"Why not, just at the end, just be kind?" A Celebration of the Unsung and Completely Wonderful Capaldi Years

Twice Upon a Time beckons and its coming heralds the end of so many things: Steven Moffat scripts, Murray Gold scores (probably) and most upsettingly, Peter Capaldi’s emotive, exhilarating take on the Timelord. This is the end of an era. Everything we love is about to vanish forever. It may well be replaced by outstanding Chris Chibnall scripts and a new and celebrated Doctor but one thing’s for certain: for better or for worse, it will never be the same again.

That might be a good thing. “Life depends on change and renewal,” after all. But now, on the eve of the Christmas special, it feels like a time to look backwards, at the most champion of times, before looking forward to what’s to come. 

The Peter Capaldi era has been an unsung one, many deriding his casting. In a theatre dressing room, I bizarrely heard an actress opining, “He needs to go. He’s far too old.” I just cannot fathom how a large section of the world cannot see what a maverick, trail-blazing and ferocious Timelord we have in our midst. Capaldi is extraordinary, every line reading infused with alien energy and intent. Look at him for instance in perhaps one of his less celebrated stories, The Girl Who Died, and marvel as he takes control of the narrative and drives the audience forward as he remembers why he chose his face. He is bottled lightning. He is fizzing. Look at him in the closing moments of The Return of Doctor Mysterio, as – left alone in the TARDIS – he demonically begins to pilot the ship. He is a madman in a box, but this madman is far more dangerous, unpredictable and astonishing than ever before.

It could be argued that Capaldi’s three seasons are very different, the era struggling to settle down into a uniformed, robust shape. But then, so were Matt Smith’s three terms at the helm: one traditional, another arc-based and the final one split in two. Capaldi’s are arguably more consistent but the changes in the Doctor’s character set them apart from one another. In his first year, he is the Dark Doctor. Clara cares so he doesn’t have to. The season is his voyage of self-discovery. Come the following year, he is happier gooning around with a guitar, although he retains his inability to positively interact, the flash cards of Under the Lake a testament to that. Finally, by his third and last series, he seems to have mellowed. When he introduces Bill to his time machine, he theatrically throws on his coat, grins and with a hint of self-satisfaction smiles, “TARDIS for short.” This is a performance decision we would never have seen in those first two seasons. This is a Doctor who no longer worries about who he is. He is – as he approaches his death - ironically content.

What then have been the biggest successes of Capaldi’s time as the Doctor? Which episodes mark out both him as a performer and his era as being, in my view, such a grand success? I’ll look at some individual stories and hopefully, we’ll be even more struck by what a majestic, incredible time we are about to part company with. And hopefully, some of those fans who are no longer wooed by the show might see that there is an awful lot of light in their darkness.

DEEP BREATH by Steven Moffat

Peter Capaldi’s first outing as the Doctor still packs a punch. Like Into the Dalek, it is gloriously well-directed by Ben Wheatley. The half-face man is seriously sinister, the atmosphere brooding and full of menace. The interactions between the Doctor and Clara in the restaurant are like watching electricity. There are moments which positively reek with tension – the stellar sequence in which Clara holds her breath, or later as she reaches out for the hand she hopes must be behind her. Best of all, comes the Doctor’s grandstanding with the half-face man above the city on his balloon of skin.  He notes that the view is much better from down below where “everything is so important.” He talks about a broom, replacing the head, then replacing the handle and asking if the original broom remains. His lack of philosophy and romance here is astonishing: “Is it still the same broom? Answer: No! Of course it isn’t!” There’s nothing for him to debate. Here, in his first outing, the first time he has to be the Doctor, he is at the end of his tether, shouting against the implacability of his mechanical adversary. Compare this to Matt Smith’s “Who da man?” speech and the evidence that we’re in a much more dangerous, unpredictable world presents itself. We are also presented here with a Doctor who has killed a man, either by talking him into taking his own life, or pushing him from a balloon to skewer him on Big Ben. Capaldi looks at the camera dangerously. Yeah, he rocks.

INTO THE DALEK by Phil Ford and Steven Moffat

Look at the sequence in which the Doctor and his gang of soldiers first enter the Dalek through its eyestalk. The sound cuts out, all we hear is weird, whale-like noise against a sea of deep blue. The Doctor’s hand bends and swirls as he pushes himself into shot. The others follow in slow motion, making their way through what looks like a prog rock album cover. This is a new kind of Doctor Who. It’s the sort of trippy strangeness that’s not been seen since Warriors’ Gate or before that The Mutants. This is no dream sequence like those seen in Kinda or Forest of the Dead, which set themselves up as dream sequences. This is the reality we’re in now. A brave, new world. Later, Capaldi talks directly to camera. “Put it inside you and live by it,” he intones, his voice raspy and guttural, but with the soothing qualities of a priest. He could well be talking about this new vision for the show. And here is an actor at the start of his time as the Doctor who has, quite incredibly, already mastered the art of playing the mysteries of this unknowable character. These two instances represent all that is brilliant about Into the Dalek. They make everything feel fresh, new, dynamic and bracingly uncertain.

