Doctor Who: Hell Bent (9x12)

I don't know... I mean, that was certainly much better than I would have expected given how poorly last week's episode went, but at the same time, I'm still annoyed. It's frustrating because I wanted to be moved and impressed and all that... but I can't quite manage it. This was much better than I had any hope to expect, however. Let's take a look.

Cons:

The Doctor, now on Gallifrey, is out for revenge against the Time Lord's high council for indirectly causing Clara's death, and for trapping him in the time loop castle of doom last week. Basically, the High Council is terrified of retaliation from the Doctor. First they send troops to try and bring him in by force, then they send envoys who bow down to them. When Rassilon finally turns up personally to get the Doctor to come forward, the Doctor wins the loyalty of his troops, because he's a "war hero." He effectively takes over the High Council and banishes Rassilon from the planet. See, the problems I have with this are difficult to describe, but it all goes back to one of my main complaints against Moffat - it's all too epic. The Doctor's uber-importance is emphasized again and again. All of Gallifrey is in awe of him. He's called a "war hero." I don't know... it seems counter to the very essence of what Doctor Who is supposed to be.

There was an oddly unbalanced feel to this episode, as the first section of it was as I discussed above, but the second half was all about Clara and the Doctor. Basically, the Doctor uses his new power among the Time Lords to pull Clara out of the moment of time just before her death. Essentially, she's being held in the moment between one heartbeat and her very last. He then tries to run away with her and save her from returning to the moment of her death. I'll talk in a minute about all of the good things going on with this. But after the first half of the episode, which felt more like a story of the Doctor and the Time Lords, this abrupt shift was a bit disconcerting. After spending so long building up to a return to Gallifrey, the Doctor spent very little time actually interacting with his fellow Time Lords. This seems like part of an effort to preserve him as the "last of his kind," but it ends up making him seem like the "best of his kind," or "the most important of his kind" which was never the point of Doctor Who to begin with.

Pros:

Despite the disconnect from the first half of the episode to the second, I did think that the second half of the episode was about as good as you can get, given all the crap leading up to it. Basically, we learn the truth of the Hybrid: the myth says that it's a combination of two warrior races. Everybody assumes this means a Dalek and a Time Lord, but it turns out that's not the case. At first, there's a red herring, where we're supposed to think it's Ashildr (aka Me). The Doctor points out that she is human, a warrior race, with a bit of another species in her as well. That would fit the bill. But Ashildr, who shows up at the end of the universe, where the Doctor has taken Clara to save her from her death, points out another possibility - the Hybrid might be two people. A human and a Time Lord. Destined to bring the universe down around their ears because of their love for one another. In other words, the Hybrid is the Doctor and Clara.

Now, I'll admit. That's a damn good twist. The Doctor actually shoots a Time Lord in the chest in order to bring Clara away with him. He's desperate for Clara's pulse to start again, to see that she's been wrenched free of her time line and will continue to live. But it doesn't happen. Basically, time itself will start to unravel because Clara's death is a fixed point in time and the Doctor is messing with that. Ashildr reminds him of the lengths he's been willing to go to save Clara, and we realize how unhealthy and dangerous the relationship between the two of them really is. I adore that they've pointed this out - it's really disheartening to see so many dysfunctional and unhealthy relationships lauded as romantic in television and the media in general. Here, we see it for the sickness it really is. It also puts last week's episode in a whole new light - he didn't endure billions of years of torture to protect the secret of the Hybrid, per se. He did it for Clara, because he has a "duty of care." That is some heavy stuff, and the scene where Clara finds out about this is one of the most touching moments in the whole episode.

And then there's the Doctor's solution. He can't bear to send Clara back to her death, but he does see the necessity of separating the "Hybrid" before they can do more harm. He plans on erasing Clara's memory. Clara eavesdrops on this conversation with Ashildr, and uses the sonic sunglasses to mess with the mechanism the Doctor was going to use for this mind wipe. The Doctor and Clara agree to take their chances, knowing that one of them is going to forget the other. The wipe happens and... the Doctor forgets Clara.

