If there's one thing that the full-length trailer for the eighth season of BBC's Doctor Who wants you to know, it's that this isn't your father's Doctor Who anymore—well, kinda.
For all the efforts made to play up the idea that this isn't the same Doctor, maybe he's scary and dark (he even says he's taking the TARDIS "into darkness," raising all manner of hackles for those of us still smarting over last year's Star Trek movie), there's a lot that's very familiar in this 60-second tease featuring new Doctor Peter Capaldi.
Take, for example, the the Daleks, who last appeared in Season 7's opener, "Asylum of the Daleks." Sure, the opening narration they provide is a tad more optimistic and affirmative than usual— "life returns, life prevails," the mechanical voice stutters, making a pleasant change from the usual "Exterminate"—but they're hardly anything new to anyone who's seen Who before.
They're just one of a number of elements in the trailer that fans might recognize from not-that-long-ago: A dinosaur roaming around London? We saw dinos in Season 7's "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship." Cyborgs? Last year's "A Town Called Mercy" had those. Madame Vastra (saying, appropriately, "here we go again")? She was in "The Snowmen," "Nightmare in Silver," and "The Name of the Doctor"—all from the last run of episodes.
Of course, what is meant to be unfamiliar and unsettling is the Doctor himself, with Capaldi representing a break from the handsome young eccentrics of the last few years. "I don't think I know who the Doctor is anymore," says Clara (Jenna-Louise Coleman), acting as a point-of-view character for the viewer. We see her looking scared at the camera, and when Capaldi's Doctor asks her if he is a good man, she replies "I... don't know."
It's all sleight of hand, of course, playing on the idea that just maybe Capaldi's Doctor will break with tradition in more ways than being over 30 and not immediately obvious heartthrob material. And the idea that the Doctor is more morally ambiguous than he appears is nothing new to showrunner Steven Moffat, who's spent years all-but-telling viewers that he's actually a scary guy if he takes a dislike to you (former showrunner Russell T. Davies explored similar territory in his final episodes, as overwrought as they were).
Indeed, for all the sound effects and fast-cut staring into the camera of the trailer, what's actually on show is the suggestion that Capaldi's Doctor may be the most moral Doctor we've seen in a while; which other Doctor even asked if he was a good man, instead of simply assuming his own moral authority was enough? The new spin on the now-traditional statement of intent backs this up. "I'm the Doctor. I've lived for over two thousand years," Capaldi begins, before going somewhere unexpected. "I've made many mistakes," he says, "and it's about time I did something about that."
The eighth season of the new Who may actually offer something different than previous years, but despite Moffat's clear fondness for the grim, the spooky and the ooky (as evidenced in his creation of monsters like the Weeping Angels or the Silence), the new trailer suggests we're not really headed into darkness for long. Instead, we might be about to have a hero who wants to go towards the light for the first time in a long while.
