"Hell Bent" Grade and discussion thread
- Thread starter JoeZhang
- Start date
My first thoughts:
1) Gallifrey remains one of the dullest planets in existence
2) When you do costumes, if you haven't got the money for pistols get rid of the pistol holster
3) Onscreen male to female AND white to black regeneration FTW
4) A fantastic critique of Journey's end... which if finished there with the Doctor back in his TARDIS would have been great and bittersweet but no.. we had to instantly undercut it.
5) The series cannot seem to decide if the Doctor grew up poor in a barn or was high-born...
1) Gallifrey remains one of the dullest planets in existence
2) When you do costumes, if you haven't got the money for pistols get rid of the pistol holster
3) Onscreen male to female AND white to black regeneration FTW
4) A fantastic critique of Journey's end... which if finished there with the Doctor back in his TARDIS would have been great and bittersweet but no.. we had to instantly undercut it.
5) The series cannot seem to decide if the Doctor grew up poor in a barn or was high-born...
CHOAR! Great way to end the season!
No.
I hated this.
Wow. What a fucking mess.
Wow. What a fucking mess.
1. The man-flu regeneration scene was a trailer cheat, and one of the cheapest gimmicks in the show's recent history.
2. The Doctor initially makes Clara a Suzie Costello, then tries to make her a Donna Noble instead.
3. That desert diner is now the new Bad Wolf Bay.
4. The Doctor who features in this episode did not spend 4.5bn years in the confession dial. He experienced a week there at most.
5. I'm disappointed that Me wasn't on Malcassairo.
6. The woman in the barn resembled a discount Molly Weasley.
7. Rassilon was played by Donald Sumpter, whom I recognised as Lord Ashdown from Coalition. It was rather hard to get this out of my head.
2. The Doctor initially makes Clara a Suzie Costello, then tries to make her a Donna Noble instead.
3. That desert diner is now the new Bad Wolf Bay.
4. The Doctor who features in this episode did not spend 4.5bn years in the confession dial. He experienced a week there at most.
5. I'm disappointed that Me wasn't on Malcassairo.
6. The woman in the barn resembled a discount Molly Weasley.
7. Rassilon was played by Donald Sumpter, whom I recognised as Lord Ashdown from Coalition. It was rather hard to get this out of my head.
What I liked:
That they took the Clara-becoming-the-Doctor theme that has grown over the last two seasons as far as it can possibly go. She is now just about as literally the Doctor as she could possibly be - immortal, unaging, with a stolen Tardis disguised as something ridiculous, running around the universe and going anywhere but Gallifrey, with her own companion by her side.
The endless references to previous stories and companions. 'Journey's End', 'The End of Time', McGann's DW movie, 'Impossible Astronaut', 'Listen', 'Utopia', 'Day of the Doctor', 'Time of the Doctor', the classic Tardis, probably dozens more I missed...
The deliberate fake-out with misleading spoilers. Making people think the Clara in the diner was a Timeline Splinter and the Doctor knew who she was, so that the twist that it was the real Clara and it was the Doctor who couldn't remember her would hit home. Well played.
The Doctor basically taking over the entire planet without saying a word or doing a thing.
The cross-race, cross-sex regeneration. Shouldn't she have had some kind of post-regen fugue though? They can't just change everything about their entire bodies and then go back to work like nothing happened.
What I Didn't Like:
So... is that it with Gallifrey then? All that build-up and we still have no explanation of where Gallifrey has been hiding (except for 'billions of years in the future') or how come the Doctor couldn't find it in 'Death in Heaven' or how the Master got out with some Time Lord technology. Nobody seemed to have any trouble getting in or out of it, so what is the big deal?
This story kind of tweaks the motivation of last week's episode - there we were told that the Doctor didn't know who was behind it and going through all that crap for 4 billion years was all so that he wouldn't have to tell the secret of the Hybrid. Now he says he knew it was the Time Lords all along and he went through all that crap because he knew he needed the Time Lords to be able to save Clara. Yeah yeah I know, Rule One. But it rather undermines the power of last week to then say it was something else altogether.
Was that the same incarnation of Rassilon as from 'End of Time'? Couldn't they get Timothy Dalton back? If that is the Timothy Dalton Rassilon just aged a hell of a lot, how come the General hasn't aged the same amount if 'End of Time' and 'Day of the Doctor' were basically happening at the same time from their POV? And if it's not the Dalton Rassilon, then the last time we saw him he was being attacked by Simm Master. So we are still left not knowing how Dalton turned into this guy, and how Simm turned into Gomez. And where does Capaldi's appearance in 'Day of the Doctor' come into it - is that still to come?
I guess all of this - the Doctor going through all the crap of last episode to get to Gallifrey, only to immediately steal a Tardis and run away again - proves once and for all that for all his guilt over killing them all, he really has no use for them aside from what they can do for him and his companions.
.
