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And in getting away from Gallifrey’s time zone, he claimed Clara’s heartbeat would return and she’d be fine… but she wasn’t. “Maybe we just have to fly a bit further”, The Doctor declared, stalling in giving her the truth. From there, they were going to the last hours of the universe, long past where the Time Lords were hiding, so he could ‘make an adjustment’ to the neural block he took from The General, who he shot which caused him to turn into a woman… seriously, Moffat, what in the name of bloody hell was that all about?!! Perhaps it stemmed from what we later saw, when The Doctor got mad with power and started shouting, making Clara distrust him.
Whilst in William Hartnell’s TARDIS, there were four knocks on the door. Who is it? “Me”… aka, Ashildr (Maisie Williams). We knew she was coming because of the ‘next time’ spoiler. They really should’ve kept that a secret!
He and Ashildr talked about the Hybrid, with him saying it’s her. Hence, when he said “The Hybrid is me”, he meant ‘Me’, aka Ashildr. But then she claimed it WAS him, and that’s why he runs away from himself so much. She also added, what if the Hybrid wasn’t one person but two? i.e. The Doctor and Missy. And so, unless I fell into a coma – and it was bordering on a possibility – we never actually got to the bottom of the Hybrid business.
Either way, The Doctor planned to wipe Clara’s memory of him, just as David Tennant’s Doctor did with Donna. Observing this conversation without their knowledge, Clara used the Sonic Sunglasses to ‘reverse the polarity’ of his memory-wiping machine. She didn’t want to lose her time with him, stating “Tomorrow is promised to no-one, Doctor, but I insist upon my past. I am entitled to that. It’s mine.”
But in reality, since they didn’t know exactly what would happen, will it wipe her memory or his? They press the buttons on the device together. He passes out… and found himself outside somewhere, but doesn’t know where, then finds his way to the cafe. And so we realised that the waitress IS Clara – the Clara who knows the Doctor. He said that if he ever met Clara again, he’d definitely know her. This caused Clara to break up slightly, just about managing to maintain her composure.
Clara left him in the cafe and disappears into the back… where the First Doctor TARDIS is. It took off and the cafe faded away, leaving the Doctor with *his* TARDIS. She travelled with Ashildr back to Gallifrey to be put back to face the raven…. but since her death is a fixed event and it’ll happen at some point, she said she’d go “the long way round”, the same words The Doctor used to describe last week’s events.
So, Clara has her own TARDIS, and she’s with Ashildr. The Doctor’s back on his own and his blackboard says: “Run you clever boy. And be a good Doctor.” And he’s back with a new sonic Screwdriver and TARDIS doors that open and close with a click of the fingers. As he takes off, the portrait of Clara flakes off and is left behind.
While I was brought round to the concept of Clara being brought back from the not-yet-dead, certainly more than I expected, the rushing off in a TARDIS with Ashildr was nonsense – that means they can come back at any time when Steven Moffat has run out of ideas (which could be as early as the Christmas episode!) and following The Doctor’s Daughter, we’ve still got Georgia Moffett floating about in space. The creation of her character was a missed opportunity because they’ve never brought her back into it! And the whole “end of the universe” concept was thrown away by the fact that they can all travel about in time anyway, so it’s never ever the end.
There were a couple of other decent lines, such as The Doctor talking about the internet leading to a war, plus the line, “Never be cruel. Never be cowardly. And if you are, always make amends.” But earlier, did the Doctor find himself back in the barn where Matt Smith and David Tennant were in The Day Of The Doctor?
Overall, there were elements in this episode which made for a nice final hurrah for The Doctor and Clara, but oh blimey there was a hell of a lot of filler, like the female General situation, with the episode mostly feeling like Moffat writing Who is like him just sitting at a typewriter, bashing out, “JUMP THE SHARK! JUMP THE SHARK! JUMP THE SHARK! JUMP THE SHARK! JUMP THE SHARK!”… and Clara’s crying was like she’d been to a bukkake party.
Next time: It’s the Christmas episode. River Song returns. Matt Lucas is present, as is the head of Man Down’s Greg Davies, River Song’s husband… in the episode The Husbands Of River Song, on Christmas Day at 5.15pm. Check out the trailer here.
Hell Bent is available on the BBC iPlayer until January 4th.
Doctor Who Series 9 Part 1 is available to buy on Blu-ray and DVD, you can also pre-order Series 9 Part 2 on Blu-ray and DVD ahead of its release on January 4th 2016, and individual episodes can be bought in HD and SD here.
And click on all the images in this review for the full-sized version.
Score: 4/10
Director: Rachel Talalay
Producer: Peter Bennett
Screenplay: Steven Moffat
Music: Murray Gold
Cast:
The Doctor: Peter Capaldi
Clara Oswald: Jenna Coleman
The President: Donald Sumpter
The General: Ken Bones
Female General: T’Nia Miller
Gastron: Malachi Kirby
Ohila: Clare Higgins
The Woman: Linda Broughton
Plump Man: Martin T Sherman
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.