There’s a marathon of the Peter Capaldi episodes of Doctor Who on BBC America Saturday, followed by the finale of this very short season. And truthfully, it’s been an up and down experience at best, beginning Mr. C himself. So here are a few idle thoughts and hopes for the future…

It might very well be a result of overly high expectations. After the picturesque runs of Tennant and Smith, we all anticipated Great Things from Peter Capaldi. That face, that attitude, that track record — come on! And yet we leave this first arc with not so much a sense of disappointment as… well, underwhelment. (Yes, that is not  a word).

It’s just that we’re surprised that Capaldi isn’t more, well, eccentric and charming. He sure was as a human hate machine in The Thick of It; it’s almost like he’s a bit intimidated by become the idol (or object of ridicule) of millions. Orr maybe it’s just that producer./visionary Steven Moffat has rather run out of new ideas (the “Deep Breath” aliens were just yet another rework of the Quantum Angels like The Silence before them, weren’t they? And then we had the Daleks right away (no waiting around this time), then a rather rude smack-down of the whole “child companion” thing — twice — and an Orient Express episode that felt a whole lot like a (far more callous) revision of the brilliant “Midnight” episode of long ago. And now with the last two episodes, here we go with a SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER female version of The Master SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER, which okay, is kind of coolm but really, nostalgia and continuity aside, did it have to be the SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER Cybermen SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER?

And now, after a measly dozen episodes, we’re up and out and Bob’s your uncle until Christmas (which, we hear, will feature Nick Frost, so we’ll be there regardless).

Yes, it’s true that Jenna Coleman is amazing, and in many ways this twelve-episode season has been far more beneficial for her and her character Clara than it’s been for Capaldi as the Doctor. But here’s thought: what if Moffat were to step aside, someone else could step on (or come back?) and we could see the curmudgeonly doctor cut loose entirely, with  a few one-shot companions and the old, abrasive, arrogant doctor in a series of done-in-ones. No overwhelming end-of-the-universe arcs, no rewrite of the continuity, and please, Gods of Gallifrey, no return of the “classic” villains or characters. Just…something new. Something bold. Something that’s already there in Capaldi, but not… yet… realized.

Anyway: if you want to catch the back-up, BBC’s showing ‘em in order all day along, with the big finish and the death of life after death itself at 9:00 pm tonight.