When a Trailer tries very hard to make you think one thing the opposite is probably true.
“Heaven Sent” Grade and Discussion Thread
- Thread starter Starkers
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When a Trailer tries very hard to make you think one thing the opposite is probably true.
This episode was just sort of there.
Nothing happens for most of it. The "plot twist" is given away at the beginning of the episode. Somehow the Xerox Docs manage to do the exact same thing for a couple of billion years. Then it ends with the Doctor on Gallifrey doing a CSI: Miami gag.
Nothing happens for most of it. The "plot twist" is given away at the beginning of the episode. Somehow the Xerox Docs manage to do the exact same thing for a couple of billion years. Then it ends with the Doctor on Gallifrey doing a CSI: Miami gag.
Sure the twist was given at the beginning, doesn't mean you knew what it meant.
And not nothing happened in the episode.
This was a tense and tragic story showing the Doctor figuring out what was going on and then culminating in showing the extreme length he is willing to go to WIN!
I watched it again and enjoyed it maybe even more on that level of "knowing".
Agreed. If anything, this episode was a straight up character examination of the Doctor, which 1. has never happened before with this level of depth, and 2. happened to the central character, who also happens to be the most enigmatic person on the show. The steps, methodology, and choices he makes are there, but the reasoning behind it explains the type of person he's always been, regardless of incarnation. That's *super* important.
I love that he starts with all this fiery vengence, and at the end he's full of almost nothing but despair. How he gradually gets from Point A to Point B kept me hooked, but seeing him persevere after hitting that point of despair was a big payoff.
In many ways better than DotD.
I like to think that in many of his cycles over those billions of years, he didn't make it to the wall of punching. In true Groundhog Day fashion, in many loops he'd have been killed before he fully realized what was happening and thus didn't move the story forward - we only saw some of the loops that did. Of course, after each time the Veil got to him, he'd make it back up to the teleport and restart things (thanks to the mind palace sequences, naturally). Makes it even more poignant, really.
Mark
Mark
Speaking of that trailer, "Don't you think that's going a little far?" is a question that should never be posed to someone who spent two billion years punching through a wall of diamond.
I don't think so.
The point was that every "loop" was the exact same as before, because the castle reset to the exact state it was in before same as the Doctor.
Of course quantum mechanics dictate that it could never be the same even if the initial state was identical, but I don't expect the writer's intent to go that deep.
The only difference was that the very first Doctor must have been naked to leave his clothes where the later incarnations left them and the diamond wall at the end, which he chipped away at allowing him to recite more and more of the story before the vail got to him.
It's interesting to compare the various responses to this episode. In my house, I loved it. My wife, who's not a massive fan but has watched the show since the Tennant days and enjoys it, said about halfway through that she didn't think much of the episode, though she praised Capaldi's performance (we've both been fans since The Thick of It). My brother-in-law was visiting and isn't a DW fan at all - he actually asked 'is he Doctor Who now?' when Capaldi came on. But he enjoyed the episode, even though I don't think it'll convert him to a fan or even that he'll tune in this Saturday.
Why does everyone keep thinking Missy is behind this? There's no need for her to put the Doctor through this just to learn his secrets. The confession dial was coded specifically to her, and rather than hold onto it she chose to give it back to the Doctor. Sure, she's not the most rational person and the Master has in the past indulged in all manner of unnecessarily convoluted plans, but this really doesn't add up at all.
Absolutely. I would say this is the best episode since "The God Complex."
I don't think that was the intent (that there was variability in the cycles) because they didn't show us even 1 variation of a cycle but only exact replications, but who knows. At the very least, he'd have to set up the clues and make it back to the teleport room to start the next cycle even if he didn't actually punch the wall.
Mr Awe
She may want the information that he has but won't tell her. It's not necessarily in the confession dial that he sent her. But, if she thinks that he knows something useful to her but normally wouldn't tell her, you bet she'd try something like this. And, she'd have the personal first hand experience about what to use against him.
Mr Awe
We may not have come in (as viewers) to the first iteration of these cycles.
of course not, we came in 7000 years into the whole ordeal. He says as much when he is up on the tower.
Unless they're faking the star field, massmanufacturing skulls and burrowing through the diamond wall for him.
It's not a trap, and it's not punishment.
It reminds me of the Blackmirror where they digitally cloned Oona Chaplin's personality and then tortured it until it agreed to become the (virtual) house slave controlling the "real" Oona Chapman's House, gadgets and modcons.
What happened in the confession dial might have been probably virtually happening to avatars, and then those events were grafted as memories onto the real Doctors consciousness as he was transported to Gallifrey and materialized.
It's not a trap, and it's not punishment.
It reminds me of the Blackmirror where they digitally cloned Oona Chaplin's personality and then tortured it until it agreed to become the (virtual) house slave controlling the "real" Oona Chapman's House, gadgets and modcons.
What happened in the confession dial might have been probably virtually happening to avatars, and then those events were grafted as memories onto the real Doctors consciousness as he was transported to Gallifrey and materialized.
I was reading the comments, when I had a realization. Mayor Me held the confession dial. The only other person who could hold the dial was Missy. Why is that?
Like a lot of Time Lord technology, there's probably a telepathic element to it. Maybe she could hold it because the Doctor gave it to her directly.
When did the Doctor get it back from Missy? In the opening two-parter, obviously, but I can't actually remember the scene where it happens.
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