Heaven Sent

"I've just watched my best friend die in agony. My day can't get any worse."

Writer: Steven Moffat
Format: TV
Broadcast: 28th November 2015
Series: 9.11

Featuring: Twelfth Doctor

Synopsis

As if the death of his best friend wasn't enough, the Doctor's situation has only gotten worse. What initially started as an attempt to help clear someone of a false murder charge has evolved into something much worse.

Now trapped in an old rusty castle in the middle of an ocean, the Time Lord is being stalked by a mysterious creature that only pauses when he gives up his deepest secrets. What does this thing want? And can the Doctor escape and find his way back home?

Verdict

Heaven Sent was a fantastic episode of Doctor Who and served as a superb start to the finale of the ninth series since the show was revived back in 2005. It follows on from the events of Face the Raven, the following episode which was expectedly referenced on more than one occasion, and we see the Doctor having to deal with the death of his best friend and companion in Clara Oswald. She had been with him for a long time now so for the Doctor to see her die and be helpless must have been awful for him but instead of having time to grieve, he was teleported to his own personal hell thanks to the trap laid by Lady Me and the mysterious people she had made a deal with. The castle-like setting that turned out to be the inside of the Doctor's confession dial was excellent and I loved the mystery that surrounded it. As the episode went on, we were learning new things about this strange environment and I liked how we got to see that the Doctor was both afraid and confused. He was learning too which isn't always the case and I think that was sold to us by the fact the story was largely a single hander from Peter Capaldi. That was a brave and bold move by Steven Moffat but as he has done many times before, he did not fail to deliver. Obviously, he was helped by the brilliance of Peter Capaldi in playing the Twelfth Doctor but even for an actor as talented as he is, it must have been a hugely challenging script. I loved the scenes in the TARDIS where the Doctor would work out how he escaped the oncoming doom that was presented in the form of his childhood nightmare. I love the idea of the Doctor being chased by something from his nightmares and even though we saw him experience some of those nightmares in Listen, the idea of our hero having them is frightening. What could scare the Doctor so much that he couldn't sleep? I love that concept. We of course got to learn the details of his childhood nightmare but despite the Doctor not having been a child for a very long time now, he was still afraid. The hints that were being left of what he needed to do to get out of his current location and find out just what was going on were fantastic and despite Clara having died in the previous story, she still managed to play a big role in this episode which was good. The Doctor needed his audience. It would be a bit boring if he just tried impressing himself in the TARDIS in working out what was needed to make sure he won. The use of the chalkboard to aid the Doctor and guide his thinking to the right questions was very good and I liked how patient he was in working things out. The revelation about the skulls in the water beneath the castle was quite horrifying, as was pretty much everything that came with the moment the truth was revealed to us. I remember being a little confused when watching on broadcast but I think having the advantage of already watching the episode once made things a lot clearer this time around. Patience and determination was going to get the Doctor out and although he had to wait billions of years, he finally cracked his way through the impenetrable wall. It was four-hundred times harder than diamond and was 20ft thick but the Doctor punched his way through. There was no reset here and the Doctor knew what he needed to do. The bird hint was wonderful and it was actually rather frightening though to see the Doctor basically commit suicide to ensure the new copy of himself was teleported through. Once the Doctor had escaped, things got very interesting indeed. Not only was the Doctor back on Gallifrey, but he quashed the Hybrid rumours of Davros from The Magician's Apprentice/The Witch's Familiar. He'd already revealed that he didn't run from Gallifrey because he was bored, and I think we now knew why. The Doctor was the Hybrid. And he was back home. Overall, a stunning episode!