? They're clearly not behaving in a normal cyborg fashion, so wouldn't that blow their cover anyway?

The Doctor shot someone with a sonic screwdriver. NO. Excuse me, but NO. That made me want to cry and throw my computer across the room. I know it didn't kill him or whatever, but still. That was... just annoying.

Throughout the episode, Vastra keeps talking about the Doctor as if he were this mystical, impossible to understand entity. It reminded me of River Song's line back in... oh, Season Six, I think? She describes the job of the companions as: "We do as we're told." That made me livid at the time, and although it wasn't done quite so blatantly here, I still got the same vibe from some of Vastra's conversations. She kept going on and on about how the Doctor works in mysterious ways, and how if they ever wanted to see him again, they had to do this, or how in order to be there for him, they had to do that. Despite Vastra being interested in women, this episode still barely passed the Beschdel test, in that practically every line of dialogue out of Vastra's mouth was about the Doctor, and Clara's entire arc in the episode was entirely about the Doctor.

And let's talk about that, shall we? I want to make it clear that I have no problem with focusing this episode most specifically on the Doctor's character. It makes sense - we're introducing Peter Capaldi, and his new version of this beloved character. But did you notice Clara's arc throughout this episode? She's upset because the Doctor is different, and then Madame Vastra and the Matt-Smith-Doctor convince her to help the Doctor, and so she decides to accept him. Because he's the Doctor, and she likes him. There's no other real reason, here. It's not like the story suddenly becomes unreasonable because of this, but I'm thinking about Rose's first episode with David Tennant, and how she was surrounded with her family, and how we learned more about her as a character, than we've ever known about Clara. She nannies some kids, there's some weird unexplained hallucination about teaching in a classroom, but what does it all lead up to? A devoted companion of the Doctor, and nothing more.

While Capaldi's performance was amazing, I was still annoyed by his calling Vastra and Jenny "the green one" and the "not green one," because it seemed to cement that he really does only see people for their superficiality. Obviously, the joke was that he was in a disturbed and unstable state, but you can almost look at it as if he were extremely drunk: he was revealing true yet unpleasant things about himself, including the fact that he really can't tell Jenny and Vastra apart as people, beyond their skin differences. It's irritating.

And finally, what the hell was up with that epilogue? Who's Missy? Is she supposed to be the "girl from the shop?" Or is that something else? I know I might be overreacting, but to me it seems like this sort of thing is exactly the problem with Moffat's Doctor Who. Here we have this epic episode with a lot of good stuff in it, that works as a jumping off point for Clara and the Doctor's new relationship parameters, and then you have to throw in some weird little mystery at the end. Why can't we just have a stand-alone adventure? It drives me nuts! When we were in Davis' hands, the seasons always led up to something bigger, but we didn't need anyone holding our hands and screaming at us: "notice this! It's important!" Yikes.

But as I said earlier, this was a good episode in terms of the Doctor's character. It was delicately and subtlety wrought, and it did place a lot of emphasis on the utter enormity of the Doctor's life, and his struggles. His pain, and his principles. Let's talk about that.

The humor was pretty fantastic. "An independent state of eyebrows" was probably my favorite bit. I loved it when Matt Smith's Doctor made fun of his own chin, and I love that Capaldi seems to have a hangup about the eyebrows. The disoriented way that Capaldi was talking throughout the episode really helped us to understand his state of unease. He couldn't keep names straight, he couldn't find the word for "cold," and he couldn't get out the questions he wanted to ask.

I loved that scene, where he said that the question wasn't "who did this," or "how did they do this," about the dinosaur being dead. I was worried that the punch line would be: "The question is, why?" But instead, the question was a very logical "have there been any similar murders?" I loved that!

And while Vastra and Jenny may have annoyed me a bit, I still like the way that the two of them and Strax are playing up the Sherlock Holmes comparisons. Strax is like their Mrs. Hudson! We see them solving crimes, contacting detectives and even using a network of boys to spy for them, just like Holmes does in ACD's stories.

My other favorite humorous scene was the lunch scene with the Doctor and Clara, where they both misunderstand each other and think that the other person placed the ad. The Doctor taking Clara's hand and telling her to never change... hahaha. And "it's a face!" "Yes, it's very convincing," "No, it's a face!" "Ahh!"

