With the revelation of Peter Capaldi as the new Doctor, I was deeply skeptical, and a bit dismayed: Yet again, the series had gone with a white man, refusing to buck a long tradition in which white actors occupy a quintessential and iconic role — just this once, it would have been bloody nice to see them branching out a bit. I was also not a fan of his age, his looks, and his record; I confess to unabashed bias against him compounded by my irritation with the producers for once again going white.
So and thus, I approached his debut on ‘Deep Breath’ with, well, deep trepidation. Perhaps my decision to approach with prejudice turned out to be a good strategy (lowered expectations, etc.), or perhaps he really was just that good, but within the first half hour of the episode, I found myself falling deeply in love with Capaldi’s Doctor, and understanding why the producers had gone the route they had with him.
This is the older, wiser, more tired and sad Doctor they have been building up to over recent years, played by an actor with the gravitas and experience to pull it off. Youthful, fresh faces no longer work for this dragged, complex Doctor; even at their most emotionally wracked, there was something about them that just didn’t feel quite mature enough. Capaldi has that maturity, along with a more rugged, worn body, and he carries an air of bearing a heavy weight with him on screen that fits the Doctor we’ve seen growing, a man tortured by his past and struggling with his future and who he wants to be.
From the opening titles (inspired by a fan-designed set of titles developed by Billy Hanshaw and posted online originally as a portfolio piece) to the closing scene, ‘Deep Breath’ warned us that this is going to be a darker and more emotionally complex season. Capaldi is sharp, sardonic, dark, and brooding — but not in a way that makes him so laden with manpain that the viewer wants to expire from boredom.
Here’s what we know about the new Doctor: He sees himself as a man haunted by mistakes that he needs to put right, and as a man who wants to revise himself. This reflects the events we’ve seen over recent seasons, which have complicated our narrative of the Doctor as simplistic saviour out to rescue and protect the universe. We’ve seen the Doctor as murderer, as destroyer of worlds, and in this season, we are clearly going to begin reckoning with these issues and confronting the depths of who the Doctor has been, and who he could be.
Certainly the episode had its levity (courtesy of Strax, always good for a laugh, and the Doctor, talking to a horse), along with more serious, challenging moments, and a lesbian kiss (well, a lizard lesbian kiss, at any rate), but it also had some truly wrenching, sharp scenes, like the one in which the Doctor tells Clara that he’s not her boyfriend and she responds, shaken and somewhat sharp, that she never thought he was, only for him to respond that he didn’t say it was her mistake.
It’s a sharp admission of the Doctor’s recent past with his companions, and the complicated attractions and relationships he’s had with them. For viewers who long for just one show without endless simmering sexual attraction, it’s been sometimes frustrating to watch the relationship between the Doctor and his lady companions, and Capaldi’s more reserved, cold approach to Clara makes for both a refreshing change and a commentary on the setting of the show and where it will be going. Can we have a companion who’s just a companion, without the endless romantic undertones?
The episode also, to many extents, broke the fourth wall. Clearly anticipating that viewers would feel uncomfortable with and displaced by the new Doctor’s age and quieter regeneration and emergence, the show used Clara as a standin for the viewer, putting her in the position of continually stating that the Doctor seemed unfamiliar and strange. He wasn’t her Doctor, viewers were told and shown, and she clearly felt deeply uneasy with him even when the two were working together and teaming up just as they had in the old days.
Over the course of the episode, though, Clara’s attitude shifted along with those of viewers. As Madame Vastra and Jenny Flint implacably accepted the Doctor for precisely who he was and welcomed him into their lives, Clara’s perception of him began to change. By the time she stepped into the revamped TARDIS for the reveal of his new signature outfit and a glimpse of the time machine’s fresh look, Capaldi felt natural and familiar. At the end of the episode, the previous Doctor’s handoff almost felt unnecessary, though the scene of Clara standing on a rainy sidewalk listening to his voice through her phone as he told her to accept, and to help, his new regeneration, was dark and deeply touching.
This new Doctor, the Eleventh Doctor warned, was afraid, perhaps more afraid than anyone else Clara knew or could imagine, and he stressed that it was up to her to help him navigate a world filled with dangers and the reality that everything is changing. When he feared his own face at the start of the episode, and Eleven expressed fear about regenerating in an older body at the end, the Twelfth Doctor expressed audience fears about the aging up — but at the same time, he put those fears to rest by noting that he was obviously sending a message to himself.
That message came through clearly and elegantly in this opener and introduction: It’s not just time for a new Doctor, it’s time for a reckoning.