Who Me?

“I didn’t say it was your mistake.”

I can’t tell you tell you who said that, where they were or what they were talking about.  But I can tell you it was my favourite line of the whole first episode of Peter Capaldi as Doctor Who.

Yes, I was as the World Premiere of “Deep Breath” in Cardiff on Thursday.  Yey! Lucky me!

Obviously I can’t tell you what happens in the episode, but I can tell you it was a little disappointing.

To balance that I should say that Peter Capaldi was excellent, I think he is going to be one of the best Doctor Whos ever, he was brilliant in the role.  The dynamic between the Doctor and Clara takes some interesting twists and turns, but somehow I just wasn’t that enthralled by the story. The Scottish angle was used to great and glorious comic effect, not a huge belly laugh, but appealed to me greatly.

Now change over Who stories are always going to be difficult, but the fishfingers-and-custard start for Matt Smith turned my view of “he’s too young, this’ll be rubbish” around in a single episode.  I should also say that I wasn’t overly fond of “The Christmas Invasion” either, when David Tennant took over, and Mr Tennant is my second favourite Doctor ever.  Sorry but I grew up with Tom Baker as the Doctor and he was always be The Doctor to me.  (Well, that ages me!)

Technically, I can’t fault the show, the actors did a good job, the costumes, the sets, lighting, cinematography, CGI, it was all good.  But the story was too full of references, so full in fact that the newer ideas nearly got lost in the mix.  Have to say, the lead ‘baddie’ through the show was great, very well brought together and brought to life, and the new ‘baddie’ who appears at the end looks rather interesting too.

As a writer I know stories have to have an action and emotional profile, otherwise they are just flat. Even constant excitement gets dull after a while because no-one can maintain that kind of momentum.  So like all good stories, “Deep Breath” has its ups and downs (or should that be ins and outs?), and there is a really slack tide in there, however, the final conversation between the Doctor and Clara makes all of that worthwhile.

So, so far, when it comes to changeovers in the last 10 years, it’s a case of two out of three ain’t bad, but they weren’t great either.  12’s introduction gets and 8 out of 10 from me.  Roll on what will otherwise, I’m sure, be an fabulous series with answers to a lot of interesting questions not least of which is: What’s with the wedding ring?