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“Heaven Sent” Grade and Discussion Thread

What did you think of tonight's episode

  • One in a Million

    Votes: 73 62.9%
  • One Man Army

    Votes: 24 20.7%
  • One Man Band

    Votes: 12 10.3%
  • One is not Amused

    Votes: 4 3.4%
  • One out of Ten

    Votes: 3 2.6%

  • Total voters
    116
Is that Arcadia, looking all shiny and perfect? Does that place this before the events of DOTD, or were they able to rebuild inside their "frozen moment"?

I am assuming Gallifrey was able to rebuild inside their "frozen moment". They would be perfectly safe from all their enemies like the Daleks or any outside interference so they would be able to focus 100% of their efforts on rebuilding.
 
The Audience Appreciation figure for this episode has been released. It is at 80, which is not a bad number. According to one site, a score of 80 reveals the audience finds the episode, "very interesting and/or enjoyable".
 
Like Moffat wouldn't do something misleading for a cliffhanger...

On the other hand if it isn't the Doctor it would mean that the Timelords are destined to be destroyed by someone they could probably render mortal with a wave of their hands and then shoot repeatedly.

Plus the only one going on a rampage in the trailer is The Doctor.
 
This episode is better the second time around, partcularly this sequence:

DOCTOR: (angry) That's when I remember! Always then. Always then. Always exactly then! I can't keep doing this, Clara! I can't! Why is it always me? Why is it never anybody else's turn?
BLACKBOARD: How are you going to win?? (seven underlines.)
DOCTOR: Can't I just lose? Just this once?
(He hides under the time rotor assembly.)
DOCTOR; Easy. It would be easy. It would be so easy. Just tell them. Just tell them, whoever wants to know, all about the Hybrid.
(The Doctor is sitting on the ground in a channel cut part way through the Azbantium, as the Veil arrives in room 12. In the Tardis, in his head, he comes out and runs around the console room.)
DOCTOR: I can't keep doing this. I can't! I can't always do this! It's not fair! Clara, it's just not fair! Why can't I just lose?
BLACKBOARD: No!
DOCTOR: But I can remember, Clara.You don't understand, I can remember it all. Every time. And you'll still be gone. Whatever I do, you still won't be there.

Now I know what he's talking about here. Ouch.
 
The gap between how the timelords are talked about and how they actually appear on screen (a gang of old dudes waiting for a prostate exam) is vast...
 
This episode is better the second time around, partcularly this sequence:

DOCTOR: (angry) That's when I remember! Always then. Always then. Always exactly then! I can't keep doing this, Clara! I can't! Why is it always me? Why is it never anybody else's turn?
BLACKBOARD: How are you going to win?? (seven underlines.)
DOCTOR: Can't I just lose? Just this once?
(He hides under the time rotor assembly.)
DOCTOR; Easy. It would be easy. It would be so easy. Just tell them. Just tell them, whoever wants to know, all about the Hybrid.
(The Doctor is sitting on the ground in a channel cut part way through the Azbantium, as the Veil arrives in room 12. In the Tardis, in his head, he comes out and runs around the console room.)
DOCTOR: I can't keep doing this. I can't! I can't always do this! It's not fair! Clara, it's just not fair! Why can't I just lose?
BLACKBOARD: No!
DOCTOR: But I can remember, Clara.You don't understand, I can remember it all. Every time. And you'll still be gone. Whatever I do, you still won't be there.

Now I know what he's talking about here. Ouch.

That's a great scene, one of my favs from the episode, especially the last line about Clara. You can really see the Doctor's pain.

But I am curious what is so dangerous about the Hybrid that the Doctor cannot tell the Time Lords about it even if it means dying over and over again for a billion years? Clearly, the Doctor knows that he has no choice. He must guard the secret of the Hybrid at all costs. Is it because the prophecy says that the Hybrid will destroy Gallifrey? The Doctor does not want Gallifrey to be destroyed (again). Also, it is key that the Doctor says "whoever wants to know". He does not know that it is the Time Lords. For all he knows, he could be in a trap set by the Daleks or the Cybermen. He knows he cannot take the chance of telling them something that could help them destroy Gallifrey. At least, that is my take on it.
 
The Doctor is behind this.

A trap/punishment that takes him to Galifrey, is not a trap/punishment.

It's what he's wanted dearly for a while now.

You work out the prime mover in a scheme by waiting till the end and see who benefits most, and work backwards from there.

The Doctor is home.

Therefore he killed Clara or created the illusion that Clara had been killed.
 
The Doctor is behind this.
A trap/punishment that takes him to Galifrey, is not a trap/punishment.

Except that in order to break free from this "trap", the Doctor had to die, incinerate himself, make a copy of himself and repeat this death cycle over and over again for 7 billion years. Is the Doctor a masochist? Cause that seems like a horrific thing to put yourself through on purpose. Plus, he would have known that the Veil would torment him over and over for information that he could not divulge. Why create the Veil when he knew that he could not give it the information that it would demand?
 
I hope we don't get another "Beethoven's 5th" paradox where a future version of the Doctor is putting his past self through the trials he needs to endure.

