Obviously, I have had nothing else going on in my life for last nine months, but now, from my slumber, my hibernation, I awake at last, and with a Deep Breath.
I'm not sure I should be writing about new Doctor Who. When I began I was revisiting old episodes, watching them again with hindsight, and that's really easy to do: the original viewing sets a benchmark, everything that has happened since provides context, and all one needs to do to have an opinion is short the differential between the two.
But now I've caught up, and that makes it harder. We don't know where this is going and all I can do is make snap judgments - and I am sure to disagree with myself in the future.
The upshot of this hand-wringing is that I am (of course) going to write about this episode now but with the proviso that these aren't my final, considered thoughts. That comes later, after the end of the season, after the end of this Doctor, or the next.
But, for now, I was thrown, initially, by the slower pace. This is part of the much-vaunted change in style we were promised by this year's fearsome publicity machine but, despite the warnings, I found myself missing the helter-skelter zinginess of the last few years. A second viewing helped enormously, and it became clear how key moments benefitted from a slower treatment. Vastra's admonishment of Clara; the Doctor's haranguing of a tramp; the restaurant reunion; Clara's eye-bulging, lung-bursting escape attempt. These scenes all enjoyed space and time that has not been available recently. But for all that, the running time is still a gargantuan seventy-six minutes and some moments beg to be cut, most obviously Clara's medical - included to honour a Blue Peter competition. A few trims elsewhere (why all the writing on the floor with the chalk?) and this episode could at least have cantered along between the slower, more significant scenes.
Wisely, given that there is so much to be done with the Doctor and Clara, Moffat serves up a simple and familiar plot. The return of the clockwork robots from the 51st century is very welcome, especially when they provide such striking visuals and visceral scares as they do here. Half-Face Man looks amazing, partly down to the astonishing effects work, and partly due to a lovely performance by Peter Ferdinando: a combination of jarring robotic movements and snarling desperation that gives way, before the end, to a touching humanity. With their penchant for body parts and an implacable indefatigability, these robots are formidable and truly scary. Inadvertently they show us what a Cyberman story is supposed to look like - especially in the wonderful moment when Clara uses logic to resist Half-Face Man's threats and make him reveal his plans.
Coleman is great throughout, and a chief beneficiary of this slower pacing that allows Clara to show more of her character than has so far been possible since The Bells of Saint John. She is rightly shocked and unnerved by the regeneration, indignant, learned and eloquent at Vastra, resourceful and brave when she tries to escape the robots, and so, so clever during her interrogation. At the end, and most importantly, she demonstrates her compassion for this strange man who has replaced her friend.
And what about this new Doctor? Well, if nothing else Capaldi and Moffat are clearly a good fit for each other ("Don't look in the mirror? It's furious!"), but there is more to his performance than just getting all the best lines. On the muddy shore of the Thames, Capaldi, distractedly rattling out his thoughts, gives us a few final hand-flapping moments of the Eleventh Doctor. In the bedroom, this has become confusion and genuine desperation, and it is this vulnerability, which comes to the fore once again at the end of the episode, that it is more interesting and surprising than the darker steeliness which we knew to expect. It's not the fury or the shell-shock that Eccleston's Doctor kept hidden away, neither is it the loneliness of Tennant, or the sudden weeping of Smith. This Doctor is keenly aware of and embarrassed by how pathetic he looks to Clara, but he absolutely needs her. He is at her mercy, waiting for her to see the man she knows inside the stranger before her.
Really, of course, he is speaking to us, asking us not to reject him. This makes it all the more surprising that Moffat brings in Matt Smith at that very moment to make the point on Capaldi's behalf. It's a very brave decision. By then, having survived the adventure and watched the Twelfth Doctor gradually assert himself, I was ready to accept him - the sudden reappearance of the old Doctor only served to make me realise how much I missed him. But, as much as it forces the audience to compare Smith and Capaldi, it does also absolutely sell the idea that they are indeed the same man, either side of a great change and, of course, it's a typical, ballsy, pull-the-rug-from-under-you moment from Steven Moffat.
The Eleventh Doctor was a wonderful fixer - he refused to accept any defeat, any reverse. He rebooted the Universe and restored Amy's family, he repeatedly saved her marriage with Rory, he reached back into his own past to save River Song, and even to circumvent the destruction of Gallifrey. Now we see his last act was to fix his own future and, anticipating Clara's disappointment, save her and himself from this rejection. Neither we nor Clara can resist him.
More than anything else though, this episode is full of hints and glimpses of what this Doctor has ahead of him. Watching him rebuild himself is fun, but I want to see this new persona in action and to learn the answers to the questions raised here: why did he choose this face? Did Half-Face Man jump, or was he pushed? And who is the, er, eccentric character played by Michelle Gomez in full Sue White mode?
Luckily we have eleven weeks in which to answer these questions, to get used to Capaldi's Doctor and for this new era to bed down and become the new normal. And after all that, we can look back at Deep Breath and, perhaps, see it properly for the first time.
