Deep Breath is an event episode. It’s the start of a new Doctor’s journey in the TARDIS. Peter Capaldi’s arrival in the role is unusual. He was announced a long time before actually appearing in the series and this was done with a special half hour programme on BBC1. This was unprecedented. The BBC was clearly chuffed as chips to have bagged such a prestigious actor as Capaldi for the role.

With such a long wait, the anticipation for Capaldi’s first episode grew and grew. Now, I have to admit to being a huge Matt Smith fan. I was always going to find the transition to a new Doctor difficult. I liked some of Capaldi’s previous work (Neverwhere, for example) but can’t say I’m a big fan. But, as my love for Doctor Who is unconditional, I sat down with a bunch of friends (premiere episodes tend to be a social event for us) to watch his debut.

I enjoyed it. But I cannot say I was overwhelmed. It felt a bit long. It felt a bit drab (colour-wise). I wasn’t taking to Capaldi. This was a problem over the next few episodes. I wasn’t warming to the 12th Doctor’s grumpy characterisation. There were episodes I enjoyed such as Into the Dalek, but it wasn’t until Mummy on the Orient Express and Flatline that I started to accept this new Doctor.

I returned to Deep Breath with some trepidation, but also a knowledge that episodes (especially from the new series) which had underwhelmed me on first watch often rose in my estimation on repeated viewings. I’m glad to say that Deep Breath has joined that number.

There is so much to enjoy in this episode that I’m not even sure why I felt underwhelmed the first time through. It looks gorgeous. The scenes in the spaceship at the end of the episode with the variously costumed clockwork robots look stunning. I love the array of period costumes from military to prostitute to Li H’Sen Chang-alikes. The sound work is also brilliant. I hadn’t appreciated how utterly chilling the clockwork sound is in this episode. It is used to great effect throughout the episode. And the clockwork effect on the side of the Half-Face Man is amazing. I know it must be CGI but the effect is seamless and looks utterly like part of the actor’s own physiognomy.

Bringing back the Clockwork Droids is also great fun. In their first appearance in The Girl in the Fireplace they were really playing second fiddle to the love story between the Doctor and Madame de Pompadour. Wonderful as that story is, they were a rather perfunctory monster. Here, in Deep Breath, they seem more menacing for some reason. Maybe it’s because, this time, they have a ‘leader’ in the Half Face Man. Peter Ferdinando is excellent in the role and I don’t think I properly appreciated his contribution to the episode. Maybe, first time round, I was too focussed on the new Doctor. Now that I’m used to Capaldi’s performance from two series’ worth of episodes, I was able to look past that aspect of the episode. I also like how the audience probably reaches a conclusion about the droids before the Doctor does; the SS Marie Antoinette part simply being confirmation for the viewer of where we’ve seen them before – whereas for the Doctor it is really the start of him making the connnection. His post-regenerative muddle stopping him from immediately remembering.

And I think that is another aspect of the episode I hadn’t properly appreciated first time around. The ‘post-regenerationness’ of the episode. It is played in a different way to how it was for the 10th and 11th Doctors. The 10th was unconscious for a sizeable chunk of his episode, but when he finally turned up proper he was right into the thick of the action. The 11th too wasted little time in investigating the mysteries he was presented with. The version they’ve gone with for the 12th Doctor is far more similar to the traumas experience by the 5th and 6th Doctors. Stumbling around, not knowing who they are; being antagonistic and unlikeable; putting the companion in mortal danger and making the companion, and the viewer, disconcerted and uncomfortable. For some reason I ‘got’ it far more this time around. The part in the spaceship where Clara thinks she has been abandoned by the Doctor and confronts the Half Face Man alone is thrilling. We needed an unlikeable Doctor for this story to work as well as it does. Continuing that unlikeability for as long as they did; well that maybe harder for me to come to terms with. However, as this marathon will watch the episodes out of order, I’ll probably find myself – as with this episode – appreciating each one far more.

Capaldi will never be my favourite Doctor but I am definitely appreciating his characterisation far more now than I did initially. This is also a great story for Jenna Coleman as Clara. She is in a Peri-like role of having to accept and adjust to this very different Doctor from the young, youthful version she knew (and one she knew a lot better than Peri knew the 5th (if we ignore the Big Finish additions to their time together). As I say, her scenes facing up to the droids alone are thrilling, but I also love her interplay with the Paternoster Gang.

Ah yes, the Paternoster Gang. I know they divide fan opinion (what doesn’t) but I am very fond of them. This is the story, though, where I went right off Madame Vastra. Her treatment of Jenny is appalling; this is even pointed out by Jenny. Why does she still treat her as a servant behind closed doors? It doesn’t make any sense, aside from portraying her as arrogant in her attitudes towards ‘apes’. There is, of course, the controversial kiss between Vastra and Jenny (excused in the script as being a transfer of oxygen) but it does seem as if there isn’t very much left to be done with these two characters, Vastra especially. I do wonder if we will actually see them reappear in Series 10. Strax, on the other hand, provides everything I could want. A hilarious performance from Dan Starkey as always and its no wonder that, in the world of Big Finish, its Strax they have chosen to cross-over into their Jago and Litefoot range. Having Strax a bit more central to the story would have been nice, but as his role is, principally, comic relief, I suppose that is just how it will have to be.

Historically, this felt very Victorian. The date of 1894 is a little bit of guesswork based on the explicit dating of The Crimson Horror. As I’ve mentioned, the costuming is exquisite and the location work really adds to the time period’s atmosphere. The early scenes on the banks of the River Thames work extremely well. We are, still though, in the Victorian era that is more inspired by Sherlock Holmes than real history. In fact, this story is strongly influenced by the Penny Dreadfuls. It has a little of the atmosphere present in the audio series I have reviewed previously (with a third instalment soon to be listened to) from the Wireless Theatre Company – The Legend of Spring Heel’d Jack. It’s also reminiscent of the atmosphere conjured in The Talons of Weng-Chiang. It feels more akin to that story than it does to either The Snowmen or The Crimson Horror (although I commented on how The Crimson Horror is a very different style of Victorian story in my review of that). The links with Sherlock Holmes are reinforced by the presence of Inspector Gregson, a character from some of the Conan Doyle stories. He appeared briefly in one of the short prequels to The Snowmen, and it is fun to have him return as the ‘police’ character to Vastra’s Holmes. She even says ‘the games afoot’ and Jenny makes reference to the Paternoster Irregulars in a – not very subtle – reference to the Baker Street Irregulars from the Sherlock Holmes stories.

Of course, the one very unhistorical aspect is the giant Tyrannosaurus Rex. Clearly just included for some good pre-publicity, it’s gigantic size is rather silly and hand-waved away with the most cursory of explanations. Impressive though the effects are, it doesn’t really fit into the rest of the story’s tone and does raise awkward questions about why a giant dinosaur in the Thames (for quite an extended period of time) isn’t a matter of more import in the wider history of Doctor Who’s Earth. Ah well, let’s not worry too much about it.

Oh and then there’s Missy. But that’s a discussion for a different time, I feel.

I really enjoyed this story second time around and I’m even tempted to sit down and rewatch it again. I sometimes don’t give the episodes my full attention when watching them as part of my marathon; squeezing them in whilst working for example. A few times I rewound sections to rewatch properly and I feel I actually need to give this episode my absolute undivided attention. It certainly deserves it. Could I be coming round to Capaldi? Maybe. It certainly felt like a better episode than I remembered.