Peter Capaldi as the Doctor brought me back to Sylvester McCoy. He’s a good Doctor, but some of his stories were very hit-and-miss. In this rewatch of the different Doctors I thought I’d do one which follows the regeneration. Deep Breath was the one that I chose. It starts with a T-Rex in London! That certainly makes a statement.
The story is focused on Clara Oswald coming to terms with the Doctors regeneration and with the Doctor trying to figure himself out. In the process, they join forces with Madame Vestra and her motley gang and they face a mechanical being intent on using human parts so that he can launch his ship and find ‘the promised land’.
The story is fun and interesting, but its importance plays into a bigger threat for the Doctor this season; the regenerated Master (now Missy). Missy makes a guest appearance at the end of the episode, although her identity, at this stage, remains a mystery.
A second guest appearance is a first for Doctor Who as well. We get the Eleventh Doctor making a brief come-back, after dying in the previous episode. Well, sort of. Basically, he telephones Cara just before he regenerates so that she would understand that the Doctor she is now with is just as scared as she is and that he is still him. I remember at the time being pleasantly surprised by this cameo. It was a good idea.
Regeneration
A lot of attention is given to the episodes where the Doctor regenerates, but in many ways, it’s the first episode of the new Doctor which really matters. Sometimes, he’s not himself. Sometimes, he is in a near coma state. At other times, he is mostly his new self with few ill effects. The Fourteenth Doctor, for example, seems unaffected by the change. The Twelfth Doctor took some time to get there. We won’t get into the Fifteenth Doctor just yet, because, well, that’s a whole different story.
Such episodes are important as they set the tone for what comes next and for who, exactly, the new Doctor will be. We know most of it, but there are changes and differences. One of which is the Doctors wardrobe. Most Doctors wear the same outfit almost all the time and that outfit is designed to reflect that Doctors personality. In the classic episodes, the Doctor rarely removed this ‘uniform’ but in recent decades clothes have changed from time to time. Nonetheless, there is always a ‘look’.
This particular new face comes with a little mystery. The Doctor has seen this face before. Indeed, this is because Peter Capaldi played a Roman in a previous episode (“The Fires of Pompeii”. The writers have decided to use that appearance to add a little extra mystery to this new Doctor. Much the same is being done again with the Fourteenth Doctor, who looks like an older version of the Tenth.
So, why the same face? Well this finally gets answered a year later in the episode “The Girl Who Died”, where it is claimed that the likeness was a means for the Doctor to try and remember to always try and save lives even if it seems to be going against rules or laws.
Beyond this, he is also a reflection of William Hartnell’s First Doctor. Time Lords are only meant to regenerate twelve times. If you include the War Doctor and the Tenth Doctor’s half-way regeneration, then Matt Smith’s Doctor was his last life. The Time Lords bestowed upon him a new regeneration cycle (much as they did with the Master to help them during the Time War). Only, now we know that this was a lie.
In Jodie Whittiker’s time as the Thirteenth Doctor we learn that she is not actually Gallifreyan but actually the source of the Time Lords ability to regenerate. She is a ‘timeless’ child able to regenerate seemingly forever. Therefore, what the Time Lords promised the Doctor as a new lease of life, was actually them covering their backs. They knew that the Doctor would regenerate anyway.
Of course, we didn’t know this back then. When the Twelfth Doctor came on the scene he was older again and stern and ruthless. After a while, he mellowed and when he eventually regenerates himself he meets his First Doctor, who is afraid. In a way, Peter Capaldi’s Doctor was intended as a resetting of the Doctors story, although things have since taken a different direction.