Capaldi's debut. I was looking forward to this. A new regeneration of the Doctor who breaks the pattern of the younger, handsome Doctor who gets romantically involved with his companions. However, this episode seems to spend more time on Clara moping about the fact that the Doctor is older. Yes, the 'impossible girl'; the same character who became splintered across the Doctor's timeline, thereby having knowledge of previous regenerations, has a huge problem with the fact that he's different. That's just stupid. Also, Vastra, Strax and Jenny are brought back merely just for comic relief and pushing the LGBT agenda. Meanwhile, the Doctor has to face a revised version of the Clockwork Robots from the Tennant era. Insert predictable outcome here. Then Moffat feels the need to shoehorn an emotional moment as Matt Smith gives his final words through some 'wibbly-wobbly timey wimey' rubbish and Clara finally starts to accept that the Doctor has a new personality.I saw this episode in the cinema as the marketing and promotion was insane, so I foolishly decided to jump on the bandwagon and watch the episode in the cinema for a more expensive price than usual. It was pointless because I could've just watched the episode at home. Well, in fairness, it was the episode, a behind the scenes featurette and a live streamed Q&A interview with Capaldi, Coleman and Moffat MC'd by the insufferable Zoe Ball. But I digress.I wanted to enjoy this episode more than I did because I liked Capaldi's cynicism. Little did I know that he would take the backseat and make way for the Mary-Sue companion, Clara who had already overstayed her welcome by this stage, in my opinion.

This episode has a storyline where our newly regenerated Doctor (Peter Capaldi) arrives in Victorian England having brought with him a giant dinosaur. The TARDIS was in fact stuck in the dinosaur's throat! The Doctor and Clara then meet up with The Doctor's friends the 'Paternoster Gang'. Clara and The Doctor himself struggle with the Doctor's new and as yet unresolved transformation. There is a spate of 'spontaneous combustions' which The Doctor and his friends seek to investigate. There is also a half faced man lurking around. Capaldi is impressive in his full debut with excellent acting and wonderful personality on show. Moffatt's writing of the many scenes and all the dialogue based around introducing Capaldi's characterisation of The Doctor is extremely well executed. As a vehicle for bringing in the new Doctor this episode is incredibly good. It has a wonderful script for Capaldi which he exploits fully. It is funny, references the show's history and has intelligent and thoughtful dialogue based around The Doctor struggling with regeneration and starting to establish his personality. It also has an improved feel to the Smith era as the filming style is full of slower scenes for character building and more in-depth dialogue. The story itself if you take out the new Doctor introduction part of the plot is fun and entertaining but has a few issues. If you took out the regeneration side of things this would not be a great story just a fun, lighthearted romp. However, it is turned into a very good episode purely because of Capaldi and his well written and acted character building scenes. The issues I have with the plot are that like many Moffatt/Matt Smith era stories there is a tendency to overlook logic and credibility. Firstly the giant dinosaur was a bit of an issue for me. Why did Moffatt have to make it a giant dinosaur (about 8 or 10 times the size of known Tyrannosaurus Rex fossils if you measure it against the Houses of Parliament), thereby discarding all we know in science about dinosaurs? It is an unnecessary, pointless move by Moffatt purely to add spectacle. It would have worked better either with a regular sized dinosaur biting rather than swallowing the TARDIS or a giant alien monster unknown by science. Secondly, why would the half faced man not have a finished face or at least a mask as some means of making his appearance not stand out so obviously? They have had the time and resources to build all sorts of things and yet he does not finish his face and roams around London without anyone noticing his obvious missing human features. Again spectacle over riding logic.Thirdly, why does Clara react so badly to The Doctor's change to an older man? Of all companions she has even less excuse for this having met other incarnations of The Doctor before and coped perfectly well. If she has 'forgotten' these encounters with other versions of The Doctor it would still make her a remarkably shallow character. It would have been much better if she accepted his new appearance but found his new personality hard to accept and started to get more uncomfortable as the episode went on, or over the first couple of episodes, before getting used to him. However, I felt these issues were partly overcome by the superb quality of Capaldi, the script and the filming style as well as the humour and entertainment value.I am a huge, huge fan of Doctor Who. I have watched everything available to see of EVERY Doctor from the classic series (including reconstructions with audio and still pictures of lost episodes). I also have loved the new series since 2005, particularly the David Tennant years when the series was superbly written with great stories and one of, if not THE best Doctor. I enjoy even the least successful eras of Who such as Colin Baker's years when it was good and fun TV but a let down generally from its usual very, very high standards. I also have enjoyed the Steven Moffatt era with Matt Smith as The Doctor but just felt again in comparison to all the other Doctor's eras it was one of the weaker ones, better than the 6th and 7th Doctors eras overall (though not the excellent final McCoy season) or the TV Movie but below any other era. This was due mostly to regularly failing to maintain logic and credibility, particularly in the hugely over complicated over arching plots. Also the style had become a bit too zany and overblown. The best episodes (Vincent and the Doctor, The Day of the Doctor etc.) have been as amazing as any past classic episodes but in general Smith's years were good, not great by Doctor Who's standards, in my opinion.I had been greatly looking forward to a rumoured return to a more thoughtful, slow burning drama in this series and was hoping for great things from lifelong Who fan Peter Capaldi as The Doctor. I think they have met those expectations with the filming style and I was generally very, very happy with this first episode, mainly due to Capaldi who shows potential to be creating one of the better characterisations of The Doctor. I hope the rest of the series will build on these brilliant strengths and does not fall into the illogical, plot hole issues that could stop it reaching its great potential.My rating for this episode: 7.5/10