That they took the Clara-becoming-the-Doctor theme that has grown over the last two seasons as far as it can possibly go. She is now just about as literally the Doctor as she could possibly be - immortal, unaging, with a stolen Tardis disguised as something ridiculous, running around the universe and going anywhere but Gallifrey, with her own companion by her side.
The endless references to previous stories and companions. 'Journey's End', 'The End of Time', McGann's DW movie, 'Impossible Astronaut', 'Listen', 'Utopia', 'Day of the Doctor', 'Time of the Doctor', the classic Tardis, probably dozens more I missed...
The deliberate fake-out with misleading spoilers. Making people think the Clara in the diner was a Timeline Splinter and the Doctor knew who she was, so that the twist that it was the real Clara and it was the Doctor who couldn't remember her would hit home. Well played.
The Doctor basically taking over the entire planet without saying a word or doing a thing.
The cross-race, cross-sex regeneration. Shouldn't she have had some kind of post-regen fugue though? They can't just change everything about their entire bodies and then go back to work like nothing happened.
What I Didn't Like:
So... is that it with Gallifrey then? All that build-up and we still have no explanation of where Gallifrey has been hiding (except for 'billions of years in the future') or how come the Doctor couldn't find it in 'Death in Heaven' or how the Master got out with some Time Lord technology. Nobody seemed to have any trouble getting in or out of it, so what is the big deal?
This story kind of tweaks the motivation of last week's episode - there we were told that the Doctor didn't know who was behind it and going through all that crap for 4 billion years was all so that he wouldn't have to tell the secret of the Hybrid. Now he says he knew it was the Time Lords all along and he went through all that crap because he knew he needed the Time Lords to be able to save Clara. Yeah yeah I know, Rule One. But it rather undermines the power of last week to then say it was something else altogether.
Was that the same incarnation of Rassilon as from 'End of Time'? Couldn't they get Timothy Dalton back? If that is the Timothy Dalton Rassilon just aged a hell of a lot, how come the General hasn't aged the same amount if 'End of Time' and 'Day of the Doctor' were basically happening at the same time from their POV? And if it's not the Dalton Rassilon, then the last time we saw him he was being attacked by Simm Master. So we are still left not knowing how Dalton turned into this guy, and how Simm turned into Gomez. And where does Capaldi's appearance in 'Day of the Doctor' come into it - is that still to come?
I guess all of this - the Doctor going through all the crap of last episode to get to Gallifrey, only to immediately steal a Tardis and run away again - proves once and for all that for all his guilt over killing them all, he really has no use for them aside from what they can do for him and his companions.
.
Oh, you think that's hard? Donald Sumpter was in The Buddha of Suburbia.
Jemma Redgrave (Kate Stewart) was also in that show.
Now try to get the mental image of Rassilon, the founder of Time Lord society, fingering the head of UNIT, out of your head.
My take on it is that the Time Lords themselves found a way out of the pocket universe that they were put into. They exited the pocket universe around the same time they granted the Doctor a new regeneration cycle. They were aware that their return could cause massive conflict so they decided to hide Gallifrey at the end of the universe to avoid that scenario. The Master/Missy escaped after Gallifrey returned and started mucking about. The co-ordinates she gave the Doctor were correct, Gallifrey just wasn't there yet and he didn't think of travelling billions of years into the future to look for it.
That all sounds nice, but it would have been nicer if we didn't have to fanwank it.
Anyway, other things I liked:
That this story, for all its enormity and eternity-spanning events, was actually all about the Doctor-Clara relationship. One of the best things about Season 8 was the singular focus on the Doctor and Clara. After so much fannying about with time travel shenanigans with Eleven, Twelve's era was taut and streamlined. That focus had slipped away somewhat in season 9, and the season felt rather aimless at times. But this finale brought it back to that focus with a story that was all about them and no-one else.
I'll probably go back and analyse more of the thematic elements of the season at another time, but I did notice things like going into the Time Lords' basement/hell/sewers in 'Hell Bent' reflecting going into the Daleks' basement/sewers in 'Witch's Familiar'. And of course the big one - the theme of resurrection, of something appearing to be dead but not actually, or of coming back to life after it was supposedly dead. That has appeared in just about every episode of the season, so it was well applied here.
And what was Missy's 'brilliant idea' when she was on Skaro? That's the kind of thing that Moffat cannot possibly leave unexplored. He wrote that line knowing full well he would have to do something with it eventually, even if he didn't know what at the time. But I guess that's another thing we're going to have to wait for.
I find it odd that we haven't had any big splashy announcement of who the replacement companion will be. Previously they've promoted the hell out of an announcement like that, but here, not a sausage. Personally I prefer not to have that spoiled by publicity if possible, I'd like to find out when I watch the show. I just find it a curious change of policy.
.
