Heaven Sent/Hell Bent
Dec. 8th, 2015 07:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
purplecatWe loved these episodes but I'll happily confess to being mystified about what anyone not steeped not only in the lore of Doctor Who, but also the fandom debates and discussions of the past 20 years, would get from them. They seemed to me to be Moffat in full on commentary mode with the story very much taking second place.
You could probably also more or less treat these as two independent episodes, particularly given the way Face the Raven leads into them.
Heaven Sent is tightly focused, self-contained and claustrophobic with Moffat in full-on "puzzle box" mode. Tame layman spent most of it muttering "Capaldi's really is good, isn't he" (or words to that effect). I think the 12th Doctor era is marked by a sense of doom and melancholy of which I'm not particularly fond, but it is also marked by a supreme confidence that they can ask the lead actor to carry a monologue - or even an entire episode - and that he will do so with aplomb. Having felt somewhat at sea with the 12th Doctor last season I've been very much converted, if not to the 12th Doctor himself, at least to Capaldi as an actor. Tame layman also figured out all the business with hitting the diamond more or less between the second and third iteration which impressed the rest of us no end. However the story works beautifully as a puzzle and nicely showcases Capaldi's talents. I'm not sure it's equivalent to Blink: something that is worth rewatching even when the solution is known, but I suspect it is. It needs the set-up of the confession dial, that has been sign-posted all season, which makes it less standalone than Blink and it doesn't have the latter's sense of fun. On the other hand it has Capaldi: tricky one to call.
Hell Bent on the other hand is a rambling mishmash of a story which relies heavily on fan familiarity for an understanding of its themes. The most obvious is Clara's rejection of the treatment meted out to Donna. Ostensibly the Doctor is "punished" for breaking all his rules by having his memory wiped, but this is also pay-back for Donna's memory wipe. It's not entirely clear, even here, that the Doctor accepts he can not take these kinds of decisions on other people's behalves, or a recognition that, in Clara, he has met his match in determination and desperate ingenuity.
I'm not sure the show has entirely earned this resolution either. Clara's character development has been distinctly patchy, though more consistent over the past two seasons. Even so the idea that the Doctor and Clara have developed a platonic co-dependency that exacerbates both their tendencies to the extreme and the reckless is, well, stretching what we've actually seen a little. It will be very interesting to rewatch with this ending in mind. I think, in fact, that Clara's development after the shaky start of her first half season has been better, we've seen the disaster that was her relationship with Danny Pink, and understood that after that she has been mostly marking time, doing fun stuff with the Doctor, until death ultimately catches up with her. The extent to which the Doctor has become dependent upon her, especially given twelve's more abrasive personality in season eight, has been less well shown, though his paternalistic attitude has been highlighted on several occasions. I'm not convinced the story adequately underlined his disintegration following her death, either. There has been some discussion on Simon Forward's Facebook page (I hope he doesn't mind me mentioning) of the gravity (or lack thereof) attached to the Doctor's murder (or at least forced regeneration) of the General. The intention was surely to shock us with both the Doctor's action and his attitude to it, but the focus of the episode rapidly re-centres itself on the debate over how much control the Doctor is entitled to assume over Clara's life and memory and even though he is "punished" for that, it isn't clear that this punishment is also for his actions leading to that point.
As an aside,sir_guinglain also draws a parallel between Ken Jones's General and the Brigadier. This immediately led me to think of the abortive late 80s attempt to replace Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart with the black female Brigadier Bambera. One hopes T'nia Miller's character has more longevity, especially since Bambera had considerable promise.
And all this, of course, without getting into the numerous throwaway hints to fan lore and discussion. The linkage of the eight Doctor's "half-human" remark; not to mention the suggestion that he is more (or perhaps less) than "just" a Time Lord; the Shobogan (which, it transpires, I have been mis-pronouncing my whole life); Rassilon (we spent a while debating whether it was Rassilon and were somewhat surprised that it was indeed him. Arguably the show moved past his overthrow a bit quickly); the suggestion that the Doctor did not leave Gallifrey because he was bored ("I always thought he was running away from something" NLSS child said in confusion. I think the only classic Who episode she has seen is The Unearthly Child which, of course, also hints that the Doctor is on the run from something); and finally Clara's departure to have her own adventures in Time and Space is not far removed from some of the plans for Ace just before the show was cancelled. In fact, I have thought all this season that the only possible exits for Clara were death or in a Tardis of her own, I just never thought the latter was particularly likely. Having grown out of the belief that a show needs to kill its protagonists off regularly in order to demonstrate "realism" or "grit", I was actually pleased they chose this latter option. I also really hope that this heralds an era when leaving the Doctor is not considered a metaphor for abandoning an interest in the show itself, but as a metaphor for outgrowing one's teacher and finding adventures of one's own. Because, seriously, there are only so many tragic forced separations I can take (though I note that this particular parting contrived to combine the two).
I thought this was Maisie Williams' best performance so far in the show, having been mostly disappointed previously. I'm not sure she completely won me over (though she was competing against Capaldi) but she seemed more confident in playing a character who unequivocally had a correct point to make in debate with the Doctor than one who's position was debatable and possibly wrong.
Still without a background in the debate over the Doctor's paternalistic attitude to his companions, the details of Time Lord culture, the speculation about the Doctor's nature and motives, and the metaphors and problems in framing travelling with the Doctor as the ultimate goal in anyone's life, I would worry that the richness of this episode would be lost and, instead, it becomes a sequence of trivial and/or incomprehensible set pieces.
I loved it to bits, but I'm a somewhat specialised audience.
You could probably also more or less treat these as two independent episodes, particularly given the way Face the Raven leads into them.