Yikes. That was another thing I didn't expect. In a clever sort of twist, the Doctor can remember the existence of Clara. He remembers what they did together. He remembers how important she was to him, but he just can't access that feeling anymore. He can't picture what she looks like. He can't hear the sound of her voice. Throughout the entire episode, we keep flashing back to the Doctor and Clara in a 50's style diner, where Clara poses as a waitress and the Doctor tells her all about his latest adventure. It seems like neither one of them can remember the other, but once we see the result of the mind wipe, we know that Clara has known the truth of the Doctor this whole time. But the Doctor has no idea he's talking to Clara, the very person he's been talking about the whole time. The really heartbreaking moment comes when Clara asks the Doctor if he'll keep looking for Clara, and he says that the one thing he knows about her for sure is that he'd know her again if he saw her. This is just a real punch to the gut, because of course he didn't know her when he saw her. Ouch ouch ouch. Poor Clara.

Serious props to Capaldi and Coleman. This episode made me a lot more upset about Clara's departure than did her actual death episode, because the speechifying was kept to a minimum, and the full impact of Clara's absence in the Doctor's life was emphasized. There's one especially great moment when Clara says something to the Doctor, something important, and we don't get to hear what it was. We can fill in the blanks a bit - it was a declaration of love, in whatever form we choose to interpret that. But the words are too private for us to hear. It's a rare example of Moffat understanding the idea of "less is more."

Another really excellent moment is when Clara and the Doctor escape from Gallifrey in an old fashioned TARDIS (awesome to see a vintage, by the way), and the Doctor freaks out when he realizes that Clara still doesn't have a pulse. He hasn't fixed it. He can't fix it. Clara is predestined to die. He gets more and more agitated, finally yelling out to Clara "don't you trust me anymore?" Clara responds: "no, not when you're shouting." I thought that was excellent.

Clara's fate is left sort of ambiguous as this episode ends, and I'm of two minds about it. Basically, she knows that she needs to go back to Gallifrey and re-enter her time stream, fulfilling her destiny to die. But... she and Ashildr take the TARDIS away, leaving the Doctor behind at last, and it seems like maybe there might be time for a few extra stops before going back to Gallifrey. The suggestion is that perhaps Clara goes on more adventures with yet another immortal being. Clara and Ashildr traveling through space together is certainly a cool idea, and I loved seeing how Ashildr ended up after billions of years of living an immortal yet still undeniably human life. But at the same time, this up-in-the-air sort of ending seriously lessens the impact of Clara's departure. It feels like they couldn't quite stick the landing. The Doctor forgetting about Clara is tragic, of course. But it might have been even more powerful to know that the Doctor was going to continue looking for her if we knew that she was really gone. Dead. Finished.

There was, however, a really, really powerful final moment in this episode. The Doctor finds his TARDIS, which still has the memorial to Clara on its surface, put there by Rigsy following Clara's death. The Doctor sees Clara's portrait on the surface, and therefore must realize that the woman he's just been talking to was indeed the very Clara he's been missing. But he gets into his TARDIS and he leaves. He doesn't go back to find her. The paint of Clara's memorial flakes off of the TARDIS, leaving Clara behind as the Doctor goes into space searching for his next adventure. This seems to indicate that the Doctor has accepted the wisdom of his decision to erase Clara. He knows that the Hybrid is too dangerous. He's accepted loneliness as the price for the wellbeing of the universe.

I also have to mention the numerous references to previous seasons and incarnations of the Doctor in this episode. For one, down in the Gallifrey caverns of hell or whatever the heck they were supposed to be, we see the remains of Cybermen, Daleks, and Weeping Angels, all used to great effect. I particularly liked the Dalek, on its last legs of life, croaking out "Exterminate... me" over and over again. The Doctor references wiping Donna's mind, and there's even a "four knocks" reference when Ashildr knocks on the outside of the TARDIS to talk to the Doctor at the end of the universe. I also liked the vintage TARDIS quite a bit, although I do have to say one thing. When Clara remarks, about the interior of the TARDIS, "it's all white!" And the Doctor replies "genius," my brain instantly supplied: "that's probably what Moffat said when he saw the cast list for this show." Seriously. There was I think one person of color in this entire episode. Maybe two. Ugh. Step it up.

I think that's all I've got. I'm supremely surprised that I enjoyed this finale as much as I did. It felt like a much better sendoff for Clara's character than what we got in "Face the Raven," and it even made more sense out of last week's messy and totally idiotic installment. Now we're looking forward to the Christmas special, which features the return of River Song. Not sure if I've done a proper rant about her character in one of these reviews before, but you've definitely got that to look forward to once we see what we're given on December 25th.

8/10