When Matt Smith departed from Doctor Who at the end of Series 7, he left some pretty big shoes to fill. During his time in the TARDIS the long running series had soared to new heights of popularity and earned the show legions of new fans. In order to keep the momentum going, those running the show behind the scenes had to make the right choice for his replacement, and they did just that by selecting actor Peter Capaldi to play the role. A longtime fan of the series himself, Capaldi proved to be an excellent casting decision right from the start, bringing to the role a bit more darkness than we'd seen in the years before but still perfectly capable of handling both the dramatic aspects and the humorous aspects of the series as well.

Series 8 ran for twelve episodes and is spread across the four discs in this set as follows (note that for whatever reason BBC America have only supplied test discs for review, so if what's here differs from finished retail product, feel free to send them an angry email).

DISC ONE:

Deep Breath: The Paternoster Gang (that'd be Dan Starkey as Strax, Neve McIntosh as Madama Vastra and Catrin Stewart as her wife Jenny) are unsure what to do about a dinosaur that's arrived in the middle of downtown Victorian-era London. The Doctor arrives to help out with the problem but soon enough it becomes quite clear that he's not quite… right after his latest regeneration. Clara (Jenna Coleman) is still coming to terms with the fact that this ‘new' Doctor is very different from the one she had previously travelled with but she does what she can to help him find his mental footing as he begins to question the merits and worth of what he does and how he does it. When The Doctor and Clara later wind up at a restaurant only to learn that all of the other patrons are actually robots, things get strange. Even stranger still is the presence of a mysterious woman named Missy (Michelle Gomez).

Into The Dalek: The Doctor arrives just in time to save a rebel fighter named Journey Blue (Zawe Ashton) from the Daleks invading her ship but her brother is not so lucky. He returns her to the ship with Clara in tow, upset that he's taken her away just as she was about to go on a date with her new co-worker, Danny Pink (Samuel Anderson), a former soldier now working as a math teacher. To save the day The Doctor must lead a team literally inside a Dalek. They're reduced in size to make this physically possible but what The Doctor learns about his arch-foe makes him question all that he knows about them.

DISC TWO:

Robot Of Sherwood: The Doctor says to Clara that she can choose to go with him anywhere she'd like in the time stream and so she decides to go to Sherwood Forest to meet Robin Hood (Tom Riley), even if The Doctor claims he never existed. They arrive and sure enough, Robin and his band of ‘Merry Men' are there, as is the villainous Sheriff Of Nottingham (Ben Miller), who is trying to repair a spaceship he's found out about. Maybe, just maybe, if The Doctor and Robin Hood can stop squabbling, they might be able to work together to stop him. Note that this episode, like it's UK counterpart, does not contain the decapitation that was in the ‘leaked' version of the episode.

Listen: Clara comes home after a less than perfect date with Danny to find The Doctor awaiting her return. He tells her that he's learned of the existence of a creature that has perfected the art of hiding and that has subsequently been responsible for children's nightmares for centuries. They travel back in time to the nineties where Clara meets Danny as a boy and learn that he has a very strong fear of ‘something' hiding in his room. A bit more time travel sees Clara meet a younger version of The Doctor where he too was terrified of something hiding in his room.

Time Heist: A strange phone call leads The Doctor and Clara to The Bank Of Karabraxos, the most secure facility in all the universe, where someone known only as The Architect is insisting that they rob it on his behalf. The Doctor and Clara team up with two others, Psi (Jonathan Bailey) and Saibra (Pippa Bennett-Warner), but become increasingly concerned once they see the bank's Teller (Ross Mullen) catch a would be robber and turn his brain into ‘soup.' They eventually do get access to the bank's vault but of course, things don't turn out as expected.

The Caretaker: As Clara's relationship with Danny becomes more serious The Doctor goes undercover as the new caretaker at the school where they both teach. There's more to this than just The Doctor snooping around, however, as he's actually trying to track down a machine called a Skovox Blitzer capable of destroying an entire community.

DISC THREE:

Kill The Moon: The Doctor and Clara head to the year 2049 and travel on a space shuttle loaded with nuclear weapons to the Moon. After questioning the woman in charge, Captain Lundvik (Hermione Norris), he learns that they intend to destroy the Moon to stop it from creating a high tide capable of eliminating the human race. When they arrive on the Moon and The Doctor finds that a lot of the colonists who were working/living there have been bound in strange webs, he then discovers some spider monsters there that just might have something to do with all of this.

Mummy On The Orient Express: As Clara prepares to stop travelling with The Doctor to get on with her life outside the TARDIS, she and he go for one last adventure and arrive on a train travelling through deep space called The Orient Express. Here they find that the passengers are being killed off by a creature that only they can see and even then only right before it takes their lives. The computer that runs the train tells The Doctor that he's called him here to deal with this thing, referred to as ‘The Foretold' but described as it if were an Egyptian mummy, and that he has very little time left to do this.