Heaven Sent is tightly focused, self-contained and claustrophobic with Moffat in full-on "puzzle box" mode. Tame layman spent most of it muttering "Capaldi's really is good, isn't he" (or words to that effect). I think the 12th Doctor era is marked by a sense of doom and melancholy of which I'm not particularly fond, but it is also marked by a supreme confidence that they can ask the lead actor to carry a monologue - or even an entire episode - and that he will do so with aplomb. Having felt somewhat at sea with the 12th Doctor last season I've been very much converted, if not to the 12th Doctor himself, at least to Capaldi as an actor. Tame layman also figured out all the business with hitting the diamond more or less between the second and third iteration which impressed the rest of us no end. However the story works beautifully as a puzzle and nicely showcases Capaldi's talents. I'm not sure it's equivalent to Blink: something that is worth rewatching even when the solution is known, but I suspect it is. It needs the set-up of the confession dial, that has been sign-posted all season, which makes it less standalone than Blink and it doesn't have the latter's sense of fun. On the other hand it has Capaldi: tricky one to call.
Hell Bent on the other hand is a rambling mishmash of a story which relies heavily on fan familiarity for an understanding of its themes. The most obvious is Clara's rejection of the treatment meted out to Donna. Ostensibly the Doctor is "punished" for breaking all his rules by having his memory wiped, but this is also pay-back for Donna's memory wipe. It's not entirely clear, even here, that the Doctor accepts he can not take these kinds of decisions on other people's behalves, or a recognition that, in Clara, he has met his match in determination and desperate ingenuity.
I'm not sure the show has entirely earned this resolution either. Clara's character development has been distinctly patchy, though more consistent over the past two seasons. Even so the idea that the Doctor and Clara have developed a platonic co-dependency that exacerbates both their tendencies to the extreme and the reckless is, well, stretching what we've actually seen a little. It will be very interesting to rewatch with this ending in mind. I think, in fact, that Clara's development after the shaky start of her first half season has been better, we've seen the disaster that was her relationship with Danny Pink, and understood that after that she has been mostly marking time, doing fun stuff with the Doctor, until death ultimately catches up with her. The extent to which the Doctor has become dependent upon her, especially given twelve's more abrasive personality in season eight, has been less well shown, though his paternalistic attitude has been highlighted on several occasions. I'm not convinced the story adequately underlined his disintegration following her death, either. There has been some discussion on Simon Forward's Facebook page (I hope he doesn't mind me mentioning) of the gravity (or lack thereof) attached to the Doctor's murder (or at least forced regeneration) of the General. The intention was surely to shock us with both the Doctor's action and his attitude to it, but the focus of the episode rapidly re-centres itself on the debate over how much control the Doctor is entitled to assume over Clara's life and memory and even though he is "punished" for that, it isn't clear that this punishment is also for his actions leading to that point.
As an aside,
sir_guinglain also draws a parallel between Ken Jones's General and the Brigadier. This immediately led me to think of the abortive late 80s attempt to replace Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart with the black female Brigadier Bambera. One hopes T'nia Miller's character has more longevity, especially since Bambera had considerable promise.And all this, of course, without getting into the numerous throwaway hints to fan lore and discussion. The linkage of the eight Doctor's "half-human" remark; not to mention the suggestion that he is more (or perhaps less) than "just" a Time Lord; the Shobogan (which, it transpires, I have been mis-pronouncing my whole life); Rassilon (we spent a while debating whether it was Rassilon and were somewhat surprised that it was indeed him. Arguably the show moved past his overthrow a bit quickly); the suggestion that the Doctor did not leave Gallifrey because he was bored ("I always thought he was running away from something" NLSS child said in confusion. I think the only classic Who episode she has seen is The Unearthly Child which, of course, also hints that the Doctor is on the run from something); and finally Clara's departure to have her own adventures in Time and Space is not far removed from some of the plans for Ace just before the show was cancelled. In fact, I have thought all this season that the only possible exits for Clara were death or in a Tardis of her own, I just never thought the latter was particularly likely. Having grown out of the belief that a show needs to kill its protagonists off regularly in order to demonstrate "realism" or "grit", I was actually pleased they chose this latter option. I also really hope that this heralds an era when leaving the Doctor is not considered a metaphor for abandoning an interest in the show itself, but as a metaphor for outgrowing one's teacher and finding adventures of one's own. Because, seriously, there are only so many tragic forced separations I can take (though I note that this particular parting contrived to combine the two).
I thought this was Maisie Williams' best performance so far in the show, having been mostly disappointed previously. I'm not sure she completely won me over (though she was competing against Capaldi) but she seemed more confident in playing a character who unequivocally had a correct point to make in debate with the Doctor than one who's position was debatable and possibly wrong.
Still without a background in the debate over the Doctor's paternalistic attitude to his companions, the details of Time Lord culture, the speculation about the Doctor's nature and motives, and the metaphors and problems in framing travelling with the Doctor as the ultimate goal in anyone's life, I would worry that the richness of this episode would be lost and, instead, it becomes a sequence of trivial and/or incomprehensible set pieces.
I loved it to bits, but I'm a somewhat specialised audience.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-12-09 03:21 am (UTC)I left off this season from watching, debated watching these and the Raven ep, but ultimately decided not to... so thank you.
(Will be watching the Christmas Special, but I'm that rare River Song fan.)
I love the analogy to Ace you made here as I've noticed bits of Ace's personality finding homes in several of the New Companions to date.
(I always thought he was running away. Seven's tendency to dramatics often implied that maybe he was running to hide something Big, but I thought he was running. I also have odd headcanons, probably long-since debunked, that part of what he was hiding was Susan herself.)
(no subject)
Date: 2015-12-09 06:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-12-10 01:21 am (UTC)