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).