Hell Bent

I'm not going to say this was the worst season finale Steven Moffat's ever written but that's mostly because The Name of the Doctor exists. This was not a suitable end for what's been a pretty good season overall. It wasn't that it was badly made or acted, or badly written for that matter. It's that it was trying too hard to hard to be a big, epic story and in doing so it got too wrapped up in its own self-importance.

This was Big Steve's first proper go at tinkering with Gallifrey, something that was always going to end badly. Because Gallifrey stories can't be done without heavy use of continuity and Moffat doesn't really do well with that. He makes continuity the focus instead of using it sparingly to embellish his stories. The answer, generally speaking, is not to do Gallifrey stories in the first place unless under very specific circumstances. The lone Gallifrey story of the Davies era (The End of Time) worked because we'd have five years to build up to it and it was used as the backdrop for the exit of arguably the most popular lead actor in the show's history in David Tennant¹.

Moffat played all the expected cards: Rassilon, the Matrix, Ohila, Ashildr, Clara not being dead, soldiers siding with the Doctor, lines of dialogue echoing the show's past. The only real surprise was the omission of Missy. He threw in everything he could to make this a "classic" story. In doing so he made it too busy and ensured that it could only ever be seen in the light he wanted by people who adore continuity references above anything else (and it's worth pointing out he frequently makes out in interviews that those are the kinds of people the show should not be aimed at). He also made a hash of explaining what the plot was. Even if you got all of the references to the programme's past such a bad job was done of explaining what exactly was going on that I'm convinced nobody could have watched this and understood it on a single viewing. The Time Lords wanted information on the hybrid, but we didn't learn why it had suddenly become important. We didn't really get a satisfactory answer on why Clara had to die as scheduled, which hasn't exactly been an issue at any other time during the Moffat era.

Maybe the intention is for this to work with repeated viewings. Maybe this is designed as something that's watched over and over again, likely in conjunction with Face the Raven and Heaven Sent. To an extent that's okay. That's how a lot of people watch television now. On Demand services and DVD boxed sets being what they are it's actually sensible to take this approach on occasion. But it shouldn't be done at the expense of people who are going to watch once on a Saturday evening. Doing so is alienating. It's that approach that saw the show falter under JNT in the 80's.

Hell Bent was intended as Moffat's Deadly Assassin. His definitive take on the grandest aspects of the show's continuity and mythology, Gallifrey and the Time Lords. He's entirely missed that the reason The Deadly Assassin works as well as it does is because Robert Holmes was trying to avoid playing on mythology and continuity, playing against what they'd been up until that point and using them as the basis for something completely new. The lone new bit of lore we got here, the Cloister Wraiths (dead Time Lords used as anti-virus technology to protect the Matrix against people poking around inside it), were a nice idea and worthy of being the focus of their own story as opposed to a throwaway aspect of something larger. They weren't enough to justify the episode as a whole though.

I know what the argument will be in favour of Moffat using Gallifrey here: it was the backdrop for the exit of Clara. But the thing with Clara is, no matter how much you may like her and feel that she's a great character and that Jenna Coleman is very good, she isn't the Doctor. Gallifrey being brought back to bring about the exit of any character except the Doctor will always feel too much, because the Doctor, as the one constant throughout the show's ongoing narrative, is the show's most important character and as such the only one who truly warrants such high stakes for an exit. And even then it should be a rarity.

This isn't to knock Coleman, Clara or the exit. I liked all three. Coleman left showing what a versatile performance she can give, with only Peter Capaldi matching her (obviously). Clara got to leave to a greatest hits performance, grounding the Doctor, being noble, and demonstrating her yearning for adventure. She's never felt especially developed as a character but everything we've learn about her was used and tied up nicely here.

The nature of her exit was an example of Moffat's keenness to evoke the shows early years (something we've seen many times, from the understandable inclusion of the Hartnell Doctor in The Day of the Doctor to his less understandable inclusion on a library card in Vampires of Venice). Clara left her home planet in a TARDIS (which was for some reason trapped in the shape of an American diner), in the company of an immortal, and ostensibly on the run from the Time Lords. The mirroring with An Unearthly Child is infuriating in its obviousness but it carries its own kind of charm. I'm sure there are kids who would have watched this and enjoyed that farewell for Clara and (presumably) Ashildr). The real strength was her finally getting a successful Doctor-ish moment, surviving a memory wipe where the Doctor didn't and having one final conversation in which she knew more than him before leaving. It worked all the better for the initial framing of her being the one who couldn't remember, a rare example of Moffat's tricksiness being a worthwhile endeavour.

