Doctor Who: Heaven Sent / Hell Bent (2015) - Written Review

Heaven Sent is a brilliant episode of Doctor Who. Just putting Peter Capaldi in a constantly re-setting and isolated castle with a silent monster slowly chasing after him is a fascinating and original concept, and believe it or not, is pulled off to almost perfection. Sure, with the big time travel twist in the episode there are a few plot holes - such as The Doctor mentioning how he has only travelled in space and not time, the fact that he couldn't have seen the bird message if he hadn't been there before, and the fact that the diamond-like wall didn't re-set with the rest of the rooms. These are all minor plot holes that I don't mind, and I think that if the episode tried to answer some of these questions it would take away from the overall episode and possibly make it not quite as entertaining.

This is Steven Moffat's best script in ages, although I think that Rachel Talalay's direction and Peter Capaldi's performance bring it to life. It seems like a good script brilliantly visualised by a truly great director. Peter Capaldi's performance is captivating throughout, and the whole thing works wonderfully.

While it may just be an extended version of Sherlock's near-death sequence from His Last Vow, the whole mind palace TARDIS idea was fascinating to watch just to see how The Doctor's mind works. Overall though, Heaven Sent is my favourite episode of Series 9. It's well-written, brilliantly visualised and has a great central performance, and even with some minor flaws I don't think they detract from the overall episode. I give Heaven Sent a 10/10.

Right, let's talk about Hell Bent. Urgh. Well, Steven Moffat seems hell bent on running Doctor Who into the ground. After writing an almost perfect episode with Heaven Sent, Steven Moffat sat down and wrote this. Hell Bent is a terrible, terrible episode, and it proves that Steven Moffat just doesn't care anymore. He doesn't care that he very poorly set-up the Hybrid in The Witch's Familiar, built it up over the following episodes until revealing that it was in fact The Doctor in Heaven Sent, before retconning this idea in the very next episode and having the Hybrid be...you know what? I don't even know. Moffat didn't even deliver a proper answer. Was it The Doctor? Was it Ashildr? Was it The Doctor and Clara? If so, then this prophecy was pointless. It is a prophecy with poor set up, weak continuation and a confused and terrible conclusion. It is a prophecy that isn't even fulfilled. Steven Moffat couldn't even be bothered in the end to give his own story arc a satisfying resolution.

But hey, at least this is the first time this has happened! Well, no. The Wedding of River Song ruined The Eleventh Doctor's character arc over the course of Series 6, but at least made some sense. It at least delivered an enjoyable, if flawed episode with some plot progression and an interesting tease for the future. Except of course, The Doctor wiping any trace of himself from the Universe was completely ignored straight afterwards.

Then, of course, we had The Time of The Doctor. An episode with so much potential, so many great moments, but it just has no idea what story it wants to tell. What plot threads it does actually resolve are resolved incredibly poorly, and amounted to be an underwhelming and disappointing conclusion to Matt Smith's tenure as The Eleventh Doctor which began with The Eleventh Hour - a truly brilliant story that is one of my personal favourite Doctor Who episodes of all time.

Last year we had Death in Heaven - a story that rushed any interesting plot elements, completely changed one of the best and most important Doctor Who villains without rhyme or reason, and then, just to top it all off, anything interesting that that story set up was soon ruined in the following episode Last Christmas.

No writer can reach every audience member's expectations, no matter how brilliant they are, but Steven Moffat didn't just disappoint people, he wrote poorly-written scripts for some of the most influential episodes in Doctor Who. Heck, he even underwhelmed us with The Day of The Doctor.

With all the stories mentioned though, none of them were actually bad. They all had redeeming features. For The Time of The Doctor, there was that incredible regeneration sequence. For Death in Heaven, there was the tragic ending to Clara and Danny's story. For Hell Bent...there was practically nothing. The best thing about the entire episode was Rachel Talalay's direction. The whole thing looked wonderful, it's just a shame more effort was put into the visuals than into the actual script. Gallifrey has never looked more impressive, with the blend of location shooting and CGI making The Doctor's home-world feel more tangible than ever before.

