The marital McMarrieds of Marriagetown

It's been creeping around the schedules every year but, to coincide with the arrival of Peter Capaldi, Doctor Who is back to the traditional autumn run it's obviously been being nudged towards for the last few years. Hopefully this means no more of the on-and-off scheduling that made it feels simultaneously as if Matt Smith had been the Doctor forever, and like he'd barely got there before he was gone.

"Deep Breath" by Steven Moffat, directed by Ben Wheatley. Spoilers after the cut.

For the most part I enjoyed "Deep Breath," not as much as the night-on-perfect 50th Anniversary Special, but at least it was far superior to Smith's muddled swansong. Its main problem is that it's just too long, an hour and 15 minutes of a story that could easily have been fitted into an hour, could probably even have squeezed into the standard 45 minutes.

A lot of this of course is dedicated to addressing the Doctor's new face, more so than in other regenerations because Capaldi is, only just, the oldest actor to ever take over the character. Somewhere in there is a nice idea about the very nature of the character, how multifaceted he is and ultimately how an action here doesn't have to look a particular way, but it comes across more like trying to justify the casting of an older actor. And with Capaldi having been greeted with enthusiasm around the world in the last few weeks, it's pretty obvious the audience don't need to have excuses made for him. And it's a bit messy in terms of the internal canon, because of course the companion has to play the role of the audience in this situation. But of all the companions in the series' history, Jenna Coleman's Clara should be the best-placed to deal with the fact that regeneration has unpredictable results, having theoretically met all eleven-and-a-half versions of the Doctor when she divided herself across time to save him.

It feels almost pointless to talk about Capaldi's take on the Doctor, since he's spoken so much about not wanting to nail down too early just what that is, and the episode was in part about him not knowing himself; on those terms he definitely succeeded, in that there's still a pervasive sense of mystery around his new persona. If there's a single previous Doctor who came to mind it would be the last time he had a Scottish accent, as there was a kind of manipulation in his pretending to abandon Clara to the clockwork men that was reminiscent of the Seven/Ace relationship.

As far as I can tell, Steven Moffat and the rest of the creatives like the Jenny/Vastra/Strax trio more than the viewers do, but I'm sure they have their fans. But surely even they must be getting sick of them after this episode's heavy handed WE ARE MARRIED SHE IS MY WIFE MARRIED MARRIED DID I MENTION WE ARE MARRIED. Apart from anything else, no, you're not. It was a big enough struggle in the 21st century to have gay couples legally recognised as married, let's not pretend it quite cheerfully happened in the 19th. Although I guess there probably wasn't a specific law against lesbian marriage - Queen Victoria famously didn't believe in Silurians.

And, of course, a new credit sequence (although let's hope this one sticks around for a couple of years, it's hard for them to become part of the show's identity when they change once or twice a season.) As they became more booming and dangerous when Matt Smith took over, there's a more sinister tinkling quality to Murray Gold's latest remix, with actual bells and whistles. Plus, for the first time an entirely new approach to the visuals - the original series never seemed constrained by what the opening credits should be but since the revival it's been variations on the 1970s' time vortex and the 1980s' star fields (although the latter does come back in the second half of the new credits.) This new clockwork design is original and appropriate to an adventure in time and space.