ROBOT OF SHERWOOD by Mark Gatiss

Series 8 continues its incredibly consistent run of stories with this tight little comedy. What a thrill-ride it is too. This is perhaps the most light and fun story of the entire Capaldi era. (I can’t imagine Twice Upon a Time being a laugh a minute!) Even its colour palette has a vibrancy and panache missing from much of this and indeed Matt Smith’s era. It has the airy, summery feel of an Eccleston story and feels just as free-wheeling. The cast hit pitch-perfect notes of homage: rather than sending up the source material, they treat it with great respect. Anthony Ainley (Sorry, Ben Miller) is ludicrously good as the Sheriff of Nottingham and his scenes with Clara are delicious. The Doctor’s insistence that this is all cheap fakery is so at odds with everybody else’s sense of humour that he becomes something of a laughing stock himself. His scenes with Robin Hood in the prison cells are comedy gold. Perhaps Robot of Sherwood’s relative lack of celebration is because this is Doctor Who for a less cynical time, when heroes were real and we actually could rob from the rich? In short, this is pre-2010 Doctor Who, out of time.

LISTEN by Steven Moffat

One of my best friends hated this. Despite the fact that he likes The Power of Kroll, and thereby I should make no acknowledgement of his judgement calls, I could understand why. “It felt like four TARDISodes,” he said. Well, yes it did. And that was rather the point. This is a story about small pockets of the universe where, left alone, fear can manifest. In a child’s bedroom, the lighting dark and grey, a red blanket moves. And everybody is scared. Alone at night, everybody is scared. At the end of time, one man left completely alone as the darkness looms, is terrified that there is something outside, trying to get in... The whole point of Listen is its smallness. Its key sequence must be when the Doctor orders Clara into the TARDIS, recites a nursery rhyme and then is suddenly seen hanging horizontally, being pulled from the ship. The music, which was once bombastic and almost like a fanfare to every dramatic moment, is quiet and calm. As the world around him goes to pot, there is a frightening stillness about Listen.

KILL THE MOON by Peter Harness

Funny how Marmite an episode can be. Just why Kill the Moon gets so much hate is beyond me. When did we start to assess Doctor Who in terms of its believability? When can we talk of its imagination, beauty and oddness again, and use these as judgement factors? The only “mistake” that I can see is the last shot of the moon hatching: surely it should be enormous? But that’s by the by. (I have a problem with that shot because it goes against the story’s internal logic, rather than being unbelievable.) What is most curious about Kill the Moon is how bleak and dreadful its atmosphere is. It feels very much like there is no hope. At all. Until the last few minutes. The story therefore absolutely earns those crushing accusations from Clara against the Doctor and they feel real and appropriate. When skeletons are found simply left lying on the moon’s surface, there is an awful feeling that there is nothing to be done. The grey starkness of the world is enough to make the tone uneasy, but that the narrative drives through with unrelenting bleakness, piling tragedy upon tragedy, makes it so memorable. As the Doctor’s head is thrust backwards on the beach and he sees the timeline through strange tears, we are in the presence of an alien whose rules we know nothing about.

MUMMY ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS by Jamie Mathieson

The only negative thing I can possibly say about the tale of the mummy is the CG train is a little lacklustre. The image of the Orient Express trail-blazing its way across the universe should be grand and majestic. Instead, it’s very blue and a little bit underwhelming. The remainder of the story, however, is a masterpiece. We kick straight into gear with the death of “Grandmother” and the early scenes wherein the Doctor and Clara explore the train are tainted with a sadness and distance that now lies between them. True to their characters though, they never acknowledge the truth of their relationship and this inadequacy of expression runs like a seam through the narrative. The Doctor cannot tell Clara the truth about Maisie and he leaves her uncertain as to the passengers’ fate. Best of all though, is the scene in the laboratory in which the people around the Doctor die as he besieges them with questions. “No, we can’t mourn!” he rails, as he throws himself headlong into the mystery and into darkness.

