Doctor Who series 8 - review

Those then weeks have flown by!  The eight season of Doctor Who (new `reckoning) featured a new Doctor, a new Opening, and the same Companion... 

Peter Capaldi took the mantle from Matt Smith, and while I never was a fan of the Smith incarnation at all (luckily, he had Amy Pond), this Doctor already had me excited before he came on television.  We`re talking big shot actor here... and I love seeing him play.

The new doctor is different then his previous incarnations so far in the new series.  Where Ecclestone was a grim war veteran, Tennant and Smith where accepting their fate as guardian of Earth and felt and loved and cried with humanity.  But this doctor is far more alien then the others.  He is more aloof, detached, and he has a goal: he wants to find Gallifrey back, after knowing from the Smith finale that it still exists.  He cares far less about getting the approval of his actions by the humans.

The opening sequence has renewed big time as well.  Instead of a variation of the time vortex as with the previous three, this time, we get to see a sort of Steam Punk clocks and radar works opening, with the Doctor gazing out (though in the series finale, it is replaced by his companion Clara).

There is a certain hostile yet friendly energy going out between the Doctor and Clara.  This doctor doesn`t see her as a love intrest anymore.  And when she gets to meet a boyfriend, she is torn between choosing the love of her life, or the man she shares adventures with. 

Until a car comes by...

The red line through this series is that all deceased people tend to meet up in the afterlife, ran by a being called Missy.  Though initial speculations led to believing this was an older, bitter Clara, as it was known she would part with the Doctor in this season`s finale, out to get him.

They couldn`t have been further from the truth.  It is instead the Master, with a diabolical plan to grant the Doctor an army of Cybermen to conquer the universe at his side.  The season`s finale has quite a lot of nods to the older incarnations, and the Cyberman right at the end will get you teary eyed if you remember the classic series that ran until the first half of the 90s.

I`m not going to spoil to much on the storyline, but looking back on the list of episodes this season, two stood out for me.

The first is `Listen`, a creepy horrory tale along the lines of Blink.  I actually managed to scare the GF by recounting the opening sequence, covering it as a sort of `things I think about`.  Ah, good times...

The second top episode for me is `To Kill the Moon`.  It`s an odd episode, but you will love it how it turned out.

These two where definitly the best episodes out of the whole season if you ask me, and now we can wait for the christmas special in a few weeks.

But my overall feel of the new incarnation?  It has turned away again from the more epic adventures bolstered by more explosive special effects of the previous seasons, and went back into the more `intelligence challenging` sci-fi department for me.

After that?  Let`s wait until we see the constellation of Kastabouros return in the night sky and watch for that blue box to appear on our street corner...