I really wanted to like the new doctor and I hope with time I will. This however was not the way to introduce him. A heavy handed story with all the wrong elements. Let's start with the weak villains that could have been so cool. We did steam punk robots before and they were scary, these were laughable. I was continually jarred by CGI that was horrific and clunky, case in point the Dinosaur. Then there were the obvious continuity issues throughout the episode. At Demons Run Madame Vastra, Jenny and Strax were good fighters. Here, they look pathetic. We even had to have manufactured side drama between Jenny and Vastra just to bloat the run time. The same thing with Strax and Clara. Clara continues to be a weak and wooden character. This troubling trend of one-dimensional assistants has been going on for while though Clara is by fare the worst. I blame the writer(s) and director(s) for this. I really hope this is not an indicator of the quality of the show but I am worried.

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

It's insulting when a TV show episode tells me how I should think about its characters by using weak, expository dialog. It's even worse when a plot isn't really a plot, rather a "vehicle" that makes some sponsored points but few impressions.This episode starts with an excellent setting/premise: a Victorian steam-punk mystery starring Vastra et al. and a new Doctor, plus throws a Tyrannosaur into the heart of London! You've got a smashing episode, right?Nah, sorry. Basically, all this episode does is repeatedly stuff certain concepts down one's brain through limp dialog, while failing to deliver on the plot side. The best I could describe it is "fun, I guess."Vastra/Jenny, with their proved character potential, are all but wasted in this episode. Moffat, instead of writing Vastra some of the cool investigative intricacies of Sherlock, just throws her a "game is afoot" line (duh, got it), some moralistic posturing at Clara, with tons of tweenishly awkward interpretations of an interspecies lesbian relationship which verge on adolescent slashfic. Look, we get it already.Straxx? As always, a great job at comic relief. It's just that in this episode, there's nothing really heavy to get comically "relieved" from. Clara, with her whole "OMG, the Doctor's old!" thing, is one of the most slighted characters in this episode. Do we really think that Clara loved the 11th Doctor because he was "young and hot?" All of the sudden a faithful Who companion is turned into a person who thinks mainly with her hormones (her subconscious full of young men having sex, per Straxx's exam), and requires a knock on the head from 3+ characters to "finally" hug an "old" man. If he were, say, made of rotting green bacon, then this whole subplot would've made sense. But no, the new doctor's just an older-looking guy. It's not like he's asking her on a date, after all. What're the writers so insecure about?The villain in this episode could have been so much cooler. I mean, multiply steam-punk by millions of years... a sci-fi writer's dream! At least, he could have been relevant and/or made logical sense. But no, robots who only know you're not a robot if you breathe, and will hack at you with swords until you decide to hold your breath. And if they can make a blimp out of skins, how come El Honcho's missing half his face?Capaldi? Yeah, he's good. I appreciated the occasional tributes he did to previous doctors, but most importantly, by taking the crappy script he got this time and making it OK, he's gonna carry the role well. In all, an entertaining episode, though with insulting writing aimed at the LCD. I hope they don't saddle Capaldi with having to save every episode.

I didn't know what to expect at first but I was very shocked to see Clara not wanting to be a part with the Doctor. Her and Strax are hilarious together which gives lot's of laugh out loud moments. The episode is very chilling and frightening. A great start to Peter Capaldi's era. The Clockwork Droids were super and scary but not like old times. Great CGI. Sometimes it can become long winded but the script is fierce and frightening! Overall, it is a must see episode but the title song is quite weak for Doctor Who. And a good look into future episodes. Clara is fantastic and portrayed very well by Jenna. Super skills!