Deep Breath (TV story)

Deep Breath
Doctor:	Twelfth Doctor
Companion(s):	Clara
Featuring:	Vastra, Jenny, Strax, Eleventh Doctor
Main enemy:	Half-Face Man, Clockwork Droids
Main setting:	London, 1890s
Key crew
Writer:	Steven Moffat
Director:	Ben Wheatley
Producer:	Nikki Wilson
Release details
Story number:	241
Premiere broadcast:	23 August 2014
Premiere network:	BBC One
Format:	1x76 minute episode
Production code:	4.1
Doctor Who television stories
← Previous	The Time of the Doctor
Next →	TBA

Deep Breath was the first episode of the eighth series of Doctor Who produced by BBC Wales. After a brief cameo in The Day of the Doctor and a short appearance at the end of The Time of the Doctor, this episode marks the full first appearance of Peter Capaldi as the Twelfth Doctor. It also saw the last regular appearance of Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor in a surprise cameo set directly before his regeneration.

Following the success of the theatrical simulcast of The Day of the Doctor on 23 November 2013, this premiere episode also received a release, simultaneous with its broadcast on television, in cinemas across the world.

Synopsis

When the Doctor arrives in Victorian London he finds a dinosaur rampant in the Thames and a spate of deadly spontaneous combustions. Meanwhile, Clara struggles to embrace the new man the Doctor has become.

Plot

A Tyrannosaurus rampages in the River Thames much to the shock of onlookers, with the exception of the Paternoster Gang. Jenny notices the beast has something lodged in its throat that caused it to time travel, and then the dinosaur coughs up the TARDIS, which lands on the banks of the river. Madame Vastra gives a policeman a device which will keep the dinosaur in one place, before she, Jenny and Strax descend to the bank. Strax knocks on the door and the newly regenerated Doctor appears, shooshing him and telling him that he thinks he has escaped the dinosaur, before leaving the TARDIS and refamiliarising himself with the gang, albeit poorly due to only just regenerating. After failing to identify his companions, the Doctor suggests to "take five" and passes out. The Gang learns he has again regenerated, and take him to their home.

Back inside, the Doctor is conscious again. But he is puzzled by the bedroom he's in, complaining on what you do in this room when you are awake. He is also annoyed about the accent Jenny and Clara speak with. Madame Vastra however, talks properly according to him. She then uses a psychic link to help him get back to sleep. Clara is more and more troubled by the fact that the Doctor's new face looks old and different. Meanwhile the Tyrannosaurus is making moaning sounds in the city. The Doctor then seems to be translating the moans in his sleep. Strax comes in and escorts Clara to Madame Vastra who asked to have a word with her.

Outside on the street, people are still looking at the giant dinosaur. A man called Alf guesses the Tyrannosaurus is part of a government plan, in conversation with his wife. Alf then says to a mysterious man there is something wrong with the dinosaurs neck, that makes it look unreal. The man replies that Alf has good eyes, and he needs them as a gift to replace his bad eyes. He reveals the other side of his face and looks much like a droid, and then proceeds to remove Alf's eyes.

Madame Vastra questions Clara about how she and the Doctor ended up in Victorian Londen after Trenzalore. Clara remarks that Vastra has put on her veil again, Vastra says she wears it to be accepted. The conversation escalates as Vastra thinks Clara is judging the Doctor. After a few emptional outbursts, Clara stopped seeing Vastra's veil. Upstairs, the Doctor wakes up smelling something. After sniffing about on the floor, he finds a piece of chalk. He writes the whole room full of calculations, and then escapes through the window the check on the dinosaur.

Cast

• The Doctor - Peter Capaldi
• Clara - Jenna Coleman
• Madame Vastra - Neve McIntosh
• Strax - Dan Starkey
• Jenny - Catrin Stewart
• Half-Face Man - Peter Ferdinando
• Inspector Gregson - Paul Hickey
• Alf - Tony Way
• Elsie - Maggie Service
• Cabbie - Mark Kempner
• Barney - Brian Miller
• Waiter - Graham Duff
• Courtney - Ellis George
• Policeman - Peter Hannah
• Footman - Paul Kasey
• Missy - Michelle Gomez

