Dr Who

I watched the first episode titled “Deep Breath” of the new Dr Who this evening, featuring the debut of the actor Peter Capaldi, and, I’ve got to say I was severely disappointed.  It was not due to the acting, or, the fact it was a change of actor playing the Doctor.  It was the story line.

Now I am not an expert at critiquing television shows, and, at the best of time have difficulty following the intricacies of storylines, but my view of tonight’s show was that it was complete drivel.  The story in my opinion went nowhere, and, at times left me absolutely bored.  It seems that most of the special effects in the show were there to be completely gratuitous, and, to try and compensate for the absolute lack of a realistic storyline. 

It seems I am entirely on my own with this opinion, because the reviews I have read in the newspapers seem to be completely in awe of the new series and positively rave about how good the episode was.  I just don’t get it.  The story lines of Dr Who have been going downhill for some time, but it certainly appears they are hitting new lows.

I did not understand how the dinosaur at the beginning fitted into the story line, apart from a weak reference in needing a body part to power the alien spaceship.  When this so called ship did appear it was a container attached to a balloon.  What was that about?  I seem to recall another past episode of the show also featuring a hot air balloon.  Is the budget so low now they have to recycle the props, or can the writers not come up with any better ideas?  Was the balloon supposed to be made of human skin?  This was presumably the only reason that so many humans were being killed.

In the final scenes when the alien was killed and fell from the balloon he ended up being impaled by a spike.  What did this symbolise exactly?  It was an awful picture, which I cannot grasp the significance of.  The alien then reappeared in paradise apparently intact.  I can only imagine that the reason and explanation for this will be picked up later in the series because again I did not understand the meaning of at all.

It seems that the whole thing was just a series of unrelated events put randomly together padded out by special effects, which I presume the producers hope will take your mind away from the poor story line.  Still I suppose the good thing is that if you start the series at the bottom you can only go one way, which is up.  For me there were large parts of the show that were just so slow and boring, even the action scenes were predictable.  Was it ever in doubt that the Doctor would make a reappearance to rescue his companion?

As I said I am not an expert in television reviews, and will stand corrected if someone explains my ignorance in understanding this episode.