Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Peter Capaldi, Jenna Coleman, Neve McIntosh, Dan Starkey, Catrin Stewart, Peter Ferdinando, Paul Hickey, Tony Way, Maggie Service, Mark Kempner, Brian Miller, Graham Duff, Ellis George, Peter Hannah, Paul Kasey.
The Doctor is in, he just might not see you just yet.
The thirteenth man to take on the titular role of the long lasting and very popular series of Doctor Who might take some getting used to for some. After nearly a decade of having arguably a more youthful outlook but for many, surely the more than capable, erudite and wonderfully strange Peter Capaldi is a return to what bought success for the programme in its 1970s heyday.
Of course Doctor Who has moved on since the days when the most popular Doctor of them all, the sublime Tom Baker, was at the helm, the stories in many regards are more sophisticated, incredibly daring, certainly more entertaining but no matter how good David Tennant and Matt Smith were in the role of the man from Gallifrey and to be fair there were rather exceptional, what has been missing is the Teacher/guide aspect rather than the boyfriend potential that the companions, with one big omission in the character of Donna, has seen.
Deep Breath, the latest series started with a bang, not quite with the same cosmic explosion in which saw Matt Smith see out his tenure in the final trilogy stories, The Name, The Time and The Day of The Doctor but still enough of booming explosion in which to revel in as a fan and certainly more than enough of a pull in which to grab either a new generation of audience or even bring back many that might have departed due to overwhelming nature of the previous incumbents.
With the newly regenerated Doctor’s Tardis being stuck in the throat of a dinosaur, Victorian London once more was the setting for a Doctor story, the time of the Penny Dreadful, of murder and mayhem on supposedly the most civilised, over- crowded and at times degenerate society, mainly in places of high office, that the world had ever seen. A world in which the finest detective around is a misplaced Silurian Lizard, whose partner is pretty adept at wielding a sword as well as brewing tea and for whom the Doctor and his companion are nothing more than a welcome, if unexpected sight.
Audiences and fans have been promised a darker Doctor, that’s not to say the opening episode of the new series wasn’t fun but as for dark, this was a times like looking for the black mass in a black hole whilst holding an ineffectual candle and stroking a black cat. The Doctor has always been complex but perhaps never more so when he doesn’t know who he is.
The first episode of any new Doctor Who star is always going to be a big hurdle but to make it easier it needs to retain, even for a short while, elements of what made it a success for the previous actor. In opening the series with the brilliant Neve McIntosh and Catrin Stewart as Madame Vastra and Jenny Flint, the heavenly Dan Starkey reprising his role as Strax and showing a manner much underused in Doctor Who, a non companion willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for his friends. Also present of course is arguably the finest companion of them all in Jenna Coleman’s Clara Oswald, whose portrayal of bewilderment, angst and loss is perhaps the most heart-breaking and moving of all the companions to have walked in the light of the Tardis, all of these different facets placed into the story by lead writer and series producer Steven Moffat have taken The Doctor in a direction possibly not seen since Tom Baker placed his iconic long scarf and dishevelled hat upon his head.
Breathe easy, Mr. Capaldi is every inch the Time Lord.
Ian D. Hall