Remember Matt Smith when he came in ? "The Eleventh Hour" !The one liners, the funny eccentric Matt Smith, lovely Amy Pond, and of course, the showdown in the end of that episode. That showdown was excellent with the Doctor calling the alien back. Lines like "The doctor is in" , "Basically... run !" were delivered so well. The holographic images of all the doctors, through which Matt Smith walks out in the end !!!Well, absolutely none of that cleverness was there in this episode. It was quite a simple one. Looks like Moffat ran out of ideas for a story and for showcasing a Doctor.A simple story about a dinosaur who combusts and the Doctor searches for the serial killer. Clara was as good as always. No difference there.One neat thing was the way they set up this Doctor's personality really well. they make it quite clear that he is not like Matt Smith and not a pseudo boyfriend to Clara.Nevertheless, if you are as big a fan as I , you need to see it !Update: I saw the second episode "Into the Dalek" and still not impressed.

As this episode opens one could be forgiven for thinking you were watching an episode of 'Primeval' as we see a tyrannosaurus rex rampaging through London… that is until it becomes apparent that this is Victorian London and it coughs up the Tardis! The Doctor who emerges from it is quite a bit older than the one in the previous series and he is having difficulty with the names of people he should know and with his new appearance. The Doctor and Clara are taken to Madame Vastra's house but the Doctor wanders off. It looks as if he and Clara are to be separated but she spots an advert in The Times which could only have come from The Doctor; it leads her to a restaurant where they are reunited and he tells her how he found her advert! Clearly it was a trap; they are in a room full of creepy automata and it would appear they are on the menu!.The first episode of a new Doctor is always a little difficult to judge; the character is familiar yet also unfamiliar; both for the viewer and the characters who know him. Much of the first half of the episode was given over to getting Clara, and through her the audience, to accept the change… then the real action started. The villain of the story was suitably creepy without showing us what he did in any detail… a family show can't show organ harvesting robots who have made a balloon from human skin! It isn't all scares though; we get a few laughs too, mostly from Strax.Peter Capaldi got off to a fine start in his first full episode as The Doctor; it certainly looks as though he will be quite different when compared to the other 'new-series' Doctors. He is still somewhat manic, so much so that I feared he'd end up in Bedlam as he wandered around London in a nightshirt! Jenna Coleman continues as assistant Clara Oswald so we don't need to get used to two new protagonists as we did when Matt Smith took over and the presence of Madame Vastra, her wife Jenny and Strax provide more familiar faces. The episode is almost double the usual length but at no point did I think the story was dragging. Overall I found this to be a fairly enjoyable episode and have a feeling I'll like this new Doctor.