DARK WATER/DEATH IN HEAVEN by Steven Moffat

The culmination of Series 8, as I have noted before is a thing of vast beauty. The first half of Dark Water is a worrying sequence of events. Watching Clara so driven to betray the Doctor and the depths to which she will stoop, is harrowing. Watching the Doctor forgive her is heart-breaking. His utter kindness is brought into sharp focus at the start of the story and as the narrative progresses, we feel more and more for the man with the biggest hearts in the universe as he is crushed and humiliated beneath the might of his best enemy. The Master has converted the bodies of people he loved into Cybermen, killed his UNIT friends, brought humanity to “its darkest hour” and given the Doctor an army to play with. All he can cry is, “Why are you doing this?” desperately and feebly. The despair of this finale, the feeling of emptiness and deep, deep sadness as Clara says goodbye to Danny all coalesce to deeply affect the viewer. I watched this with a friend who hadn’t seen Doctor Who for years. After Dark Water, he started watching again. 

LAST CHRISTMAS by Steven Moffat

The despair of the preceding finale is replaced in Last Christmas eventually by hope. We feel the after-effects of losing Danny and Clara and the Doctor come to terms with their attitudes towards each other and their propensity to lie so easily. By the end of the episode, we have a Doctor and companion who are happy to adventure together again, and who believe in Father Christmas. It totally makes sense of their fresher and in some ways more dangerous relationship the following year and paves the path for Clara’s ultimate end. Though dark, small-scale and grim, Last Christmas ends on a cheer and a feel-good message. The Doctor – and Santa Claus – are real.

UNDER THE LAKE/BEFORE THE FLOOD by Toby Whithouse

I must admit to not being much of a fan of the Series 9 opener (The Magician’s Apprentice/The Witch’s Familiar) in that nothing much really happens and then the Daleks are defeated by poo. But in Under the Lake, the series kicks into gear. It feels familiar, of course. It’s your typical base-under-siege set-up. But it’s terrifically tense. The running through corridors has an unusual urgency about it. The scene in Before the Flood with the axe is astonishingly visceral. The second half brazenly starts with the Doctor talking straight to camera about Beethoven and we’re whisked off to a grey village with an atmospheric Curse of Fenric vibe going on. It is a play of two acts, but both have unique moods and complement rather than distract from one another. It also uses time travel in the most successful way since A Christmas Carol.

THE ZYGON INVASION/THE ZYGON INVERSION by Peter Harness & Steven Moffat

I’ll be honest: much of this two-parter doesn’t really work for me. The direction is flat, the narrative unfocussed and for no readily apparent reason we have a Zygon called Bonnie. Now, I’m sure it was drafted and re-drafted and Peter Harness knows precisely why the Zygon is called Bonnie and knows of what precisely the Zygon treaty consisted and knows exactly who that other UNIT girl is. But there’s much that is missing from the script in terms of what really is happening in any given moment. There is a missing simplicity. Why does the Zygon change form in the middle of the street, and why do onlookers simply… do nothing about it, not even wince? Are they Zygons? Who is recording it? Why do the Zygons set up camp in a place called Truth or Consequences, why is it their slogan and why has the Doctor already set up those coincidentally labelled Truth or Consequence boxes?

Which brings us to… that scene with the boxes. It makes up for all the dead ends and half-starts afforded by the first half of this script. Because right at the end of a story I wasn’t particularly enjoying, Peter Capaldi made me cry. I thought exploration of the after-effects of the Time War was long over, but here suddenly, it means everything to the Doctor. He knows what war is and how much it hurts and Peter Capaldi is savage, brutal, patronising, livid and very, very angry. The scene is as close to perfection as any Doctor Who scene is ever likely to get.

FACE THE RAVEN by Sarah Dollard

Again, it’s all about the Capaldi moment. In Heaven Sent he is determined and in Hell Bent he is vengeful. But here, most quietly and affectingly of all, he is just sad. A tiny word but a great huge well of emotion. Of all the things for the Doctor to feel, overwhelming sadness is not one we often see him struggling with. His desperate bleat of, “What about me?” as Clara says her goodbyes is such a huge moment of delicate, true beauty. The rest of the story may be a bit of a muddled, naval-gazing mess and the overarching Ashildr business a complete waste of time, but the last scenes of Face the Raven make this a very special episode indeed.

HEAVEN SENT by Steven Moffat

The Doctor alone and grieving: It’s not the best pitch in the world is it? But again, it puts Peter Capaldi front and centre and we are allowed to live with this most infuriated and intense Doctor for a whole 55 minutes. And doesn’t it just look stunning? The dull yellows and browns of the castle walls, Peter in his best costume, the slow motion, the underwater sequence, the cross fade from the Doctor’s face to the skull, the final belting, punch-the-air montage. All combine to make something utterly memorable. It’s a difficult story to have as a favourite, and it’s difficult to truly love it, but its panache, its ability to do whatever it wants despite the family audience it’s definitely not catering for thank you very much, its bravado and guts make it as close to a work of art as Doctor Who has ever come.