There were other performances worth mentioning. Donald Sumpter was perfectly cast as Rassilon, power mad and desperate to retain control. If you can't get a "big" name like Timothy Dalton casting a man in his seventies is the next best thing. The silent woman who attended to the Doctor while he stayed at the barn was good too, showing good comedy  timing and giving character to an otherwise forgettable part. But it was the Female General who I liked the most. She seemed like a promising new character in her post-regeneration scene but was presented as glorified muscle for Ohila for the rest of her time on screen. It's a shame she wasn't given more to do. She'd make a good semi-regular villain based on what we saw here.

Speaking of Ohila, Clare Higgins gave one of the worst performances in New Who's ten year history. It's easy to see why she's previously been relegated to pre-credits sequences, webisodes and YouTube uploads. She is not good at acting. Had she not happened to be cast in The Brain of Morbius she would not be lucky enough to be in this position now. She's getting work because of the showrunner's love of pointless continuity references. Although, to be fair, she was playing a character who became a villain for absolutely no discernible reason halfway through the episode.

Hell Bent is a needlessly complicated episode that focuses far too much on continuity and far too little on plot. It ends series nine on a bad note but it gets the departure of Clara right and as that's the central purpose of it it's hard to deem it a complete failure.

***

¹ If you're of a certain age you're going to be thinking that Tom Baker was more popular. I'm not saying he wasn't but Tennant is easily his counterpart in the rebooted series, the guy who helped the show attain the international appeal that's so integral to its continued existence now.

Face the Raven

This episode feels like it should have come about a lot sooner. Not because of the series arc stuff it included but because of its urban fantasy trappings. It's a genre that's been growing in popularity since before the show was revived in 2005, making it something the show was always going to touch on. More importantly it feels like a natural fit for Doctor Who. It's not a coincidence that former Who writers Ben Aaronovitch and Paul Cornell have found success in this genre or that one of its most prominent figures in Neil Gaiman has been brought in to write for the show. It's trappings and tropes are a good fit for a programme that can lends itself to magical realism.

It's possible I liked the episode disproportionately because of its use of urban fantasy. Not that the writing was bad. It wasn't. In fact I felt that the pre-credits teaser scene was one of the best we've had this season, the regulars were written impeccably, and the opening stretch in which we were introduced to trap streets and the concept of aliens using them as hiding places was excellent. The idea of a raven that flew into people branded with a tattoo that counted down to zero was a good one and the returning Ashildr was written the same sort of moral greyness and magnetism that made her stand out in The Woman Who Lived. Rigsy was better here than in Flatline, for the record, although he's a far less important or interesting character.

It was the world building that I liked. Because that's what I always like, in anything. But that doesn't necessarily make a good episode of Doctor Who and I'm having trouble picking out anything before the climax scenes that stood out to the same degree. I think the episode got an easier ride from me than most because it was doing something different to the rest of the Moffat era and making use of something obvious. And because it had a fantastic set that perfectly fit the tone of the genre and the needs of the episode. It felt like what it was meant to be, a magical Victorian street squirreled away in the middle of London.

But ultimately it's not any of this that this episode will be remembered for, no matter how worthwhile it may have been. This episode will be remembered for the death of Clara. And, in fairness, it is a good death scene. Clara has been written as becoming increasingly Doctor-esque across her time on the show. It's not always worked and it's sometimes outright misfired but there's enough material of Clara emulating the Doctor's behaviour and behaving as he would (or thinks he would) that you can take her actions here, thinking she's found a workaround for the rules of the raven always killing its victims by taking the tattoo target from Rigsy, as completely in character. And it's a fitting end, a companion who's overestimated their own ability and similarity (or lack thereof) to the show's lead character and paid the price for it. If only Earthshock had included as much thought as this Adric may be better remembered.

Jenna Coleman and Peter Capaldi handle what we were are left to assume was their final scene together as those characters well. Capaldi went from snarling rage with Ashildr to sorrow and awkwardness when saying goodbye to Clara. It demonstrated the range the man has, something which could be made use of far more often. Meanwhile Coleman played Clara coming to terms with her impending death and the Doctor's inability to help her with dignified acceptance and bravery, giving the character the ending I imagine most viewers will feel she absolutely deserved. For what it's worth I've never felt that engaged by Clara. Her origin as a Big Mystery™ and relationship with the boring Danny Pink left me cold. But she's worked this series and this was a memorable exit.

Assuming of course that it is an exit from the show. There are two episodes left to air. Next week's has been announced as a solo outing for Peter Capaldi, which should shut up my requests to give him more to do. You can't ask for more than giving him an entire episode to himself. But Coleman has been confirmed for the following week. There's also the fact that Steven Moffat has never been shy about bringing back characters that are absolutely-definitely-positively-dead-totally-forever. It happened several times with Rory, it was Amy's final send-off, and we have River Song coming back at Christmas in a story set after her death and upload to a magical super computer on the planet Library. That we know characters can so easily return after death under Moffat does blunt the loss of Clara slightly, but we can still enjoy her death scene in isolation. I suspect it will be easier to accept when we know how her time on the show plays out in Heaven Sent and Hell Bent. I suspect the Doctor will track down one of the "splinters" Clara created in The Name of the Doctor (my views on that episode here) and have a somewhat one-sided chat with them before a final reveal that those splinters can all remember being Clara (or something equally daft and underwhelming). And on the subject of predictions I'll be amazed if we don't find out that Missy and the Daleks (and possibly Davros) is (are) behind the trap sprung on the Doctor in this episode.

