Lost in space

I've been a fan of Dr Who since my earliest memories of television and though the storylines could be a bit ropey before the first cancellation at the end of the 1980s, as a preteen this really didn't bother me and so Sylvester McCoy was the first timelord for me and thus will always be reserved a special place.  Of the subsequent Doctors (including, of course, Paul McGann who had a brief flash before he was gone again in an American co-production gone awry), Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant, Matt Smith and John Hurt have all had some fine moments.  Though they could be furious at times and grim in others, there was always a quicksilver mischief to them that couldn't fail to make you warm to them.  The quality and enjoyability of the acting meant one could overlook the ludicrous premises and heavy-handed social and politically correct messages (the latter expanding since the departure of Russell T. Davies who often had a lighter and pleasantly ambiguous touch).  Not so with the current inhabitant of the TARDIS.
Peter Capaldi is a fine actor and despite this stint as a man of Gallifrey, he may be forever remembered as Malcolm Tucker, the foul-mouthed political press secretary that dominated In the Thick of It (and the big-screen version In the Loop that avoided many of the pitfall of a TV series transfer).  Three months younger than when the first Doctor, William Hartnell, began his adventures in time and space, he clearly is meant to a Hartnell Mk II.  And it doesn't work.
To be fair, his tenure has endured a more childish than usual set of storylines that probably reached a nadir with allegedly one of the most lethal robots ever built with firing and targeting mechanisms than can be easily avoided by ordinary 20th century humans.  Marvin the Paranoid Android would have a better hit rate.  Without the threat, boredom ensues.  It didn't help that it looked like something out of Robot Wars, with that cobbled together in the garden shed appearance.  There has been a slight uptick in the overall arc though,  Coming before the shoddy robot episode, Time Heist was okay and Kill the Moon had scares and interest aplenty (even if they must abuse the timeline in full view of the world - a repeated theme of the rebooted series).  Jenna Coleman has been exemplary as a companion, her Clara the best fit since Billy Piper's Rose.
Yet it tends to fall flat whenever Capaldi is onscreen.  Now it may not be his fault - it may be the direction he is receiving - but the dour and mean-spirited, even spiteful, attitude, even if acknowledged in the narrative, not only drags one down to Earth rather than being elevated among the stars, it also reinforces impressions about Scotsmen (made long before the referendum result, it perhaps also reflects BBC anxiety over separation, despite the current Dr Who supremo, Steven Moffat, being a Scot).  It brings to mind Groundskeeper Willie from The Simpsons and his 'damn Scots' diatribe.  Now, Hartnell was grouchiness personified but it was a different era when relations with authority were light years from what they are now.  It worked in the 1960s for precisely the reasons it doesn't now.  It was useful that Hartnell looked aged and could pull off the gruff grandfather role whereas Capaldi comes across a presumptuous, pub bore baby-boomer, perpetually angry about being middle-aged.  Dr Who as it is currently configured is about fun and Eccleston, Tennant and Smith (Doctors with a full series behind them) gave us all of that.  Even John Hurt could raise a smile for himself and for us.  It has gone past the bedding-in period as we acclimatise to a new Doctor and cease to mourn for the previous one.  Capaldi on current projections seems badly miscast.