HELL BENT by Steven Moffat

At the time, Hell Bent was considered underwhelming after the praise heaped upon Heaven Sent. However, it acts as a definite companion piece. We get the pay-off to the earlier masterpiece when the Doctor admits to Clara how long he was in the confession dial. We suddenly see the unimaginable extent of his kindness and his love for his companion before he is forced – agonisingly - to forget her. Doors are also opened on glimpses of the Doctor’s past on Gallifrey and the planet itself has never looked so incredible. We’re talking Star Wars here. It had vast, rolling deserts, an orange sky and the citadels themselves look glorious. But the story is not without its secrets. After so many years of lying to each other, the camera pulls away rapidly upwards when the Doctor and Clara finally speak their truths to one another. We never discover who the woman in the barn is and how the poor know and revere the Doctor. Capaldi, as ever, is mesmerising. In fact, for the first fifteen minutes on Gallifrey, Steven Moffat makes the bold decision to have his Doctor worryingly silent. Though Clara does get her fairy tale ending, did we ever expect anything less? The series was always heading towards Clara becoming her own sort of Doctor. And in many ways, that was the only possible ending she could have had.

THE HUSBANDS OF RIVER SONG by Steven Moffat

This Christmas special is surprisingly overlooked by fans. I think it is one of the definitive Christmas outings and one which stands tall next to The Christmas Invasion, A Christmas Carol and Voyage of the Damned. (Yes, I know no one likes VOTD either but they’re all fools, I say!) Husbands has everything: knockabout humour, screwball romance and in the end a great tragedy before a final moment of unadulterated happy melancholy. Capaldi’s Doctor is allowed to do things only the Doctor’s wife could bring out of him: he laughs honestly. “We’re being threatened by a bag!” he giggles, unable to stop. He is, without the responsibility of Clara hanging over him, a freer man, an easier man. It’s a delight to see him enjoying himself. For once, the Capaldi Doctor isn’t cynical, tortured or incapacitated; he is simply having fun with his woman. He also has a great line in teasing his missus. When she discovers who he is, he takes great joy in throwing her flouncy description of her love for him back at her. Then there’s the last scene. The Moffat era has a tendency to do this: in the last few minutes, the story is turned on its head and we realise it was all leading to this moment. As the Doctor gives River his screwdriver, watches her silently from behind as she marvels at the towers and wipes tears from his eyes, we finally see how much he really does love her.

THE PILOT by Steven Moffat

It’s rather wonderful that in Moffat’s last year and indeed Capaldi’s last year, the two of them start again. Peter is again, a Doctor who has moved on, though he now has new secrets to keep. He is distracted and edgy but lovable, mysterious and heroic. The only problem with Series 10 is that we know it is the end so the promise of more adventures to come is a difficult one to fully invest in. It’s trying desperately not to look like it’s plodding towards the finish line, but we know it is. However, Steven Moffat does do a very credible job of trying to disguise that fact. The Pilot is a breezier episode than any of the past 2 years. It comes without baggage or angst and Bill is a reminder that companions can be naïve, funny and unfamiliar with the show’s concepts. Seeing the Doctor through Bill’s eyes is a joy and suddenly, the show almost feels brand new again.

THIN ICE by Sarah Dollard

Which other programme-makers would build a set of London Bridge and the frozen River Thames beneath it? Only the James Bond producers gets close, building their own Westminster Bridge for the finale of Spectre. But Doctor Who, on its relatively meagre budget gives it a go. And succeeds admirably. Thin Ice looks beautiful. Its costumes tell stories, its sets are rich and ornate, and the colour palette and atmosphere are so particular to the period. This is a living, breathing London and the monster is almost irrelevant. This is a tale about class and it’s all the better for it. It also includes Peter Capaldi’s Doctor punching a bigot.

KNOCK KNOCK by Mike Bartlett

David Suchet gives his lesson in how to play a Doctor Who villain. Why wouldn’t anybody want to watch that? It’s a masterclass in acting; a textbook performance. The fact that Doctor Who still attracts guest stars of this calibre says a lot about the programme. He is sinister and aloof, speaking in the old-fashioned language of a creep. And then he’s devastated, crippled and childish. It’s a joy to watch an actor so immersed in his character. Even better is the fact that Peter Capaldi is in the same room and he’s only bloody going and matching him! From a purely performative perspective Knock Knock is golden. And there are the added bonuses that it’s a cracking good script from Mike Bartlett, a genuinely atmospheric piece of direction and there are moments which will definitely make you jump.

