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Hell Bent began with The Doctor entering a ’60 diner, with a cover of Queen’s Don’t Stop Me Now playing on the jukebox, and Clara seemingly behind the counter. This made me think, “Oh come on, bringing Clara in a lot, after she died, is just taking the proverbial!” I was expecting her to return at some point, but last week’s brief cameo was enough.
He seemingly didn’t recognise her, while she wanted him to tell her all about Clara, as if it’s new to her. Huh? Is this Jenna Coleman character one of “Clara”‘s many lives?
After the opening credits, we were back in Gallifrey, and this is the point where the episode really dwindled in the dark for a hell of a long time, we had Donald Sumpter rather wasted as The President of Gallifrey, who turned out to be a camp, bloodthirsty loony wanting to assassinate the Doctor, and when he trained his army on the Time Lord, they all missed on purpose, although at first it felt rather like Pulp Fiction and the 'hand cannon' incident .
Just before all this, the inhabitants treated The Doctor like a refugee and gave him some food. Then the President’s spaceship came, ushered everyone away from the Doctor, who stood up, drew a line in the sand… and went back to his soup. When asked “What’s his plan?”, Ohila, from the Sisterhood of Karn replied, “I think he’s finishing his soup(!)”
And then after it took forever before he finally went out to meet up with The President, he didn’t shake hands, but threw down his confession dial down to the ground and bemoaned, “Get off my planet”.
And inbetween the soldiers shooting at the Doctor and us seeing the outcome, it cuts back to him and Clara in the cafe, with her telling him, “You like a cliffhanger, don’t you?”
But, why did they miss? Because he was unarmed. Aside from a couple of quips, this was mostly terrible scriptwriting with Steven Moffat trying to make the episode last as long as possible. I really can’t imagine what he was thinking of.
Some other quips came with Ken Bones returning as The General, following 2013’s 50th anniversary episode, The Day Of The Doctor, and the Christmas episode, The Time Of The Doctor. After a brief exchange between him and the Doctor which culiminated in establishing their position in time: “We’re at the end of the Universe, give or take a star system”, they got down to business, questioning the Doctor – “What is the Hybrid?”
The Doctor countered their thoughts on what they knew, “What colour is it?” (they didn’t know), to which he replied, “Prophecies never tell you anything useful, do they?”
Ohila told him, “This is no time to play the fool”. He replied, “It’s the end of the universe, it’s the only time I’ve got.”
More improbable situations continued as they travelled back to when Clara was hit by the raven in the trap street. He saved her from that scene, and took her to Gallifrey, with the intention of get info about the Hybrid which they think she has… or so he told the powers that be so he could rescue her – that was his sole endgame. But there was a catch – she wasn’t dead, but she wasn’t quite alive, either.
He told her, there’s a sound she’s been living with every day of her life but has chosen not to hear – her heartbeat. Her phyiscal processes have been timelooped. Basically, she’s frozen in time. Technically, they only have a short amount of time, and after they’ve finished, she’ll be returned to her scene to die. And that’s where he played his hand in trying to save Clara, except it was stupid how he pulled a gun… just like he never does!
At the halfway point, it was established that the cafe scenes were flashforwards, and he was telling Clara that he had to wipe some of her memory – memory of him.
But then more timewasting ensued as they escaped through the Cloisters, trying to get out and avoid the Sliders (who only attack if you try to leave – yet provided no threat!). A Dalek was shown to have broken in at some point – it was a leftover from the Cloister Wars, crying “Exterminate me”. Also present were some Weeping Angels and one of the Cybermen. This had suddenly turned into a “best of Doctor Who”, rather like Spectre was a ‘best of’ for all of Daniel Craig’s Bond films and, as such, it showed just how few ideas they had as they’d run out of them all!
We learned that all that time in the maze last week – trapped in the confession dial (really?) – was actually four-and-a-half-billion years. He did that to save Clara. Awww…. that was quite a nice moment.
Clara told him: “Between one heartbeat and the last is all that we have. We should say things to one another” (the conversation not taking place onscreen – oh well, I thought, it’s Moffat’s writing so it’d probably be terrible…) But then she revealed what she said in their conversation as she talked to the powers that be: “Don’t worry Doctor, they’ll all be looking at me”, and he ran off while she gave that misdirection, so he could get to the workshop and find another TARDIS… and this one was a cylindrical shape, and the internals were like the First Doctor’s TARDIS, so those were neat references back to itself.
The Doctor: “What do you think of the new wheels?”
Clara: “Basic”.
Go to page 2 for more thoughts and conclusions on the episode.
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.
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