...because, that should have been a shining jewel of an episode. And it just wasn't.

More thoughts exist under the cut, but I don't want to harsh on anyone's squee, so don't click if you're not happy with a critical review of the episode.

But, in it they had this to say about the Doctor in this season:

what's missing for me in his performance... [is] so far, he doesn't look like he's having fun

Now. I've been thinking about this observation a lot, because it touches on something similar that I've been considering. 

I think it is true. The Doctor is no longer doing exactly what he wants to be doing. He's not so sure that this running around the universe shindig is all it's cracked up to be. And - if the last episode is anything to go by - ghosts, and fears, from his past are coming back to haunt him in a big way. 

For a man who's always, always looked forward and outward - almost exclusively (and sometimes detrimentally) - it says a lot about the new Doctor that he's spending rather a lot of time looking backward and inward.

However, I personally don't find this a problem. It makes sense that the Doctor would, at some point genuinely begin to lose focus.

In fact, I think his monologue in Into the Dalek is very revealing on this point. In it, he emphasises to Rusty that he should take the glory and wonder of the universe and internalise it - make it his reason for doing what he does...

But there's a desperate edge to his tone. And, as we all know, Rusty doesn't get that message at all.

I wonder if there's more to it than Rusty just going 'oh, look at all the Dalek destruction going on here in this brain.' I wonder if Rusty isn't convinced because the person who needs to be entirely convincing can't quite manage it. I wonder if the Doctor is struggling to hold onto his reason for doing what he does... if he's desperately grasping at all the things that once seemed to come so naturally and finding that they're now out of reach. 

In Deep Breath, the Doctor pulls the clockwork man to the window and says that he hates seeing things from a distance, because it's only up close, in the smells and the sights and the sounds that things feel real. 

I wonder if there should have been an 'anymore' tacked onto that sentence. 

I wonder if the Doctor now has difficulty seeing the beauty of the universe, or seeing the relevance of each individual life when he's standing at a distance. What he does is no longer fun. In fact, it no longer comes naturally at all. It's a chore. Something he has to force himself to do. 

This is why he asks Clara 'Am I a good man?'

Not because he's worried that he's bad, but because he needs the motivation. He needs a reason to go on. 

This has huge implications for Capaldi's Doctor. 

It means, for one, that he's no longer going to say 'we're under attack' and then grin as though all his Christmases have come at once. 

I already know that I'll miss those moments if they do disappear. There's a certain comfortable familiarity to them that I'll be loath to lose. 

But - it also means that this Doctor is going to be one of the most interesting, complicated, and intriguing Doctor's of them all. 

What does the Doctor do when he's mislaid his enjoyment at exploring the universe? What does he do when grim purpose and duty are his driving motivators instead of curiosity and a taste for adventure?

I don't know, but I think we're going to find out.

I am determined not to have my glee over this episode plunged into sadness by reading other people's less happy opinions (... I've already failed in that once by accidentally clicking on the meta of someone who I normally trust to have the same taste as me... in this case, I don't think we were even watching the same show...)

Still, my decision not to read other people's meta doesn't extend to not writing my own, so my thoughts are under the cut for anyone interested in reading them. Head's up: They're gleeful. So much glee.

...for ‘overthinking things and getting annoyed’ just so I can write about things I didn’t like in episodes that I otherwise loved. 

Featured on that tag today, it’s Doctor Who with The Bells of St John’s…

Am I the only one frustrated by the fact that the Doctor uses a laptop to save Clara in this episode?I don’t like the way he treats technology in this episode at all actually. He’s a time traveller from an advanced alien race, he’s meant to take one look at 21st century technology and call it backward. He’s not meant to pick it up and treat it seriously.

I mean… why did the Doctor use a laptop to find out about the Spoonhead? It made about as much sense as him choosing to use a gyroscope to find his longitude in the 1700s because it was the height of technological advancement at the time. Surely there was something better on the Tardis?

And — at the climax of the episode — he’s certainly not meant to look at a piece of 21st century code that’s stealing someone’s soul and go ‘two can play at that game’ — he’s meant to look at the game and say ‘well that’s all good enough for you primitive apes, but look what I can do,’ before pulling a miracle save with a teaspoon and an open mind.