Full of characters who know they're in a TV show breaking the 4th wall and interacting with the audience. Unless there's some very clever twist or reveal planned I'm not a fan.
I'm pretty sure those winks at the audience were just for that episode, and it just kind of fit the vibe of The Maestro to do it. Sometimes people can think too much about what was a fairly harmless gag, not everything has some extended meaning. The villain was over the top and winked at the audience, so The Doctor did, too. I don't think its any deeper then that.
Aside from the Maestro addressing the camera and playing the Doctor Who theme, was there any other breaking of the fourth wall? And in the case of the Maestro, eh, that was just a brief fun moment.
And Before the Flood came out in 2015, four months before the first Deadpool movie. Who's copying who (pun?) now?
The Doctor looks directly at the camera and winks at least once, I think its after the Maestro was defeated (although I can't remember if its pre or post musical number).
This. He knows in a TV show that has a theme tune and is surprised to hear it being played in person.
That wasn't about the theme music, it was about the suspense music that "attacked" Ruby. TV Tropes has a list of the many times Doctor Who has broken the fourth wall, though it's mainly just instances of the Doctor or other characters looking at the camera. Capaldi did it repeatedly in episodes like "Listen" and "Before the Flood" where he monologued to the audience. And there was that bit in "The Caves of Androzani" where the villain's actor misunderstood a stage direction and soliloquized directly to the camera, but the director liked it and told him to keep doing it.
And Tom declaring "even the sonic screwdriver won't get me out of this one!" to absolutely no-one, except the audience.
Of course, actors talking to the audience used to be the norm; see every Shakespearean soliloquy ever. (I'm currently watching the 1978-85 BBC Television Shakespeare series on BritBox, and in Henry IV, Anthony Quayle's Falstaff actually delivers his soliloquies directly to the camera in a conversational tone, as if speaking to a confidante.) Another example of Shakespeare at least leaning on the fourth wall is in Julius Caesar, just after Caesar's assassination, when Cassius says, "How many ages hence / Shall this our lofty scene be acted over / In states unborn and accents yet unknown!" Then there's the final scene of Henry XIII, the baptism of the newborn who will become Queen Elizabeth I, where the Archbishop of Canterbury gives a closing monologue extoling the future glories not only of Elizabeth's reign, but that of her successor King James, the reigning monarch when the play was written. So he's not only breaking the fourth wall, but the fourth dimension. (Maybe he's a Time Lord?)
Except that was a one-off and was arguably an unintended gaffe, though I've read back'n'forths that Hartnell intentionally said it. Didn't mean the rest of season three was the same. I believe we've six episodes yet to go for Ncuti's first year?
I love how the classic era did it less, making the instances feel more effective when they worked. "Androzani"'s was a major win since it was accidentally using the trope to a harrowing scene, not outright comedy.
And it doesn't mean the rest of this season will be. There was a bit of it at the end of "Ruby Road" and more of it in "The Devil's Chord," and that's all so far. Besides, it's not like Doctor Who has ever been plausible and realistic. It's a fairy tale about a wizard in a magic box. It's a show made for children, and children are far better than adults at accepting something as fiction and reality at the same time.
The first time I learnt of The Bootstrap Paradox. I've seen it in many shows, but never knew the name. Capaldi made a good teacher.
I suspect it might tie into the whole concept of the Doctor doing a wibbly-wobbly fucky-wucky at the edge of the universe and accidentally softening the borders of reality and fantasy. I don't know if it's going to be all She-Hulk and end with the Doctor meeting RTD in his office, but I think something is in the offing more than just a stylistic flourish.