Doctor Who (Spoilers!) Review: "Hell Bent"

                Last week I mentioned how I would have been completely satisfied if the stellar “Heaven Sent” had been the series finale. Nonetheless this week we end the series with “Hell Bent” and I have to say I still would have preferred the former.

                One of the things I never really liked about Clara was how much she was built up as one of the most important figures in the universe of the show which compared to how she acted and what we saw of her never felt right. Hell, at times it was insulting! Who does this person think she is? Why is she supposed to be better than the greatest companions of the past fifty years? It was a characteristic that really made me revile Clara for a while. Last series however, we began to see her as an ordinary human with more of a consistent personality, and life outside of and non-dependant on the Doctor. It wasn’t great, but it was an improvement and I found myself tolerating her much more fairly. Which is why certain parts of this episode irritated me to no end.

                But the plot: (With this being the final episode there are a lot of spoilers that I’ll just get into with the rest of the review.) The Doctor’s now arrived back on Gallifrey and is quickly able to depose the mad President Rassilon before setting on a mission to extract Clara from the point of her death and save her by fleeing the planet. Something which could have severe repercussions on the structure of the universe because as the Tenth Doctor always used to say “fixed points in time.” He runs into opposition in this, and keeps a lot of this secret from Clara as he repeats the actions that led to his flight from Gallifrey all those years ago.

                As you may be able to guess I have problems with how this episode was basically the can’t-let-go-of-Clara hour. And more than that, that it pretty much negated, or at least severely lessened the impact of “Face the Raven”. Though seeing Clara as this apparent diner waitress tipped me off at the start, the extraction of her from her timeline was still disappointing. I guess the show needed ONE more Clara death cop-out before they got rid of her for good. As it happens, the Doctor’s statement at the end of the last episode was a lie: the hybrid is actually both him and Clara due to how similar they are. Which does beg the question, are they really? Because Clara’s eagerness and sense of adventure could be switched out with half the other companions in the series’ history. They never felt nearly as similar in personality as say the Tenth Doctor and Donna, or even the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane. What it really was, was a plot device to account for their closeness, which in the last number of episodes has been a focus. I guess that explanation is welcome because the extent the Doctor goes to for her is otherwise disturbing. Even the episode addressed this. Upon finding out the Doctor spent billions of years in the confession dial acting out of a perseverance for her, Clara has the way-too-much reaction of someone overcompensating romantic feelings. It’s very awkward, especially as I still say Clara’s not worth all this time and effort, and what the Doctor sees in her I don’t really get. We get a lot of focus on the two of them which given the episode’s set-up is also disappointing. The Doctor has just set foot on Gallifrey for the first time since the Time War and his actions there are kind of rushed to get to Clara. He very quickly deals with Rassilon wasting a perfectly good use of Donald Sumpter and reassumes his role as President in a quick and harsh way. It’s a shame the agenda of the episode gets in the way of a lot of better opportunities. We could have had a lot more of the Doctor’s homecoming, what it means, how the Time Lords react, the confusion and emotion. But instead it just becomes a segue for one more Clara show. The Sisterhood of Karn in the form of Ohila (Clare Higgins) return as does the General played by Ken Bones in “The Day of the Doctor” but they wind up only providing exposition and being plot devices themselves. And that’s another thing. There are ideas that are really interesting, but don’t work for me because they’re executed here. The Doctor kills another Time Lord, which is a big deal! He is not someone who kills! It doesn’t matter that they can regenerate (and into a woman; we get it Moffat, Time Lords can switch gender, you don’t NEED to hammer it in anymore!), it’s against his principles. It’s an idea that should be explored but is just glossed over here. And the IDEA of a companion in their own TARDIS travelling the universe with their own companion is really cool! But not THIS companion. She doesn’t feel deserving of it and I certainly don’t like the implication that it means we’re not going to see Ashildr again, at least without Clara.

