"Doctor Who" has returned! Feature-length season 8 premiere "Deep Breath" sees the twelfth Doctor, played by Peter Capaldi, flirting with dinosaurs, dining with clockwork cannibals and getting in touch with his inner Scotsman. But what does this first episode tell us about the new Doctor?
Spoilers, sweetieIf you haven't seen the episode on BBC One, BBC America or ABC yet, go and watch it on iPlayer or wherever you can. I'll wait. Seen it? OK, continue. In "Deep Breath" we're back in Victorian London investigating inexplicable disappearances uh-gain, but that's really a backdrop to the character drama unfolding around the new Doctor. It's a grotesquely beautiful and richly cinematic backdrop, as rendered by horror movie director Ben Wheatley, but a backdrop nonetheless.
There may be a new Doctor in the TARDIS, but he's surrounded by plenty of familiar faces. "Deep Breath" sees the return of Madame Vastra, prehistoric Silurian warrior turned Victorian detective, accompanied by her feisty crime-fighting partner and wife, Jenny. The scene-stealing Sontaran warrior turned manservant Strax is back, still struggling in comic fashion with the finer points of polite society, human anatomy and when it's not appropriate to dissolve people in acid.