OXYGEN by Jamie Mathieson

Watch the pre-titles and know that you are inside a programme that simply astounds. Two bodies float through the vacuum of space, spinning menacingly towards the camera. Over this, the Doctor narrates. He tells us of the dangers of “Space: the final frontier. Final because it wants to kill you.” What follows is a pre-titles sequence which is all about its own terrifying atmosphere. Or lack of. The dead are walking. Oxygen is an exercise in dread. When the Doctor declares at the story’s conclusion that “dying well” is the only option left, for a minute, we believe him. We have seen Bill on death’s very brink and have watched an emasculated Doctor battle the universe ferociously. Now it all seems to be over. Oxygen is quite literally breath-taking. 

EXTREMIS by Steven Moffat

The Pope enters the room and a comedy organ sounds. The President has killed himself with a bottle of pills. How do we go from one to the other? The answer is with the dexterity of a writing genius. Steven Moffat is given a lot of abuse, so-called fans rallying for him to leave and a general feeling that he’s played all his cards too often. (I watched The Girl in the Fireplace last night and saw the River Song story in 45 minutes, as well as mentions of the Lonely Angels, the Doctor Who? gag, something under the bed, a timey-wimey plot and clockwork droids; when your ideas are that good though, who wouldn’t use them again?) In Extremis, Moffat shows us how much more he has to give, how imaginative and original he still can be and what a wealth of story-telling ideas and forms we are about to give up. Extremis not the sort of script a man on the way out should be delivering, but here stands Moffat. One day, he shall be as great as The Girl in the Fireplace’s reputation once again.

THE PYRAMID AT THE END OF THE WORLD by Peter Harness & Steven Moffat

So good I watched this three times in a week. Whilst the rest of the Who fan world were still salivating over Extremis (perhaps rightly so), I was even more thrilled by Pyramid. There is a feeling of dread and doom hanging over the whole episode. It isn’t just the doomsday clock countdown or all the talk of “the world ending” as the close-ups of smashing spectacles and the bottle of beer shattering in slow motion. We know the two plots are connecting. We know events in the laboratory are connected to the end of everything. So to watch the two characters going about their daily business in blissful ignorance is the ultimate in dramatic irony. There’s a tension at play all the way through the story and it ends in as edge-of-the-seat way as any season finale: the Doctor is trapped behind a door, the room about to explode. And it’s at this moment that he tells Bill he is blind. It’s staggeringly tense.

WORLD ENOUGH AND TIME/ THE DOCTOR FALLS by Steven Moffat

So in his final finale, Steven Moffat decides to do his own Spare Parts. That he succeeds admirably takes nothing away from Marc Platt’s pinnacle Cyberman-Genesis story but only highlights just how strong World Enough and Time is. If only that John Simm hadn’t been spoilered by the show itself, I’m sure the ending to the first instalment would have been up there with Army of Ghosts or Utopia. It still manages to pack an alarmingly strong punch though. Like most Moffat two-parters, it’s a game of two halves and the second part is a strange exploration of what it is to do the right thing even when nobody is watching. Every character does something “without witness” and we love them all the better for it. It’s heart-breaking to know that the Doctor may never discover that Missy stood with him in the end. But watching Peter Capaldi tear through the forest, exploding Cybermen and screaming in vengeance is proof positive that this is the best programme ever made. Watching a limping Cyberman kneel at his feet and burst into tears is one step better. This is the television that dreams are made of. What a shame that it is all about to end…

Simon H, over on the other corner of the internet is currently composing his Top 10 Capaldi episodes, so in the interests of fairness, one-upmanship and given the above, here are mine:

10. THE ZYGON INVERSION – (Chiefly for those last 15 minutes.) As adventures go, I hugely prefer ROBOT OF SHERWOOD! Just to be awkward.
9. EXTREMIS
8. MUMMY ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS
7. THE PYRAMID AT THE END OF THE WORLD
6. THE HUSBANDS OF RIVER SONG
5. INTO THE DALEK
4. KILL THE MOON
3. WORLD ENOUGH AND TIME/THE DOCTOR FALLS
2. DEEP BREATH
1. DARK WATER/DEATH IN HEAVEN

So there you have it. Just my twopenneth! If you don’t feel better about the weird and wonderful Capaldi era after this little celebration, you’ve probably not reached this bit of text. In which case, let me tell you: you’ve no soul.

 JH