Sarah Dollard is welcome back any time.

The Woman Who Lived

Back in The Witch's Familiar Davros talked about a Gallifreyan legend of a hybrid. The Doctor did not react well to this. This was in an episode in which Davros had tried to create half-Dalek, half-Time Lord hybrids (y'know, because Davros's defining characteristic in the new series is that he comes up with this kind of mental plans). That didn't work, so we were left to mull over the topic of the hybrid.

Thankfully it's not Steven Moffat's take on the half human nonsense from McGann's TV Movie. That's something that seemed like a worrying possibility for a while. It would have been spectacularly poor. I mean season twenty-two levels of poor. Thankfully The Woman Who Lived seemed to make it clear that the hybrid in question was not, in fact, the Doctor or a new breed of Dalek or something else based on years-old continuity. It was Ashildr from The Girl Who Died.

At the end of The Girl Who Died Ashildr was made immortal using a modified bit of tech from enemies of the week the Mire. That made her a human-Mire hybrid. This episode made it clear that she is to be taken as A Problem™ for the Doctor. Which could have been boring. Thanks to an engaging script from Catherine Tregenna, excellent work from Peter Capaldi and Maisie Williams (as well as, perhaps bizarrely, Rufus Hound), and the decision not to try and squeeze Clara into the episode it wasn't. It was a well-judged piece of writing that included just enough of a plot (an invasion orchestrated by a duplicitous, fire-breathing space lion wearing a metal headband) to keep things interesting in between stretches of what the episode was really about, the Doctor confronting his decision to make someone immortal.

Tregenna pitched things perfectly. After starting out with an amusing sequence in which the Doctor stumbled into a heist she gave us around fifteen minutes of the Doctor and "Me", the character having abandoned the named Ashildr centuries earlier, discussing their differing experiences of living lives so long that they are forced to watch loved ones grow old and die. Or, perhaps, their ability to forget and repress these experiences. These scenes were deftly handled, avoiding heavy-handedness but carrying the emotional heft required to make them work. It became clear across the course of the episode that Ashildr or Me or The Knightmare (srsly, pick a name, guys) was less unhappy with the "curse of immortality" (good because that trope is played out) and more the fact that the Doctor has lumbered her with the slow path through history, forcing to live every day in full and in order as he grants himself the freedom of time and space. Implicit in this was the unspoken accusation that the Doctor has made it easier for himself and isn't interested in lessening her burden. 'You trapped me in my life!' exclaims Me at one point. It's a good line but it would be more accurate to state that the Doctor's trapped her in history.

Me clearly isn't framed as a baddie in the style of Missy or Davros. She's given a great deal of sympathy. Meanwhile much is made of the Doctor's poor judgment and while it's not dwelt on there's that callous refusal to take her into the future and let her live the life she wants. His inaction is forcing her to lead a life she doesn't want and can't escape and was trapped in by him. But we are also left in no doubt that this is a woman who could become terrifyingly bad. Her willingness to kill is shown several times, most notably when she's keen to shoot her way out of a burglary job and when she sacrifices Sam Swift to open the rift she needs to escape the planet. It's a disregard for life that's a staple of recurring villains in the show.

This is clearly something Moffat has been moving towards for a while, the Doctor creating his own enemy. Had he handled it himself I don't think it would have been as good as it has been across these last two episodes. But in handing the job over to Catherine Tregenna and Jamie Mathieson he's let writers who will focus on the character, rather than the idea of the character, come to the fore. This is how he should run the show all the time. The closing flourish of Clara turning up to show the Doctor a selfie with Me (or whatever modern pseudonym she's taken) looking on pointedly from the background is clearly an addition he would have added or requested but the bulk of the episode feels unlike something he'd have written himself. This is for the better, because Moffat's authorial voice has been oppressive at points over the last five years.

That closing shot gives us a tantalising glimpse of where this series will end up. With Jenna Coleman's departure confirmed it seems safe to assume that the modern day incarnation of Me will be responsible for her death, talking as she did about how she'd keep an eye on the Doctor and exhibiting jealousy at the fact that Clara was taken with him on his continued journey. That would tie into the theme of the Doctor creating his own enemy in The Girl Who Died and The Woman Who Lived and the debate about compassion in the Doctor and Davros scenes from The Witch's Familiar. Everything points towards Clara dying as a result of Me's actions, forcing the Doctor to admit that his act of compassion in saving her was ultimately wrong. There will be more to it than that, of course, but it's looking like the richest season arc of the Moffat era right now, and if it turns out to be true this episode will be a pivotal part of it.