Flatline: The Doctor and Clara arrive in Bristol and realize that somehow the TARDIS has been reduced in size to that of a small box. Clara makes it out and tries to go about fixing this while The Doctor remains stuck inside, too big to leave. Clara befriends a teenaged graffiti writer named Rigsby (Joivan Wade) whose paintings may hold the clue as to what's going on here: something alien is siphoning the TARDIS' energy. It turns out that these creatures can be 2D when they want to be and hide in the different paintings Rigsby and the other writers have made in the tunnels. In order to fix this they'll have to re-power the TARDIS but with The Doctor stuck inside, it's all up to Clara.

In The Forest Of The Night: A girl named Maebh (Abigail Eames) runs through the forest and knocks on the door of The TARDIS. The Doctor lets her in and realizes, after looking out the door, that all of London has become overgrown and is now one massive forest. Meanwhile, Clara and Danny are chaperoning a school trip to the museum. When they too realize what's happening she calls The Doctor and he comes to meet her. It turns out that Maebh is one of their students and when she runs off, The Doctor and Clara leave Danny with the kids while they go off to find her. To sort this out they'll have to figure out what exactly has caused the trees to grow the way they have and how this all ties into Maebh‘s past.

DISC FOUR:

Dark Water: Clara's relationship with Danny is stressed because she's still been off adventuring with The Doctor behind his back. When she goes to tell him the truth, he's fatally struck by a car. Understandably devastated she tries to get The Doctor to go back in time to prevent this from happening. They wind up at a strange body storage facility referred to as 3W where Danny is consoled about his new state and a ‘robot' named Missy reads the facility's information manual to The Doctor. When the liquid starts to drain out of the body storage chambers, The Doctor soon realizes what's really going on here…

Death In Heaven:

…which all leads into the series' finale. Here the truth about 3W is revealed, Clara's relationship with Danny is tested in ways she never though could or would happen and Missy's true identity and ties to The Doctor's past all come to light. And we'll leave it at that.

Series 8 has been fairly universally praised for being a ‘return to form' for the series after what some saw as the show going too soft towards the end of Smith's run, and that's pretty fair. Capaldi's take on The Doctor is full of life and energy and acerbic wit, he's an interesting character and occasionally even a little bit frightening. He isn't afraid to put people down or throw his weight around when a situation calls for it and where Smith's Doctor seemed to be in many ways quite in love with Clara, here their relationship has changed. He's still obviously quite fond of her in his own way but often times he shows that with a quip or even an insult. His back and forth with her is a big part of what makes the show humorous but this time around, she's actually given quite a bit more to do. Her character develops well, particularly towards the end of the series, and that makes the whole point of having Clara around matter more than it has in some of the Series 7 episodes. Capaldi and Coleman have an interesting dynamic here and this dynamic allows the writers to take the show into directions that would not have been possible without the drastic change from Smith to Capaldi. Maybe it's a cliché to say that some new life has been breathed into the show, but it's true.

Introducing Danny Pink, likeably played by Samuel Anderson also brings another dynamic into the series. Whereas in the past Smith's Doctor was travelling with Amy and Rory, both of whom really liked The Doctor, here Pink and Capaldi's Doctor don't always see eye to eye. In fact as Clara's relationship with Danny becomes series it in turn takes away from her time with The Doctor and understandably once her boyfriend finds out what she's really up to, he wants her to stop. He realizes it's dangerous and he cares about her and isn't keen on the women he loves traveling through time and space with a maniac in a blue box. This helps with the character development in the series and also serves to humanize certain aspects of the storylines that run throughout the show.

This batch of stories also returns to some of the scarier episodes that longtime fans will know has always been a part of the show. The Listen episode came under fire from some critics for being too scary for a younger audience but it is in keeping with the series' tradition of dealing with things that go bump in the night. The writing is pretty solid here and while there are a few slips, the series has a few genuinely classic episodes in its favor, Mummy On The Orient Express being a stand out and really just a perfect example of how fun and exciting and tense and insane the series can and still does get when firing on all cylinders. There are a few times where some kinks aren't completely worked out but by and large Capaldi's inaugural run is rock solid entertainment. This ‘new' Doctor isn't kind, he's not even really a nice guy, but after we're a few episodes in, it's hard not to love him, even as we sometimes have to question him. Given that he and showrunner Moffat have had a dozen episodes for find their footing, all signs point to Series 9 as being even better.

Video:

Doctor Who: The Complete Eighth Series was shot in HD and is presented here in AVC encoded 1080p 1.78.1 widescreen and the quality is about what you'd expect. Black levels are generally pretty strong and detail is generally good. Some of the CGI work looks a little goofy in spots, as is typical with the series, and there are occasional bursts of aliasing that are hard not to notice from time to time but if these aren't reference quality they're at least very good looking transfers. Colors are reproduced beautifully throughout the episode and detail and texture go far beyond what standard definition is able to provide, and in fact look noticeably better than they did when broadcast on BBC American in HD. Now having said that, there are some spots where the bit rate creeps down well below 20 and when this happens, attentive viewers may notice that things don't look quite as sharp. This isn't a constant, but there are scenes where this happens and the picture quality does drop a bit. By and large, however, the good outweighs the bad and the transfers are solid.