In 2014 Doctor Who did what it always does when you think you’ve finally grasped exactly what it’s all about – it tore up the rule book and started all over again.
Who else could follow Matt Smith – the series’ youngest ever star – but one of the most senior actors to take on the lead role? Peter Capaldi was 55 when he started shooting his first full episode, Deep Breath. Steven Moffat’s script introduced us to a wiry, irascible Doctor who was quite unlike anything we’d seen before. Or at least quite unlike any characterisation of the Doctor we’d seen for many years.
Landmark episodes are usually etched on my memory, but in the case of Peter Capaldi’s Twelfth Doctor it’s his second story that I remember more vividly than his first. I watched Into the Dalek with my dinner balanced on my lap, fully expecting that – in Doctor Who’s time-honoured tradition – the latest incarnation of the Time Lord would have settled down a bit following his post-regenerative grumpiness. It was not to be.