and Matt Smith as The Doctor

Crew

to be added

References

• The Doctor accidentally brings Clara to Glasgow.
• In his confusion, the Doctor thinks Clara is the regeneration of Handles. He also thinks that Strax is one of the seven dwarfs from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, calling him "Sneezy", "Bashful", "Dopey" and "Grumpy".
• Vastra claims she hasn't seen dinosaurs since she was a little girl.
• When the Doctor is in the alleyway talking to the vagrant, he comments on the cold, saying he should get a long scarf, then immediately dismisses the idea. This is a reference to the Fourth Doctor.
• Clara had a difficult time controlling her pupils in her first days as a teacher in Coal Hill School.
• The Doctor has a hard time remembering the events of The Girl in the Fireplace, and sniffs roses while trying to remember. The episode took place while the companion was Rose Tyler.
• Madame Vastra uses a Scottish accent to calm the newly-regenerated Doctor.
• As Clara is struggling to reach for the sonic screwdriver with her legs, the Doctor marks that he misses long-legged Amy.

The Doctor

• The Doctor enhances the TARDIS control room with furnishings such as a chalkboard, bookshelves, and a recliner. He also changes the cold blue neon piping in the time rotor to a warmer amber.

Story notes

• Matt Smith's cameo is said to be recorded during the filming of The Time of the Doctor.
• Moffat joked that Matt's return was the fastest return ever, considering the fact that he last appeared in the previous episode.
• This episode (and its script) was leaked online when stored on a publically-accessible server, with incomplete CGI, watermarks and timecodes in black-and-white, prompting a plea from BBC Worldwide not to watch it.
• The BBC gave this episode a world tour in seven countries over twelve days.

Specific to theatrical presentation

• A specially recorded scene similar to the Strax Field Reports was shown before the episode in its showing in cinemas featuring the Paternoster Gang: Vastra, Jenny Flint, and Strax. The scene primarily focused on Strax humourously describing the first twelve incarnations of the Doctor, making note of the War Doctor as well as the Tenth Doctor's aborted regeneration, to his people, before alerting them to the appearance of the latest Doctor. He also made fun of the Ninth Doctor's ears and the Eleventh Doctor's chin.
• A behind the scenes feature similar to the previous Doctor Who Confidential, entitled Doctor Who Extra, focusing on both the production of this episode and Peter Capaldi's inauguration as the Twelfth Doctor, was screened to participating cinemas following the showing of Deep Breath. This was in turn followed by a live Q & A in London, hosted by Zoe Ball with Peter Capaldi, Jenna Coleman, and Steven Moffat.
• A five-minute "prequel" was shown before this episode.

Common among all versions

• The story's premier broadcast date, 23 August, is the same date as the in-universe setting of The Fires of Pompeii, in which Peter Capaldi made his first appearance in Doctor Who as Lobus Caecilius.

The Hanshaw Title Sequence

• This episode saw the debut of a new title sequence designed by Billy Hanshaw after executive producer Steven Moffat saw a video of his conceptual Doctor Who titles sequence on YouTube and decided to draft him aboard to do a professional version of his sequence. The new titles features a vast expanse of golden-bronze clock gears whizzing by in empty space, and then the TARDIS flying through a tunnel of Roman numeral clock face numbers spiraling into a literal depiction of a time vortex with glowing engravings of circular Gallifreyan. The TARDIS passes across the screen in a way very similar to the Series 1 title sequence as the TARDIS jumped from the blue to red time vortex, and then launches past a group of planets. Peter Capaldi's piercing eyes are shown, rather than a full insert of the actor's face.
  • Moffat replied in an interview, I happened across it [the title sequence], and it was the only new title idea I'd seen since 1963. We got in touch with him, and said, 'OK, we're going to do that one.'" Billy Hanshaw responded, "I had to pinch myself because I didn't know if it was really happening. It's one of those stories about people putting something on YouTube - it's usually a musician this happens to. They put a performance on there and they get picked up by a label. It's a similar kind of story. I thought, these things don't generally happen."

Ratings

6.8 million overnight

Filming locations

The Maltings, Pontprennau

Mount Stuart Square, Cardiff

Queen Street, Cardiff

Production errors

If you'd like to talk about narrative problems with this story — like plot holes and things that seem to contradict other stories — please go to this episode's discontinuity discussion.