But it was good to see Ashildr (or “Me”), and though I’ve griped a lot there were things I liked about this episode. The return of the Russell T. Davies Time War theme was very welcome. Even more so was the TARDIS the Doctor stole. I don’t know if we’ve seen a Gallifreyan TARDIS used to this significance in an episode since maybe the Second Doctor’s era, and they haven’t changed a bit. But I like that as it’s a great bit of nostalgia and a nice introduction to younger fans that underneath the blue box is a pretty bland looking metal elevator shaft. And the inside of the TARDIS was absolutely wonderful! The set they used is likely one I’ve walked on myself when visiting the Doctor Who studio in Cardiff, and it’s one of my favourites. It’s a perfect replica of the TARDIS interior from the First Doctor’s era and I do have a love for that era, so seeing the flipping of the controls, the raising time rotor, and the slow doors opening was such a delight. In order to free Clara from death the Doctor takes her in another stolen TARDIS to the very end of the universe, but because of the extraction she still has no pulse and will still have to face death. That’s where he finds Ashildr who reveals the Doctor and Clara’s shared status as the hybrid. The Doctor realizes he has to let Clara go and decides to wipe her memory. Clara overhears this, switches the device in the TARDIS so it selects one of them at random to forget the other, and the Doctor ends up forgetting Clara which is a nice change. A number of companions have had their memories wiped of the Doctor so it’s refreshing to see it in reverse. We get more drawn out good-byes, and then the Doctor awakens in Nevada where he finds a café where Clara’s posing as a waitress; and he tells her the story remembering ‘a’ Clara and their adventures, but not much about their relationship or her face. Therefore why he doesn’t recognize her as he’s telling her this. And I think this final conversation is nice. Clara reminds the Doctor he said all memories become stories, but they can also become songs, and as he leaves the Doctor begins to strum on his guitar. And I have to say, I do still like the guitar because Capaldi is very comfortable with it and it’s a nice prop for him (wouldn’t be the first time a Doctor’s had a musical instrument; and as a prop it’s definitely better than the stupid fez). The café turns out to be the other TARDIS and it takes off. Clara tells Ashildr that she knows she has to face death, but like the Doctor, will get there the long way round, and the two fly off in another TARDIS with another faulty chameleon circuit (seriously what Time Lord engineer designed these things??). I guess I am glad Clara didn’t really (but sort of) die in the end, and I hope that Ashildr can still show up in the future. Maisie Williams and Peter Capaldi had good chemistry and it would be a shame not to see more talent like hers added to the series.

One thing’s for sure, we need a new kind of companion. We can’t get just another modern girl from London. Clara’s departure from the series was drawn out more than any companion in the show’s history and that’s not a good thing. I prefer the short but sweet departures of the likes of Susan, Ian & Barbara, and Sarah Jane. But we spent so much time on Clara focused on her, it would be a bad idea to just repeat it. So the next companion should be a male, or alien, or from another era, just someone to get away from a pattern. And certainly not someone who’s “essential to the fabric of the universe” without earning it; and as the Doctor heads away without memories of Clara, in his TARDIS with a new sonic screwdriver (YAY!) pointed eagerly to the future, I hope he realizes that too!

So that’s the end of the ninth series of Doctor Who. I’ll be back with a new review in a few weeks for the Christmas special, but that doesn’t really qualify as part of the series. On the whole, I enjoyed this series, thought it was better certainly than any since the fifth. We got some really intriguing stories and characters, and Doctor Who felt fresh again. Peter Capaldi really came into his own, he IS the Doctor! True it left some themes unclosed like the Doctor answering for the consequences of his actions (and we never found out what Missy was planning with those Daleks), but I suppose I should be grateful for that. Because Doctor Who series’ are often to their disadvantage, really self-contained and while this one mostly was too, it still left enough promise for the future. It may not have ended on a great note or a cliff-hanger, but it had plenty of those. There were a few for sure that failed to be memorable or interesting, but only a few. Many were terrific, and the penultimate episode “Heaven Sent” I say is the best Doctor Who’s been since the Russell T. Davies years. At least half the episodes this series I’d watch again in a heartbeat, and that’s a great sign that after having seen fifty-two years of this science fiction show, I can still enjoy it as much as ever!