Deep Breath

[purplecat]

Deep Breath was, I felt, a bit of a messy episode very much a story with two halves and a coda which didn't necessarily all mesh together very well.

At one point it was received wisdom in Who fandom, that regeneration stories failed if they focused too much on the Doctor's instability following regeneration. This was primarily based on the fifth and sixth Doctor's debuts both of which I'm quite fond of (while acknowledging that The Twin Dilemma is poor quality even for a sixth Doctor story). However neither could be counted as an unqualified success so I thought it was odd to see the same thing being tried again. I'll confess I rapidly got a bit bored with it and was relieved when the second half kicked in at the moment the Doctor and Clara met in Mancini's. I didn't feel it was particularly showcasing Capaldi, the Paternoster gang jokes were not really worth the amount of screen time they got, and even Clara's confrontation with Madame Vastra felt a bit forced to me. It looked more like a heavy-handed attempt to underline the new "no hanky panky in the Tardis" (to borrow a phrase from old Who) status quo than a genuine attempt to explore Clara and Madame Vastra's characters and their relationship to each other. That said, I did like the shading in of Jenny and Vastra's relationship and the hints of the inequalities embedded within it. mondyboy (here) notes that the first half of the story is "a bit rubbish" and I can't help but agree with him.

The second half was much better, nice idea, some cool moments, not enough time for the plot to fall apart and the Doctor's confrontation with the villain was truly excellent. In fact I'm a little disappointed that we've not seen more of that side of the Doctor (rather than the "babbling fool" persona which both the eleventh and tenth Doctors also adopted to greater or lesser extents) but the moment where he sits still and is suddenly conspicuously the adult in the room was a great contrast to what had gone before. I wonder if it is deliberate that it was a side of himself he only revealed to someone he believed would not survive the encounter, and possibly was not equipped to appreciate what he/it was seeing.

ed_rex (here) very accurately sums up the coda. It was written as fan service and, at that level, it does the job admirably. But the cost is that it robs Clara of any real character development. She doesn't come to accept the new Doctor in her own right, but because the old Doctor tells her to. A number of people have noted that Jenna Coleman does a really good job with Clara given how thin a lot of the character's writing has been. Playing the "companion who won't accept the regeneration" is a pretty thankless task and she handled it well, making this viewer, at least, sympathetic to her point of view and care about how it was resolved. The resolution we got, in purely dramatic terms (taking out the Matt Smith squee!! factor), was deeply disappointing.


So, umm, a bit rubbish (or at least over-long) at the start, a very nice second half, and a coda that jettisoned character development for fannish squee points. It wasn't egregiously bad by a long shot, but I wasn't excited by most of it.

Comments

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I saw a number of comments from people who are not long-time fans, but had started watching around the David Tennant period, that they found it baffling, and I kind of felt the same : I watched old Who as it came along, but I've forgotten most of it, and I found myself turning to Pp (who is a proper fan) for elucidation. I hope they don't have so many people steeped in Who myth on this now that they have lost the ability to tell an accessible story.

[fredbassett]

Good review, thanks. I was bored by the first half and think I might actually have fallen asleep!

I think I'll like Capaldi (I couldn't bear Smith in the role), and Clara is improving a bit.

I think the scripting is getting dire, though. When I saw it was more Victorian England, I groaned, even though I really do like Madame Vastra, Jenny and Strax.

[daniel-saunders.livejournal.com]

I think I liked it more than you did, but I've been a little underwhelmed so far this season, although today's episode was more enjoyable. I think it is only with Robot of Sherwood that I've even begun to get an idea of who the new Doctor is, which seems a bit too long, similar to the fifth Doctor not feeling defined for too long in his first season. However, new Who often has a weak start to a season and picks up part-way through, so I remain hopeful.