Anyway, other things I liked:
That this story, for all its enormity and eternity-spanning events, was actually all about the Doctor-Clara relationship. One of the best things about Season 8 was the singular focus on the Doctor and Clara. After so much fannying about with time travel shenanigans with Eleven, Twelve's era was taut and streamlined. That focus had slipped away somewhat in season 9, and the season felt rather aimless at times. But this finale brought it back to that focus with a story that was all about them and no-one else.
I'll probably go back and analyse more of the thematic elements of the season at another time, but I did notice things like going into the Time Lords' basement/hell/sewers in 'Hell Bent' reflecting going into the Daleks' basement/sewers in 'Witch's Familiar'. And of course the big one - the theme of resurrection, of something appearing to be dead but not actually, or of coming back to life after it was supposedly dead. That has appeared in just about every episode of the season, so it was well applied here.
And what was Missy's 'brilliant idea' when she was on Skaro? That's the kind of thing that Moffat cannot possibly leave unexplored. He wrote that line knowing full well he would have to do something with it eventually, even if he didn't know what at the time. But I guess that's another thing we're going to have to wait for.
I find it odd that we haven't had any big splashy announcement of who the replacement companion will be. Previously they've promoted the hell out of an announcement like that, but here, not a sausage. Personally I prefer not to have that spoiled by publicity if possible, I'd like to find out when I watch the show. I just find it a curious change of policy.
.
My favourite episode for a long time, I think Capaldi's best.
Great twist wiping the Doctor's memory instead of the companions, and this was a much better send off for Clara and Me was much more human and likeable in this episode.
They spent a lot of time making the trailer nothing like the episode. Top marks.
Great twist wiping the Doctor's memory instead of the companions, and this was a much better send off for Clara and Me was much more human and likeable in this episode.
They spent a lot of time making the trailer nothing like the episode. Top marks.
The first 15 minutes or whatever on Gallifrey were completely dull. The episode didn't even get going until Clara got the "get out of death free card." And I'm pleased that I was proved right in one of my early guesses from the summer(!), that the diner situation was sort of like "John Smith and the fob watch", with Clara posing as a waitress and the Doctor losing his memory somehow. And I'm pleased that Clara got a TARDIS. That's what I've always wanted her end to be.
I didn't like the whole "this has to end because we go too far" bit. I didn't like the inclusion of Me. I wish she would go away, but whatever. I said earlier this week that if they bring Clara back it has to be for a good reason, and for a bit, the tension of the episode was actually effective as we didn't know what would happen. As this was Jenna's last episode, I know they had to end it somehow, but I truly expected Clara to sacrifice herself again. I know that in the end she did, but the whole memory erasing thing was done before with Donna and if they were going to give Clara a TARDIS anyway, why didn't they just go that route? Doctor and Clara part, going their separate ways and not having to "forget"?
Yeah, the Doctor felt he had a duty of care, and he would've worried about Clara traveling in time & space on her own (I am choosing to forget that Me is in the TARDIS with her), but I think it would've been an interesting way to do things without the whole memory wipe. "I'm ready. You've made me ready. Let me go. We'll see each other again....the long way 'round," or something like that. And "I'm already dead, so I can't die! Don't worry!"
Anyway, as a finale it functioned fine. But yet again Moffat had too much to resolve in 60 minutes so it felt rough. And it also makes me care even less about Gallifrey.
I didn't like the whole "this has to end because we go too far" bit. I didn't like the inclusion of Me. I wish she would go away, but whatever. I said earlier this week that if they bring Clara back it has to be for a good reason, and for a bit, the tension of the episode was actually effective as we didn't know what would happen. As this was Jenna's last episode, I know they had to end it somehow, but I truly expected Clara to sacrifice herself again. I know that in the end she did, but the whole memory erasing thing was done before with Donna and if they were going to give Clara a TARDIS anyway, why didn't they just go that route? Doctor and Clara part, going their separate ways and not having to "forget"?
Yeah, the Doctor felt he had a duty of care, and he would've worried about Clara traveling in time & space on her own (I am choosing to forget that Me is in the TARDIS with her), but I think it would've been an interesting way to do things without the whole memory wipe. "I'm ready. You've made me ready. Let me go. We'll see each other again....the long way 'round," or something like that. And "I'm already dead, so I can't die! Don't worry!"
Anyway, as a finale it functioned fine. But yet again Moffat had too much to resolve in 60 minutes so it felt rough. And it also makes me care even less about Gallifrey.
As I said above, I think this part critique of Journey's end where the Doctor robs Donna of her agency - where here Clara's agency drives the scene. If it had ended with the Doctor waking up in his Tardis I would have loved it.
What diner situation in the summer?
I just meant that when the spoiler pics of that diner scene were first leaked over the summer, showing Jenna as a waitress and Capaldi as a "rocker" with sunglasses and a guitar, I speculated that it might be a situation like "Family of Blood" in series 3, with the Clara posing as a random person and the Doctor having his memory suppressed, like they did with the fob watch.
Later on, I started to think it would be a Clara splinter like everyone else. But the original guess turned out to be closer.
Similar threads