All this plus a reference to the Terileleptils. What's not to like?

The Girl Who Died

The Girl Who Died was the sort of Doctor Who story I like. We were presented with a series of scenes in which the Doctor and Clara were introduced to a world and got some amusing lines to deliver, things got fleshed out, and there was a closing sequence that made sense both on the episode's own terms and in terms of the mechanics of the show at large. When done right that's always a great approach for Doctor Who (though obviously it can work with any companion and not Clara specifically).

It was the series of twists towards the start that really stood out to me. The Doctor pretended to be Odin. A nice little thing in itself because it's the sort of thing many other incarnations of the character may have tried. Then a giant faced appeared in the clouds and claimed to be the real Odin. An amusing, well-placed conceit within the episode which instantly raised questions for the audience. From there the fittest, strongest people in the village (including Clara and Ashildr, played by biggest name guest actor Maisie Williams, because of course) were beamed onto a space ship by some giant alien robots and slaughtered for boring-but-sensible-within-the-confines-of-the-show reasons. Clara and Ashildr escaped because they were always going to and then the second phase of the episode began: the Doctor helping the remaining villagers to prepare for a battle Clara had stupidly (but handily for a TV show that has to feature #conflict) provoked the alien into a battle.

After that it settled down into a well written episode . We got some scenes that were determined to make us care about the guest cast and for the most part they did. Far more impressive was the material given to Capaldi. He got to play everything from courage to angst and was given excellent dialogue to do so, a refreshing change from the by-the-numbers material he's mostly gotten in the part (I think I remember this being a strength in last year's Flatline, also by Jamie Mathieson). Clara being split off for the brief sojourn to the ship made sense too, and gave her something to do after weeks of her being sidelined.

It was also nice to see the design work back on track after a severe wobble with the Fisher King in Before the Flood. Fake Odin was pretty much written and performed as a generic baddie but he was made to look enough like a futuristic Viking that it didn't matter. He looked like what he was meant to be, an alien (or possibly an alien AI, I didn't follow that bit closely enough) trying to pass themselves (or itself) off as a god using a basic understanding of human mythology. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that someone took inspiration from Lost Vikings 2 for that (and I'd be more surprised still if more than one person reading this understood that reference without the assistance of Google). The robot henchmen were better still. They were big and bulky and intimidating with rivets and bolts that you don't see in Doctor Who designs often. They looked convincingly alien and warrant a return. I could have done without the removal of their headpieces to reveal squealing flesh heads though. They were more appealing when they appeared to be some sort of enchanted clay-metal robot warriors.

In fact the episode's only weakness was something that was likely intended to be one of its highlights. The topic of where the Doctor's face came from was tackled more substantially than it has been since Capaldi's debut episode Deep Breath. This is something aimed at people like me, people who know and rewatch and study the show. But I didn't care. I didn't care because it's been handled poorly within the show. I could have been convinced that it mattered pretty easily. It is, after all, famously a theory that Russell T Davies cooked up as his own private fan theory then passed on to Moffat, who decided it was so good he'd include it in the show. That's my kind of thing! But it was so bland, not to mention wholly unnecessary, that I couldn't bring myself care. The Doctor chose the face of Caecilius, the man he saved from a burning Pompeii, to remind himself that he saves people. So what?

It raises more questions than it answers. How did he do this when he's seemingly had no control over his appearance before? How does John Frobisher, also played by Capaldi, factor into this? Why didn't the Doctor do it when he changed from the Tenth Doctor, who saved Caecilius, into the Eleventh? If the Eleventh chose the face to remind himself that he's a good man who saves people because he'd just run into the War Doctor and been reminded of some apparently horrible things he did and was having a crisis of confidence or something  then why didn't he make a more recent or relevant selection? Does Moffat really expect anyone who's not invested in this show more than the average viewer to understand the sudden appearance of David Tennant and Catherine Tate in scenes from an episode that first aired seven years ago? Maybe there's more to come on this. If so, good. Right now it looks like another example of Moffat building something up in interviews that turns out to be wholly underwhelming once it appears in the show.

After the predictable struggle against the bad guy worked out in favour of the overmatched villagers (funny that) we got the episode's final twist, the Doctor saving Ashildr with technomagic and making her immortal. This was a nice final flourish and kept the revelation of how two episodes (this and next week's The Woman Who Lived) written by two different people and not appearing to be a two part tale fit together.

This was easily the best episode since The Magician's Apprentice and possibly the best of the series so far (I'd need rewatches to decide for sure). It featured enough surprises, dealt out its revelations well, and contained enough strong design work that it was a joy to watch. If this was the average level of quality I think the show would be all the better for it.