Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Doctor Who: Deep Breath

To read my Amazon review of "Deep Breath" (8.01) click here.

WARNING: The following contains spoilers for the Doctor Who episode, “Deep Breath”.

Doctor Who Logo Wikimedia
Instead of a straight-up review, let’s talk about past Doctor Who episodes that were similar or linked to the season 8 premiere, “Deep Breath”.  There were three episodes in particular from David Tennant’s run as the Tenth Doctor, which related to Peter Capaldi’s debut episode as the Twelfth Doctor. Those episodes were “Girl in the Fireplace” (2.04), “Blink” (3.10), and “Fires of Pompeii” (4.02).

The Doctor mentioned the similarities to “Girl in the Fireplace” during the episode. The Doctor realizes the spaceship in “Deep Breath” was the sister ship to the Madame Du Pompadour, which was featured in “Girl in the Fireplace”. Both episodes featured robots that killed humans for body parts to repair their ships. Throughout “Deep Breath,” the Doctor kept saying that he had seen this before. It wasn’t until the end of the episode when the Doctor saw the ship's name the Marie Antoinette that he pieced together the two occurrences. This bothered me because in “Girl in the Fireplace,” the Doctor never found out the name of the ship, or why the robots wanted Madame du Pompadour. Once the TARDIS leaves, with the Doctor, Rose and Mickey, the shot zooms out to show the name of the ship.

While “Blink” wasn't mentioned in the episode and the villains weren’t the same creatures, the overall concept of the episode was similar. In “Blink,” the motto was ‘Don’t blink. Blink and you’re dead.’  The episode featured the weeping angels for the main antagonist. In “Deep Breath,” the motto seemed to be ‘Don’t breath. Breath and you’re dead.’ The robots which were trying to kill the Doctor and his companions would only know someone was there if they were breathing. While I overall liked “Deep Breath,” the similarities with “Blink” made the episode feel a little like a repeat.

Weeping Angel by by williamsbd Wikimedia
Finally, the references to “Fires of Pompeii” focused around Capaldi’s face, as he played a character that the Tenth Doctor saves in that episode. There were a few times in “Deep Breath” that Capaldi’s Twelfth Doctor mentioned his face. The most notable was when he was in an alley with a homeless man, looking into a mirror. Capaldi kept saying things like “I’ve seen this face before” and “I am trying to remind myself of something” but he never connected Caecilius, man he saved in Pompeii all those centuries ago, with the face. Since so much of the information given about Capaldi’s Doctor says he will be darker than the previous incarnations, I hope that they explain the similar face to the Doctor reminding himself to help people and to be compassionate, as he was when he saved Caecilius and his family.

Peter Capaldi by Stuart Crawford Wikimedia
As I said, I enjoyed this episode very much and I'm am so glad that Doctor Who is back for a new season. I’m excited to see what Peter Capaldi does with the role. So far, I think he’s a great Doctor. My post for the second episode, “Into the Dalek” will be up soon.

If I had a clever sign off line, I’d insert that here. Thanks for dropping by!

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