WATCH ALONG | DOCTOR WHO | 9x11 | Heaven Sent
Added 2023-08-04 14:00:11 +0000 UTCA Few Notes:
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*****
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Comments
He succeeded at poetry. I'd put this hour of television up against any other. It's one of my all time favorites, full stop.
David Blau
2023-08-05 03:22:19 +0000 UTCRespectfully, I disagree that it's filler. Understanding what the Doctor went through in Heaven Sent gives his actions in Hell Bent a supreme depth of meaning and purpose they wouldn't have had otherwise. The Doctor has always said he's going home, "the long way 'round." That's a nice soundbite and all, but it has no punch, no gravitas. This episode provides the punch. People have no practical concept of billions of years; no one has ever lived that long. This is as close as I have ever seen anyone come to portraying the absolute desperation of it, and the Doctor's abject grief and loneliness. As he said in The Girl Who Died, immortality isn't living forever, it's everyone else dying, and this time it was the Doctor's turn to die--over, and over, and over again. It absolutely broke me when I figured out what was going on. It still does.
David Blau
2023-08-05 03:16:43 +0000 UTCWhat an episode!! I still don't fully grasp everything that's going on despite having rewatched it 10+ times. But that's ok because it's SO fantastic!! That reveal at the end of The Doctor being in his confession dial that's on Gallifrey is amazing. And that realization that the Time Lords made Ashlidr/Me get The Doctor to Trap Street, which resulted in Clara's death, is so chilling. The Doctor has spent so long wanting his home back but now he wants to destroy them after what they did. It's such a special episode. Wows me every time!! ๐
Siobhan Linehan
2023-08-05 02:12:22 +0000 UTCJeezโฆ this episode. Just the idea the doctor chose to live not just in fear but trapped in the worst days of his life in the depths of his grief for Clara for millions of years is just heartbreaking. Iโm not sure I got this episode the first time I watched it but I discover more in it every time.
Carys Barnes
2023-08-05 00:31:21 +0000 UTCOh Rachel Talalay! Possibly the best director Dr Who has ever had. She's coming back to direct the next batch of specials in November this year and I couldn't be more excited. Obviously Capaldi, Moffat and Murray Gold also knocked it out of the park with this one too.
Lois Lane
2023-08-04 20:54:19 +0000 UTCIt's lovely to look at. It's lovely to listen to. Capaldi gives a lovely performance. It's still little more than a Filler episode,though. Get over it :D
Ian Smith
2023-08-04 17:24:51 +0000 UTCIn regards to why The Doctor didnt go looking for Gallifrey. Steven Moffat said in an interview He didnt think it would be very interesting just hopping to planet to planet with The Doctor saying "Oop, not Gallifrey" over and over again. He felt a surprise would of been better and I think that look on your face at the end of this episode sums it up well haha. This episode is phenomenal, one of the best in Who history. Peter killed it and showcased why he is such a fantastic actor.
Tommy
2023-08-04 16:04:25 +0000 UTCI consider "Heaven Sent" to be one of the best things Doctor Who has ever done. The script takes a stunningly original idea and works through its implications rigorously, and the production (especially the music) really can't be overpraised. To construct an entire episode as effectively a one-man show is an amazing piece of writing -- it's not surprising that Steven Moffat said this was the hardest script he'd ever had to write. One of the most remarkable things about the episode is that, from a structural point of view, it's actually just a wonderfully elaborate detour between the episode before and the episode after it. But it's such a tour de force it's not surprising that, in an interview in Doctor Who Magazine, Moffat nominated it as one of the three episodes he had written that he was most proud of. The other two were "The Eleventh Hour" and "The Day of the Doctor" -- the two occasions where the external pressure of audience expectations was at its highest. But he explained his attachment to "Heaven Sent" in the following passage (apologies for the length, but it deserves to be quoted in full): "Usually, big dramatic things happen in Doctor Who, then the next week everyone's absolutely fine. I never found a way to have Amy and Rory grieve over their lost baby [after 2011's 'A Good Man Goes to War'], and I still don't know how I would do that. I'd think, 'Well, hang on, they don't lose the baby. The baby turned out to be two other people they already know and love -- that's not the same as losing a child.' You can't say 'They've lost their baby,' because people watching who've *actually* lost babies would, understandably, think, 'No, your baby's fine. Your baby's safe. That's not the same.' You can't portray that fantastical, whimsical sci-fi bereavement as the real thing, when the real thing has been endured by people in the audience. You'd be trivialising real-life tragedy. So I just cut forward several months, and rather ducked the issue -- they processed that not-quite-loss off screen, which I wasn't crazy about. "In 'The Snowmen' [2012], I tried to do the aftermath of the loss of Amy and Rory, but it's a rather romantic one, isn't it? It's the Doctor on a cloud, with a spiral staircase. It's a movie mourning. It's not like real despair. It's the greeting card version. So getting that kind of aftermath -- loss and grief -- right on Doctor Who was on my To Do List. Or on my Failure List, at any rate. They're both very long lists -- I get them muddled. "The problem is, Doctor Who is always about the new adventure, not the aftermath of the last one. Structurally, that's incredibly important to how the show works. So you have to make grief the centre of the story, not a hangover from last week getting in the way of a new adventure. *Grief* has to be the new adventure. ... Essentially, I was thinking, 'What is grief? How do I make grief the monster of the week in Doctor Who?' I thought, 'People always talk about grief as being alone,' so I made the Doctor absolutely alone. Grief comes and finds you every time you stop or rest, so I gave him the Veil. And grief is waking up to the same pain every day, and trying to smash through it, so I gave him a diamond wall to punch for the rest of time. Basically, he wore away a mountain with his tears. So that was an attempt to do aftermath: an insane, sci-fi, operatic version of the Doctor's grief at losing Clara and trying to move on. I can see why people would think it was a gimmicky episode -- God knows, I love a gimmick -- but I was trying for poetry. Tried for poetry, ended up with a gimmick. I've defined myself."
Steven Cooper
2023-08-04 15:42:28 +0000 UTC
