📝 SHOW NOTES | Ep91. Deep Breath

Trying something different here so you guys get a little more insight into my bullet pointed, shorthand notes. I've expended on certain remarks so it doesn't just feel like a rundown of random, disconnected remarks. Hope you enjoy. - Billy

RoD SHOW NOTES | Ep91. Deep Breath

• Dino still looks great.

We've said it a lot on the podcast - about how the incumbent era is "the best Doctor Who has ever looked" - but I think it is fair to say we are firmly past the point where the CGI will age badly as the years go by. It might look "cheap" compared to cinema blockbusters, but the standard of computer effects that has been achieved by this time means there really is no going back to the days of cringing through gritted teeth at CSO fringing or flat matte paintings.

• The theme tune.

I am not a sonic savant, but I was brought up in a very musical household and I know what I like, and this version of the theme by Murray Gold is horrible. There's more of an electronic alien quality and I like the bells which play over the clockwork segment of the titles, but the zipping lasers flashing across the soundstage, the tremolo that flutters the tail end of notes and the horrendous seagull squawk of a melody is enough to put you off the concept of sound as a whole.

• The title sequence.

The titles are a nice attempt at something different, but anybody who was present on the Doctor Who YouTube scene in 2013 saw this very sequence months before Series 8 hit our screens. Designed by Billy Hanshaw, it is certainly trying to do something different, but the execution feels flat. Like, literally two-dimensional. This looks to have been produced in-house by BBC Cymru, like the quaint but technically abhorrent Series 7b titles. There's no dynamism and no sense of travel - it all feels a little bit meh - and a massive downgrade from sequences seen in 2005 and the 2010 refresh, which gave you the adrenaline rush required to settle in for the adventure ahead. This just shrugs its shoulders and says, "I mean, stick around if you want?"

• Capaldi is so good.

This should not be news to anyone, but maybe I forget how magnetic a screen presence Capaldi is. He is effortless as the Doctor and you can almost feel the inner fan-boy screaming internally in every scene that he's "actually doing it, oh my God, look I get to peak out of the TARDIS door and reel off technobabble and be heroic and daft and wow this is fun". I sense it was the commitment to being a "star" that maybe tarnished the experience a little for him, at least at the end, but here, Capaldi is instantly the Doctor and is relishing every femtosecond of screen time he is allotted.

• The dialogue sparkles.

Cor, that Steven Moffat can really write, can't he? There are a few moments a little later on which I still balk at (almost entirely confined to moments where Clara opens her mouth) but all of those baffled Doctor moments ("Thingy, the asking questions one", "a whole room for not being awake in", "Don't look in that mirror, it's absolutely furious", etc) are top tier. It's nice to see Capaldi performing dialogue which doesn't require him to talk right from the depths of his diaphragm, skulking in the shadows. And it's the decision to turn him into a 56-year-old teenager (minus the Monster Energy and crinkly tissues) which derails swathes of this era. But that's a conversation for another day and it appears that Steven Moffat is the modern king of the post-regeneration story.

• Clara.

Jenna Coleman is a fantastic actor. Clara Oswald is Scrappy Doo. Her constant puncturing of the Doctor's ego is grating. I can't remember if there are any moments where she's put in her place by the sheer weight of the Doctor's age, intellect or, you know, status in the show as the main character, but I always remember Clara as a fluttersome git. She refuses to acknowledge that the Doctor could be a wrinkly old miser, which seems odd considering she was jumping around in his timeline last year and would've seen the 3rd Doctor from 'The Five Doctors' - who looks more like Hyacinth Bucket than Jon Pertwee - and yet Peter Capaldi, the youngest old man in entertainment, is a grey pube too far? The Impossible Girl has her fans, and Jenna Coleman is a powerhouse of a performer (and stunningly gorgeous), but I can't stand Clara Oswald.

• The Paternoster Gang.

How those Class-holes got a spin-off before this lot, I'll never know. I had in my head that I detested Vastra, Jenny and Strax, but in all honesty, it's only Strax I wish to see boiled alive in his own piss. Victorian London is the second coolest setting imaginable, behind Antartica in the swinging sixties and I would've liked a short run of stories with this ragtag group getting up to some smoggy hijinks, putting the oopizootics up every dastardly wrong'un in Whitechapel. But again, they suffer from a condition known to afflict characters in this show between the years 2010 and 2016, known as "Smart Arse-itus". Vastra and Jenny are a great pair, but seem to be only a spare-two-minutes-alone away from shagging their mortal remains into dust. Strax is there to give the kiddies a giggle and is so far removed from the normal behaviours of a Sontaran that I can't get angry at the concept of a potato-headed cretin. He's not irksome because he is a variant of one of the show's best baddies dropped at birth. He's strangle-worthy because I'm not 5 years old, still laughing at the smell of my own farts.

• Ben Wheatley.

What a coup! By all accounts, a lovely bloke who relished the chance to direct a block of this series. 'Deep Breath' (and by extension, 'Into the Dalek') look sumptuous. The claggy, carcinogenic haze that typifies Victorian London is so thick you could bite it and the sequence which gives the story its title, with Clara trying to escape the belly of the beast with her air reserves depleting, is worth the price of admission alone. He give us enough on the visual side to keep the sensory side satisfied, but...

• It's too fucking long.

A "feature-length" premiere is all well and good when you've got enough going on to sustain the 75-minute runtime. I should not be sat here thinking, "That would've been cut if this wasn't a season premiere". Clara and Strax in the kitchen is a prime example. I can literally hear a theoretical Steven Moffat on stage at the BFI preview saying, "We had this hilarious scene with Clara and Strax where he gives her a medical, but we had to cut it for time and I'll never forgive myself". There isn't enough here to justify an hour and a quarter and the stuff with the dinosaur at the start is padding in the first degree. But if one thing justifies the runtime, it is...

• The phone call.

What a fantastic idea. Genius. And beautifully performed by Coleman, Smith and Capaldi. It's 12's retroactive final roll of the dice to keep Clara around and it works. Matt Smith looks how I imagine Matt Smith looks at the end of a good night out, panting on the floor and grumbling something about needing help, and carries this scene which was a genuine surprise to me all those years ago. I watched 'Deep Breath' premiere on BBC One with a load of school friends a few weeks before moving to university, and Clara's leap of faith into this unknown quantity of a man in the 12th Doctor rang true with my feelings a doubt as to what my next chapter would bring. 11's assurances that things will be okay if you're not afraid and take the plunge are clearly taken on board by Clara, and her final examination of 12's face before realising it's the same man is a great bit of acting.

• Missy.

Again, she's come down with that obnoxious "I'm-A-Clever-Clogs" bug, but this is a particularly bad case. The mugging is cute for a kid's sci-fi show, but really not conducive to a pleasant viewing experience as a 28-year-old man. She starts as she means to go on, mind, and Michelle Gomez commits to the bit from the off. The Mary Poppins-on-skag thing is cute and gives the Master something else to wear, when they're not resembling either a dark-side version of the Doctor, Chairman Mao or a KFC chicken tender. I can't remember what the Heaven plan is or how things gets resolved, but I trust it was undercooked.

And that's your lot for the time being. If this new format worked for you, let me know in the comments and we'll try and do this for every mainline episode. Till next time.

- RoD 💜💚