We celebrate the Peter Capaldi era by revisiting the 12th Doctor's adventures as we count down the days to his last adventure.
Doctor Who:
Heaven Sent
By Steven Moffat
“I am The Doctor. I’m coming to find you and I’ll never ever stop.”
After the emotional story Face the Raven we are given a story that is absolutely different and something we haven’t seen in Doctor Who for some time, A companionless story. Well this story could be called Doctor Who meets Groundhogs Day because that’s how it felt towards the end when it became repetitive and dragged out a bit too long watching him punch the diamond wall over and over again. The normal 45 minutes would have sufficed and some of the Groundhog Day sequences could have been cut down a bit. That’s my opinion and it seems I’m in the minority here as lots of thought it was great. But I did get what they were doing and what tale they were referencing if you Google How Long is Eternity? you’ll have the source for why The Doctor was punching the diamond and why it took 2 million years which was pretty clever in a way but I still thought that it was way to reminiscent of Groundhog Day instead of a fable but the fable is where it comes from.
Now that I got one of my major gripes over about the episode I thought what they did was pretty good and I actually like when the do something. Now on first watching I did not enjoy Heaven Sent as much as everyone else going crazy about it on social media did. But watching it again knowing what is going on and what will happen I did enjoy it a bit more. But I still had problems with it. Now when the castle resets every time The Doctor dies and pulls the reset button to send him back to the beginning with a new version of him from the teleporter everything is supposed to reset. Then why is there a new set of clothes for him then to change into when he is all wet from jumping into the water? How come the diamond wall isn’t reset also? You would think it would not be a cave every time he goes to it if the castle resets every time The Doctor resets it. Another thing is The Doctor now a copy of him since he uses the transporter to bring another copy of himself and if so when he gets to Gallifrey at the end does it set him back to who he really is? Lots of stuff that Moffat generally ignores when he writes a story and doesn’t care about minor details like that and that gets frustrating sometimes when you watch his episodes it could have been easily explained with a passing comment.
By reading the first two paragraphs you would think that I totally hated Heaven Sent. That’s not true at all. I did enjoy it for the most part and really liked what they did and tried to accomplish. This story sort of reminded me of the Matrix scenes from The Deadly Assassin when The Doctor was in that strange world going up against Goth and trying to find out what The Master was up to. I did enjoy watching Peter Capaldi’s Doctor racing around this castle afraid for his life. I really enjoyed the mystery surrounding everything and the clues that he left for himself just added to the whole mystery of the story in general as you wanted to know what was inside room twelve and what bird means. Stuff like that I really enjoy and I really get into the story that way.
Peter Capaldi was really great in this story and his performance in Heaven Sent is the best performance any actor playing The Doctor has ever done. It was amazing how he went from scared to serious in a blink of an eye and every time he confronted the ghost or hybrid just made you shiver with awe especially when he confessed about the hybrid. That was just classic and really well done and he is indeed the best actor to play The Doctor. Plus how strange was it seeing The Doctor really scared. We are not accustomed to seeing this part of him but you got a sense that he was really scared and it came across the screen that way which just gives more indication on the performance of Peter Capaldi.
I also enjoyed him talking to Clara in his mind. Here we get to see how The Doctor thinks and how he figures out how to get out of a situation. This was pretty good and added another dimension of the story as he needed someone to explain something to and if talking to a Clara in his mind helps the audience know what is going on which I am fine with that as it was done well and really added something to the overall story.
I really loved the cliffhanger. When The Doctor gets out of the castle world or simply the confession dial, which we now know what was on the one Missy had, and seeing him on Gallifrey was awesome. That was a nice cliffhanger and now he has indirectly found Gallifrey and what will happen next is anyones guess but it will have us talking all week about it. I just loved it when you had the really mad Doctor tell the Gallifrayan kid that I’m back and will be coming to kick the Time Lords butts. That was really awesome and just had to have you cheering for The Doctor. Heaven Sent is the middle part of the three part Series 9 finale and so far the story is pretty good than most finales’ and let’s hope Hell Bent keeps the story interesting and good. For the most part I did enjoy Heaven Sent but just had a lot of problems with some of the paradoxes that were not explained and the length of it.
Grade C +
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