Deep Breath

Doctor Who has returned! Following the break between The Time of the Doctor and now, we can celebrate the return of Doctor Who onto our screens with the latest story Deep Breath!

The newly regenerated Doctor crashes into London from the mouth of a T-Rex and while he recovers from his regenerative trauma he fights of some cannibalistic clock work robots lead by a half-face man who are from the sister ship to the one he went on in The Girl in the Fireplace.

The show has totally regenerated itself in this story, a lot of things have changed and its fortunate for the viewers that familiar faces are around to help us through some very radical changes in the tone and direction of the show. Lets begin with the biggest change - The Doctor. Peter Capaldi is brilliant from the beginning of the story. On the one hand you can see similarities with his incarnation with the first, second, third, fourth and seventh doctors but on the other hand he is a very distinctive doctor in his own right. An older doctor would always be seen as a risk following the huge popularity for the younger doctors 10 and 11, but I think due to both a great writer and a great actor, I think they may just about get away with such a radical change.

Despite the fact this story is meant to be all about The Doctor, Clara plays a major part in this with Jenna Coleman giving some of her best performances. Clara does have to drive the action in some parts of the story when The Doctor is not there, which is good as many Doctor Who fans have complained that she has not done much and has not been very special.

The Paternoster Gang are back and I am really happy for that. All three of them are superbly played and gel together really well. They are a very popular group of characters, especially with the younger fans - which means we are likely to see more of them in the future I hope. The only real criticisms towards these characters are made by a few very hardcore classic doctor who fans who believe that Strax is discrediting the threat of the Sontaran race. In all honestly I would not say they have had any real menace since 1975 and on the other hand in DWM 475 the readers were polled over who was the greatest sontaran of all time and Strax was the clear reader with over 40% of the votes. Dan Starkey adds so much character to him that he works so well as a result. Strax may work better with Eleven than Twelve but still is a very enjoyable asset to the story. The throwing of the Times and the less than graceful fall into the spaceship were clear laugh out loud moments. Vastra and Jenny were both very good in this, especially Jenny.

The whole tone and feel to the story was brilliant and I like this darker direction the show seems to be going in. Visually the story was very strong with some great special effects like the dinosaur. The Half-Face Man was very very creepy in this story, the whole clockwork droid idea was brought to a new even more exciting level in this story (a nice surprise to see them back). It is the simplest things which are so scary in Doctor Who like the idea of trying not to blink, so the idea of how long can you hold your breath is very good, very creepy.

My main issue with the story is the pacing. I think the story is probably five to ten minutes too long and as a result I think it was just a little bit too slow. The production team have realised that the show was too quick since 2005 but now have slowed it down too much in the other direction. I think more could have been done in the dark streets of Victorian London, I think they could have done more with that.

The story itself is very interesting, effectively this is a sequel to The Girl in the Fireplace. Moffat does like to redo ideas. Additionally in true Moffat style he sets up a number of mysteries from the beginning. Who was Missy? (Apart from Gatekeeper to the Netherspehere as confirmed by the BBC - this is all heading towards an interesting finale).

In summary a strong opener for the new Doctor but just a little bit too long (I rarely say this about any new series story), however the show is going in the right direction and I hope all the characters in this story are set to continue.

7/10

Next week we have what looks to be a very exciting Dalek story co-written by Moffat and Phil Ford and knowing the writing credits for both of them, this is going to be a very very good story (I think).

The Hunt is on for Greyhound One - Doctor Who Legacy

The Hunt for Greyhound One has begun! Continuing our continuing reviews of Doctor Who Legacy we turn to the latest story update.

Compared to previous levels The Hunt for Greyhound One epilogue is much faster paced, concentrating on a longer new story than revisting old favourites. The story itself is interesting (spoilers ahead!) as we play with the doctors as they fight through time to collect the specific parts needed to build a device which will enable them to find the Brigadier who cannot be reached normally since his and the doctors timelines are heavily intertwined. The story makes a lot of sense and the script is good. The Doctors are written well enough that you can hear the actual actors speaking the lines of the screen in your head.

As they are not visiting any specific stories, the creative team could choose any characters they liked and had the rights to use, to drop in the game. This means that classic favourites such as Ace, The Brigadier and Bessie are now drops along side new series favourites like Wilf and Rose. It is nice to see these characters here and their abilities are great. I love the ability given to The Brigadier as he now can convert yellow and pink to green which means he works well with The Second Doctor in turning the board green for powerful attacks. Ace being a bomb character seems the logical choice. The only character missing from the story personally is the Brigadier's daughter herself, Kate Stewart - to me she would have fitted perfectly in these levels but I suspect they are holding her back for either a Series Eight release or part of The Day of the Doctor (whenever that turns up).

I do hope though now with The Brigadier joining the game that he does a Captain Jack style thing and brings all his UNIT team into the action to fight The Master (Yates, Benton, Jo Grant).

The art is very good, I especially love the art in Bubble Universe Delta which is some of my favourite background art to date (along with the forest of death art). The characters too are very well drawn.

The Hunt for Greyhound One is thoroughly enjoyable and I do hope more of these more frequent smaller updates are set to continue. With series eight on the horizon I look forward to the weekly levels which will come out simultaneously with the show and I do hope that following that and the Titan Comic levels, we will begin to see more of these sorts of updates!