The dinosaur may have been a bit... in your face, but I still thought it worked as a good comparison to the Doctor. Old, alone, confused, in a place he doesn't belong... and the Doctor watches this creature die, knowing he cannot save it. It seems like maybe he can't save himself, either. By the end of the episode, we see the Doctor admit to that - he can't be alone. He doesn't know how.

I just thought of something: this is the first time ever in this show that I really felt the Doctor's sense of fear at the idea of a companion leaving him. I'm not talking about 10's grief over losing Rose or Donna, or even Matt Smith's panic over losing Amy. See, this Doctor doesn't think he's going to be able to find anyone else to rely on. He's depending on Clara helping him, for the sake of what he used to be, not what he is now. I think he's truly scared that he's not worth anyone's time, and that his previous versions command more love and respect than he can. Very interesting.

Oh, and speaking of comparisons to the Doctor - not only do we have the dinosaur, we also have the cyborgs. These creatures have been replacing bits of themselves until there's nothing original left - and where did the cyborg get that face? Where did the Doctor get his face? He feels like he recognizes it, ostensibly from the Pompeii episode back in Series Four. I like the idea that the Doctor has been borrowing bits and pieces from the world around him until he can't really recognize who he is anymore. Hopefully, throughout the season we see him start to find who he is at his core.

That's what makes it all the more tragic that the Doctor is convincing this cyborg that he has nothing left to live for - that it's time for him to give up and die. If the Doctor is noticing the parallels between himself and this robot, and he most certainly is, then he's noticing that his own usefulness might be running out, too. And while I hate the thought of the Doctor doing violence, I absolutely ADORE the fact that we don't know if the Doctor pushed the cyborg, or if the cyborg jumped. Yikes. How brutal. (Although, again, we didn't need it shoved in our faces by that weird little epilogue where Missy asks the cyborg if the Doctor pushed him or not. Thanks, lady. I wouldn't have caught the tension of the moment if you hadn't explicitly stated it for me. Gosh.)

Another thing to praise is the pacing and the buildup in this episode. The scene where Clara is abandoned by the Doctor and has to walk through the ship holding her breath was actually very creepy. And when Clara places her life in the hands of the Doctor, depending on her faith in him and she reaches her hand out backwards... "please let me be right!" And the Doctor grabs her hand and spins her around. That scene had my heart pumping. (Although I do have to point out that it's another example of how Clara's entire being is centered around the Doctor. She may have been smart enough to survive down there without him, but her plan for escaping was simply to hope that she could still trust the Doctor. If that had been Rose, Martha, or Donna, I'm convinced that they would have called for Vastra and the gang a lot sooner.)

The suspense before the cyborg fell to his death was also perfectly executed. I really didn't know what was going to happen, or what I wanted to happen. So that was nicely done. The Doctor even looks into the camera briefly, after we see the cyborg impaled. Creepy.

I'll end with a discussion of the last scene. Although, once again, this was all about the Doctor and not really about Clara, I still really loved it. We see the Doctor's hope and then despair, as Clara says she doesn't know him anymore. The best line was when Clara told the Doctor he shouldn't have been listening to her phone call, and the Doctor points out that he didn't have to, because he was the one who made the call. "I'm not on the phone, I'm right here. Standing in front of you. Please, just... just see me." In that moment, both Clara and the watching audience had to try and squish Matt Smith's character together with Capaldi's. The pieces don't quite fit, but they're not really supposed to. Clara is willing to risk the Doctor that is, for the sake of the Doctor that was. Hopefully we continue to see that tension play out.

I also have to praise this little moment: "Clara, I'm not your boyfriend." "I never thought you were." "I never said it was your mistake." This was so perfect. Matt Smith's Doctor was clearly smitten by Clara, but it was always just part of the illusion - the veil of the Doctor's young face, the performance he was putting on for her. This new version of the Doctor is older, lined, grim, and maybe a lot more true to who he has been inside for quite a long time.

Okay, I should probably wrap this up. I have complicated feelings about this episode and about this show in general, but Capaldi's performance was great, and I want to explore his dynamic with Clara further. And who is the woman in the shop?

7/10

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