Hmm. Maybe the Lake-Flood story played out the bootstrap paradox because a convoluted timey-wimey finale assumes some familiarity with the concept.
 
Wow, AI of 80. That's the third lowest in almost ten years.

I guess the lesson is, just because folk on the internet will rave over how daring you've been don't expect the general audience to feel the same.
Or that TV ratings mean nothing. Or both.

Is that Arcadia, looking all shiny and perfect?
I'm pretty it's suppose to be the Panopticon as we've seen before.
 
So an AI of 80 which is disappointing given how fantastic this was.

The problem is, leaving aside the fact that I personally thought it was great, Moffat has moved away from making a series for a general Saturday Night audience and is making it purely for the Fans.

But without that mainstream audience the result is, as we've seen, 20% fewer viewers, drops in all the other metrics and the worst AI's in years.

It's no wonder he's talking about Series 10 as a relaunch for the show.

The thing I find a little odd is that, in a lot of ways, I thought Series 8 was made with the general Saturday night audience in mind, far more than any other Moffat series since 5. Ok Capaldi was dark and gloomy but a lot of the stories were more kiddie friendly (im sounding patronising and I'm not meaning to but I can't think of a better way to put it). Yes Series 9 has been more of a fan series, but the drop off occurred from the very start of the series this year, and the figures have been fairly consistent ever since, so the people who departed the show did so between 8 and 9, it isn't this darker season that's done it. Reasons would be maybe as follows?

* Capaldi's not so accessible Doctor in series 8 meant 20% of people gave up. (I'd love to know what the focus groups are saying about him this year)
* The rugby/late start time means 20% of people couldn't be bothered.
*People are tired of Doctor Who, whether its made for the general public or the fans. It's been going ten years and a significant portion of the audience would have drifted away anyway by now (this has happened to other long running BBC dramas, Spooks for example, but others like Silent Witness maintain high ratings so this could be argued against.


Personally I think its a bit of a perfect storm of reasons. Be interesting to see what kind of a relaunch S10 turns out to be...whenever it arrives :p
 
Personally I think its a bit of a perfect storm of reasons. Be interesting to see what kind of a relaunch S10 turns out to be...whenever it arrives :p

Personally, I would like S10 to stop the "Am I a good man?" theme and just give us a good Doctor who travels through space and time with a companion, having fun adventures and saving people.
 
The Doctor is behind this.
A trap/punishment that takes him to Gallifrey, is not a trap/punishment.

Except that in order to break free from this "trap", the Doctor had to die, incinerate himself, make a copy of himself and repeat this death cycle over and over again for 7 billion years. Is the Doctor a masochist? Cause that seems like a horrific thing to put yourself through on purpose. Plus, he would have known that the Veil would torment him over and over for information that he could not divulge. Why create the Veil when he knew that he could not give it the information that it would demand?

Nope.

600 billion doctors died once, and another (final) Doctor lived.

From the final Doctor's perspective no one died that was him, and no one was punished that was him, therefore he was not punished, even if it is sad that all those copies died, and tragic that the last million copies probably thought that it was they who were going to punch through the wall, and didn't.

:)

The Confession dial "trial" was based on a centuries old human fairy tale, that (only) the Doctor was capable of identifying with enough clues. Did any of us do it without google? So how the #### would a random Timelord behind the Veil, the boss of the veil, who put a bounty on the Doctor that Me tried to cash in on, have made a Brother's Grimm themed "green room" for the Doctor wait out his trip to Gallifrey inside of, without google and a sense of humour?

It wasn't a trap.

It wasn't a punishment.

It was a slow boat to Gallifrey.

Why the Doctor needed to die over and over again, or if he needed to die over and over again is a question that might not be answered, but punching through that wall was a ####ing metaphor, more than a physical barrier that actually did need to be punched to get him to the boondocks of Gallifrey.

Which brings us back to did inside the dial happen virtually with respect to outside time, or synchronous to outside time. Was it all just the Doctor levelling up his character spiritually, or did they need him to take a literal 2 billion year vacation?
 
If you punch the wall hard enough to break half the bones in your arm.

Although, if he just licked the wall, it would possibly only have taken 10,000 times as long as punching it.

Too bad he couldn't keep the shovel...he might have gotten several more blows in, while causing himself much less pain.

In terms of breaking bones, I've always gotten the impression (in both the new and old series of Doctor Who) that Time Lords are much stronger and more ruggedly constructed than human beings, so it's possible that the Doctor could punch the wall harder and more times than a human could.
 
As he tunneled further into the diamond wall, the "monster" would have been further behind him if it was fixed to the same time table as the Doctor was. 6 feet into the wall should have meant three more punches per cycle in each time loop... Which did not happen. The monster only let him get the one punch, which means that it was fast enough in the beginning to let him get no punches.

The monster however was more probably a time keeping mechanism to course correct the Doctor whenever he seemed to be breaking out of the predetermined series of actions he had to complete to run around in circles, punch the wall and set himself on fire, and rebirth himself.
 
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