• The end of Vastra's mask is visible during the opening scenes.

Continuity

• The Cloister Bell is heard as the Doctor collapses on the bank of the River Thames. (TV: Doctor Who, et al.)
• The Twelfth Doctor often reflects that he finds the current situation of robots harvesting human organs to repair a ship to be naggingly familiar (TV: The Girl in the Fireplace), but his addled brain is unable to make the connection even when he notes that the ship, the SS Marie Antoinette, is the sister ship to the SS Madame de Pompadour.
• The Doctor mentions Amy, making reference to her long legs. (TV: The Impossible Astronaut)
• While performing a physical examination of Clara, Strax makes an observation on her thorax as did Linx with Sarah Jane Smith (TV: The Time Warrior) as well as Commander Skorr to Martha Jones. (TV: The Sontaran Stratagem)
• The Doctor wonders who gave Clara the phone number of the TARDIS. (TV: The Bells of Saint John)
• The Doctor is sure he has already seen his new face before, and comments are made that suggest someone else used it before him, creating frown lines. (TV: The Fires of Pompeii)
• The Paternoster Gang are located in the Victorian era. (TV: The Snowmen, The Crimson Horror)
• Clara learns why the TARDIS telephone was hanging off the hook when she returned to the TARDIS after the Eleventh Doctor began regenerating. Because he did not patch it back to the console unit, the Eleventh Doctor dragged the phone by its cord into the entrance of his console to make a private and final phone call to Clara in the near future, then neglected to properly hang up the phone with his time running too short to worry about it. (TV: The Time of the Doctor)
• The Doctor can speak horse. (TV: A Town Called Mercy)
• The Doctor and Clara yell "Geronimo!" as a code word to spring the Paternoster Gang into action, a catchphrase used by the Doctor's previous incarnation. (TV: The End of Time et al.)
• Jenny snaps at Vastra for calling humans derogatory terms because they're married. (TV: A Good Man Goes to War)
• Strax mentions using deadly acid again. (TV: The Crimson Horror)
• When Clara sees the improved console room, she says, "You've redecorated... I don't like it." This was said verbatim by both the Second and Tenth Doctors at the sight of new TARDIS console designs. (TV: The Three Doctors, The Day of the Doctor) The Second and Eleventh Doctors have also said this about redecorated houses. (TV: The Five Doctors, Closing Time)
• When the Doctor asks Clara to continue travelling with him, she answers, "I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry." The phrase was spoken often by the Tenth Doctor.
• The Doctor wishes he had more "round things" in his updated control room. (TV: The Day of the Doctor) He remembers he "had many round things once" and wonders where he put them.
• Clara's first and last interactions with the Eleventh Doctor are over the phone. (TV: The Bells of Saint John)
• The Doctor states that he is over 2,000 years old. He once said he was over 1,200 years old (TV: A Town Called Mercy). After adding the 900 years he spent in the Siege of Trenzalore (PROSE: Tales of Trenzalore) to the aforementioned 1,200 or so, (TV: The Time of the Doctor), his age increases past 2,000.
• The Doctor once again confirms that he does not see the human race as "small" (TV: The End of Time, Hide)
• The Fourth Doctor had previously fought in Victorian London against the war criminal Magnus Greel, who came from the 51st century as did the Half-Face Man. (TV: The Talons of Weng-Chiang)
• The Doctor remembers that he wore a scarf once. (TV: Robot et al.)
• The Doctor passing out and Jenny asking Clara who the Doctor is, is a complete copy of the opening scene from TV: The Christmas Invasion, where Jackie asked Rose who the Tenth Doctor was.
• After seeing new Doctor, Madame Vastra says "Well then, here we go again.", just like the Brigadier did prior to the Third Doctor's regeneration. (TV: Planet of the Spiders)
• A flashback sees Clara working as a teacher in Coal Hill School. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)
• The Doctor can speak Dinosaur and Horse, similar to his ability to speak Baby (TV: A Good Man Goes to War, Closing Time) and seven-year-old. (PROSE: Plague of the Cybermen)
• Strax continues to call Clara "boy", as he still has trouble telling male and female genders apart. (TV: The Crimson Horror)

Home video releases

to be added

External links

to be added