It's such a shame that the conclusion to The Doctor's search for Gallifrey ended so anti-climactically. After Rassilon swore vengeance on The Doctor in The End of Time, one would expect that Timothy Dalton would return in this story for an epic battle with Peter Capaldi, but no. The Time Lord President is now played by a completely different actor looking very uncomfortable in a completely different costume who isn't even acknowledged as Rassilon until his last scene. He hardly appears in the episode and has absolutely no presence whatsoever. This just completely ruins the character of Rassilon. He's practically a deity of the Time Lords in the classic series, so when he was resurrected for The End of Time, it showed just how terrible the Time War was. Rassilon was twisted, cruel and supremely powerful. That's why no Time Lord other than The Doctor stood against him. So, when Rassilon is overthrown by the soldiers and The Doctor just staring at him, you'd expect him to, I don't know, remind them who's boss? He has a laser glove! He's practically a God for the Time Lords, and he just gets casually exiled from Gallifrey?

But of course, we need to spend more time resurrecting Clara and keeping her alive so that the entire point of Face the Raven - and the build-up to that episode - is completely ruined. Clara may not have an actual heartbeat, but at least she can live...without breathing or pumping blood around her body... Yeah, don't think I can suspend my disbelief that far, Moffat.

Had Clara died or gone back to her death at the end of the episode, it would have shown The Doctor that he can't save everyone, and thus he learns the consequences of his actions. Face the Raven gave Clara the perfect ending, and Hell Bent just ruined it. No, Clara shouldn't die because she went too far, she should live to set up a spin-off with Ashildr that will never happen. The Doctor can just forget she ever existed...which even that isn't explained properly.

Speaking of Ashildr, she appeared in this episode. Her actions at the end of Face the Raven weren't resolved properly, but at least she...guessed who the Hybrid was? Who actually was the Hybrid Moffat? Because even you don't seem to know based on this episode.

Peter Capaldi seemed pretty bored in this episode. He wasn't given much to work with and didn't seem nearly as angry as the other characters' dialogue and the title would suggest. The entire idea about The Doctor learning about the Hybrid as a child from the Cloister Wraiths wasn't explained properly, and no doubt will probably be retconned, being a really, really dumb idea.

The Cloister Wraiths themselves were completely forgettable. They just sort of glided around, without any kind of presence, threat or any actual attack. It's mentioned that they will stop anyone from escaping the catacombs, but didn't stop The Doctor when he escaped, and even helped him escape as a child! How do they stop people even? Who knows! We'll explain later! Why Steven Moffat even bothered including them in the episode was beyond me, let alone the Dalek, Cyberman and Weeping Angel cameos.

But we mustn't forget the appearance of the First Doctor's TARDIS! Yes, of course, The Doctor found a Type 40 TARDIS identical to his own original one...that has been frequently mentioned was de-commissioned, so in theory The Doctor spent hours searching for a Type 40 TARDIS that hundreds of years later on Gallifrey shouldn't in theory still be there. Yeah, I know it's a nitpick, but it's still an idea that the show has established for years. Besides, who needs to worry about script issues when you have the original TARDIS set to distract you. The set itself looked great, but it is such a shame it was just there to keep fans too distracted to really think about the script being performed within the set itself. Steven Moffat is once again using fan service to distract from a poorly-written script, and it's getting easier to notice every single time he does it.

Oh, and the big twist at the end that the Clara in the diner was the same Clara who The Doctor forgot about? Yeah, thanks Moffat for yet another dull twist. Why couldn't The Doctor just give in and let Clara die, so goes to speak to another aspect of Clara in time and space? Is that idea too simple Moffat?

You know what though, if it wasn't for the fact that this story's problems are repeating errors from so many previous Steven Moffat scripts, I'd probably forgive most of this. But here's the thing - he's done all this before and he's doing it again and I'm just a bit fed up with it. I wanted to love this episode, I really, really did. The trailers were amazing, and the pre-broadcast reviews just as positive, but the finished product is so poorly-written that even the actors seem a bit bored by it. If Heaven Sent is the example of brilliant Doctor Who, Hell Bent is the example of terrible Doctor Who. It's not just me who thinks this. In fact, a majority of the fan-base seem to dislike the episode as well. In a series that has admittedly been a bit of a mixed bag, to have a genuinely bad episode just shows the state that Doctor Who is in at the moment. The show really needs a fresh start, and I hope that it comes sooner rather than later. Hell Bent is by far the worst episode of Doctor Who since The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe in 2011, and one of the worst episodes I have ever seen.

I give Hell Bent a 3/10. So, what did you think about the episode? Let me know in the comments section below.