World of Who: Heaven Sent and Hell Bent

Heaven Sent

This episode is something I was really excited about. We always get Doctor Light episodes every now and then with the Doctor being as much in the back as possible. Rarely do we get an episode with JUST the Doctor and no one else. Not a minute after the death of Clara in Face the Raven the Doctor finds himself in a castle on an island with a strange monster from his childhood. Can the Doctor survive the monster and figure out who put him here or will he join the skulls surrounding the castle?

This episode is considered to be the best of the season and one of the best episodes of all time and I'm kind of inclined to agree. Peter Capaldi has gotten more time to stretch his acting chops this season and this episode and next week do bring out his best along with the Zygon story. This episode legitimately felt like the Doctor going through his own personal hell as he is trapped in his sadness and despair over the loss of Clara as he tries to solve the mystery of the castle. It's story is possibly the weakest point but it makes up for it in the writing, production, and acting as the Doctor provides the only dialogue with his only companion be an away facing silent Clara in his head. It was a really interesting story that I felt could have applied to the Doctor after the loss of Amy and Rory or Rose and Donna. But Moffat really wanted to push the importance of Clara to the Doctor's life in the same way that Rose and Amy were to the 9th, 10th, and 11th Doctors. The Climax and reveal about exactly where he is and what he has to do is just epic and I honestly couldn't control my shock and excitement as the Doctor resolves to win when he would really just prefer to give up. There is a lot of atmosphere and emotion to it that just works. This isn't the first time in New Who we get an episode after the Doctor loses a companion but this one seemed to immediately deal with that. 

Hell Bent

"Brought to you by the letter Clara"

I'll be the first to say that I have a crush on Jenna Coleman but Clara Oswald is in my mind the most overrated companion in the series since Rose Tyler. This could have been one of the greatest episodes in the shows history but it was completely destroyed by the overuse of Clara, a character who died two episodes ago. The Doctor finds himself on Gallifrey and is beyond angry at the actions of the High Council of Time Lords, using a Gallifreyan tradition to torture information out of him for over a billion years. 

The first part of this episode where the Doctor is on Gallifrey and deals with Rassilon and the High Council as he tries to figure out the mystery of the Hybrid, a creature that will heal it's heart in the ruins of Gallifrey and is a fusion of two warrior races. It isn't perfect but it mostly works save for the removal of Rassilon from power. It really felt like the Hybrid story was going to be the key element to the episode as if it was the one thing that kept the Time Lords from heading back to their own proper time (which I guess would be either at Trenzalore or shortly after Gallifrey disappeared). The episode seemed like it would be about Gallifrey's political scene with the mystery of the Hybrid being at the center. Instead the Doctor uses an Extraction Chamber to pull Clara out of her timeline before she dies and goes out of his way to keep her alive, from that moment I truly despised Clara and at the end I was saddened that this happened to her character as she and Me travel through time and space knowing she has to go back to Gallifrey to die. It really does kind of take away from everything that happened in past episodes. I do like the idea that the Doctor was talking to a girl that looked liked Clara and he didn't notice because she wasn't actually Clara but that idea was shot in the face when we find out that the Doctor had his mind erased of Clara in a sort of Doctor Donna resolution. I don't like that or what it does to the Doctor as a character. It worked for Donna because it would save her life but all it does is make it so the Doctor doesn't cross lines to save Clara.

New Who has had a tendency to never really show the Time Lords in a way they did in the Classic Era. They were kept in the background to help ease off on the history of the show for new viewers but by season nine we should be allowed to see more. Seeing the Doctor in the barn where he not only cried himself to sleep as a child but also prepared to destroy Gallifrey is awesome as well as the soldiers who refuse to shoot the Doctor. This really should have been the Doctor vs. Rassilon again with Rassilon being banished from Gallifrey It would have been awesome to see the Doctor discovering the Time Lords had attempted creating their own Hybrid or something surprising the Doctor but nope, he knows everything going on a planet that he hasn't been to in centuries. Nothing about his people has an affect on him, even the Daleks. Cybermen, and Weeping Angels that looked to be a big part of the story. What if the Hybrid had been a legend of the Time War or one of the reasons it was fought?

There was a lot emotion in this episode and I do applaud that but at the same time I feel that we were beating a dead horse. This is an example of what happens when show runners get too attached to characters. Moffat turned Clara into such an important and vague character that she ultimately drove the Doctor to once again becoming another "Time Lord Victorious". This ultimately happened because of how much Moffat had Clara do so much, she saved all the Doctors in the past when she jumped into his time stream, she convinced the Doctors not to blow up Gallifrey, she saved the Doctor at Trenzalore, and she comforted a crying child Doctor. Add this to her being able to open up the TARDIS with a snap and we have a character that was so close to the Doctor she may have well been him, and that helped give her death in Face the Raven. But Clara literally took over half of the episode as we learn what we already knew: Clara was going to die, but not before traveling in a TARDIS. I think it would have been better if the Doctor left Gallifrey and Clara checked on the Doctor with help from the the Time Lords who put her under a perception filter so the Doctor didn't recognize her as he tells her his story. The Doctor turns his back as Clara opens the door to the TARDIS that was taken from Gallifrey as ME brings her back to Gallifrey to die.

Ultimately the finale was decent enough if you liked Clara. It took some risks to tell astory that was more full of ideas that are bogged down by what Moffat wants the story to do and I've heard that is an issue some of this season's detractors had. This really good idea of the Doctor waging a war against Rassilon on his home planet and then it became about Clara. I'm not saying this episode was bad but it really went in a different direction to resolve a story that I felt was already resolved, if not in Face the Raven, then in Heaven Sent. I think it would have been better if Clara had been in the Doctor's head this episode and when he sees her in the chamber he comes to terms with her death and that it was ultimately no one's fault.

With the Christmas special coming up soon I have to say that this season was an improvement over the last one and the episodes were better than those in the last part of season seven. Both Peter and Jenna seemed to have really found their groove here and I look forward to see not only what Peter will do next season but what other roles Jenna will play. If there were things I felt were missing this season it were Missy and the lack of a second companion. I'll be the first to admit that I don't like single companion seasons as a whole primarily because of stuff like this. Missy herself I thought would come up more in the last season but despite Hell Bent being the perfect episode to explain what happened to Missy before she became Missy it never happens, not even a subtle reference. The weakest episode was definitely Sleep No More where the weakest character had to be Ashildir. It seems that the work for her to be a great character but ultimately she really just felt a bit underused. Her connection to the plot on Gallifrey didn't make much sense and just seemed to be at the end because Moffat still had her on.Sleep No More was just boring ultimately and I think that is the worst thing for an episode. All other things aside I enjoyed this season and with a new screwdriver in hand I really am looking forward to season 10 and a new companion.