page_title: Deep Breath (Doctor Who)
section_title: Plot
hierarchical_section_title: Deep Breath (Doctor Who) / Plot
caption_attribution_description: Doctor Who Experience Doctor Who Experience
context_page_description: "Deep Breath" is the first episode of the eighth series of the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who, first broadcast on BBC One and released in cinemas on 23 August 2014. It was written by showrunner and executive producer Steven Moffat and directed by Ben Wheatley. The episode was watched by 9.17 million viewers and received positive reviews from critics.
  In the episode, the alien time traveller the Twelfth Doctor and his human companion Clara investigate a series of incidents relating to apparent spontaneous combustion in Victorian London, which leads them to a deadly restaurant occupied by cyborgs. Clara meanwhile faces uncertainties about the Doctor's changed appearance.
context_section_description: A dinosaur materialises in Victorian London and spits out the TARDIS onto the banks of the River Thames. The newly regenerated Twelfth Doctor, and Clara, emerge from the TARDIS. While the Doctor rests at the Paternoster Gang's residence, the Silurian Madame Vastra confronts Clara about her prejudiced attitude to the Doctor's changed face. The dinosaur bursts into flames; Vastra confirms that this is not the first recent incident of spontaneous combustion. The Doctor and Clara separately investigate.
  The next morning, the Doctor roams the back streets for answers, recognising his current face from before. Both Clara and the Doctor find an advertisement in a newspaper directing them to meet at a specific restaurant. They learn that neither of them planted the message. They discover that the restaurant is part of a spaceship that crashed in the past and is filled with humanoid robots. Beneath the restaurant, they see a dormant cyborg man with half a face. The Doctor surmises the Half-Face Man is a robot replacing his mechanical parts with biological ones.
  Upon Clara's prompting, the awakened Half-Face Man reveals that he is trying to reach the "promised land" by prolonging his life via parts replacements and he killed the dinosaur to use her biological material for his computer. The Half-Face Man deploys his escape pod—a hot-air balloon made of human skin—lifting him and the Doctor into the sky. The Doctor claims that the Half-Face Man—the other robots' control node—has replaced his components so many times that he no longer exists in his original form and does not want to continue his existence. The Doctor then warns that either the Half-Face Man will have to kill himself, or the Doctor will be forced to kill him to protect the humans. The other robots go lifeless; the Half-Face Man is impaled on the spire of Big Ben.
  The Doctor suspects the unseen "woman in the shop" who placed the advertisement in the paper and who gave Clara the Doctor's phone number is keeping the two together. Clara expresses misgivings about the new Doctor's character and is unsure about continuing to travel with him. Clara gets a phone call from the Eleventh Doctor, made moments before his regeneration, encouraging her to stay. Clara agrees. The Half-Face Man awakens and meets a woman called Missy, who tells him he has reached the promised land.
caption: The Half-Face Man, as shown at the Doctor Who Experience
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