Nothing’s sad until it’s over. Then everything is.
The Twelfth Doctor
Synopsis
If you took everything from him, betrayed him, trapped him, and broke both his hearts… how far might the Doctor go?
Returning to Gallifrey, the Doctor faces the Time Lords in a struggle that will take him to the end of time itself. Who is the Hybrid? And what is the Doctor’s confession?
Review
Hell Bent is a story that has to follow one of the best episodes in the show’s history. Like The Twin Dilemma before it, Hell Bent suffers because of this. I am not going to sit here and state that it is anywhere near as good as Heaven Sent, but I am going to be upfront and honest with you: I like Hell Bent. It is by no means Steven Moffat’s best series closer, but it is a lot better than it’s reputation would have you believe.
Suggestion, sir. We could talk to him.
Words are his weapons.
When did they stop being ours?
The General and Rassilon
I understand the frustration about Gallifrey. People feel that Steven Moffat brought back Gallifrey to do nothing with it, but I think that the opposite is true. Gallifrey has never been an interesting basis for Doctor Who stories – and before the Gallifrey listeners get on my back, that series is great, but you don’t need the Doctor to tell compelling stories about being on Gallifrey. There is also an element of complaining that Moffat brought Gallifrey back only for his successor to kill the Time Lords off again, as revealed in Spyfall, Part Two. I think it’s quite disingenuous to suggest that Moffat knew that this would happen. It is also pretty established that the Doctor wants to get off Gallifrey almost as soon as he sets foot there – there’s no suggestion in The Deadly Assassin that the Doctor intends to stick around for longer than is necessary. It’s showing us how far the Doctor will go when pushed, that he will go somewhere that he really doesn’t want to go, to try and get his friend back. He knows what he wants from the Time Lords and once getting the human compatible neural block and Clara from Trap Street, then he immediately wants to leave.
To be fair, despite having the technology to do so, the Time Lords are otherwise powerless, abandoned at the edge of the universe, saved from the Time War but a shadow of their former selves. That’s never clearer than in the depiction of Rassilon, who we last saw played by Timothy “James Bond” Dalton, wearing gauntlets capable of resetting humanity from the Master’s schemes, here he is played by Donald Sumpter. That’s not a slight on Donald Sumpter, but they are two very different actors. Whilst both have the bombast, Dalton has the swagger to suggest he has something to back it up, meanwhile, the return of the Doctor makes this Rassilon deeply afraid. That’s something that’s interesting about Doctor Who and the premise of regeneration; the Twelfth Doctor is the same man who fought at the Fall of Arcadia, as the General and some members of the Time Lord army recall, having fought with him, but having been through three incarnations since then, his reaction on returning home is unanticipated. The Doctor is able to lead a bloodless coup, from his starting position in the wild lands, in a move that is similar to westerns, and director Rachel Talalay certainly mirrors this.
The weakest part of Hell Bent is arguably not entirely this episode’s fault. Being a series finale, it has to wrap up the series long arc of the Hybrid, a legendary being destined to stand in the ruins of Gallifrey. The series has seen hybrids keep cropping up, from the Dalek-Time Lord hybrids (The Witch”s Familiar), to Osgood and her Zygon counterpart (The Zygon Invasion/The Zygon Inversion), via Ashildr/Me, a Human/Mire hybrid introduced in The Girl Who Died. Hell Bent does not really definitively answer who or what the Hybrid is. Instead, Steven Moffat uses this as a way to show just how dangerous the pairing of a Doctor and companion could be to the universe if allowed to continue unchecked. It’s certainly an interesting idea for a series arc, but it is not the most satisfying payoff and Hell Bent suffers as a result. The Hybrid is ultimately a matter of interpretation; if you want to believe that it is Ashildr, or the Doctor and Clara, or what the Matrix shows, a mixture of Time Lord and Dalek, that’s for the audience member to decide, and to Moffat’s credit, it probably works equally well whatever way you read it. It’s a bold step, but one that is a bit out of the blue for a show that has tried to contain it’s arcs to one series and tie up the majority of loose ends. This one is much more ambigious, and it is something that Big Finish have started to play around with this in A Genius for War last year, seeing Davros trying to use the Time Lord factor to create this creature. Hell Bent isn’t concerned about wrapping up a series arc, though. It’s about Clara leaving the Doctor.
You are monsters. Here you are – hiding away at the end of time, do you even know why? Because you are hated. By everybody. And by nobody more than me.
Clara Oswald
This is not the point at which I feel that Clara should have left the Doctor. I personally feel that Last Christmas is a much more logical and sensible choice of stories for her to leave and I was surprised when Jenna Coleman signed on for Series 9. Face the Raven offers her a good second chance at a departure, but the show again doesn’t take it, with Hell Bent being her final story. I’m not a massive fan of how Clara is brought back in this episode – I was of the belief that this would be the final Clara echo that the Doctor has somehow managed to track down when this was first broadcast – but Jenna Coleman does knock her performance out of the park as Clara in this story. That’s also bolstered with a really powerful performance from Peter Capaldi and good direction from Rachel Talalay. Like all of Moffat’s finales, there is a lot of dialogue, but Talalay’s direction means that your attention never drops for a second from this.
Capaldi is very powerful in those opening scenes on Gallifrey, not saying a word until he tells Rassilon to get off his planet, and then proceeds to isolate himself, leaving himself with a council of just the General and Ohila. It is not an easy performance to pull off; this is the Doctor pushed to an extent that we have arguably never seen on screen before and he does things. like shooting the General, which feel like they go against the very core of the character. Moffat takes this opportunity to revisit the decision to wipe Donna’s memory of the Doctor, by reversing this and making the Twelfth Doctor forget Clara. It’s an interesting take on the Doctor being able to mindwipe people, and Moffat feels as though he doesn’t agree with the end of Donna’s series here. Capaldi and Coleman are superb in that scene, which is fraught with emotion, and in the diner scene afterwards, leading to that triumphant closing sequence which sees the Doctor return to his TARDIS and reclaim the character of the Doctor.
Verdict:Hell Bent is possibly the weakest of the Moffat series finales, but it does manage to be a compelling story, even if it leaves the audience with more questions than it answers. 7/10
Cast: Peter Capaldi (The Doctor), Jenna Coleman (Clara Oswald), Donald Sumpter (The President), Ken Bones (The General), Maisie Williams (Ashildr), T’Nia Miller (Female General), Malachi Kirby (Gastron), Clare Higgins (Ohila), Linda Broughton (The Woman), Martin T. Sherman (Man), Jami Reid-Quarrell, Nick Ash and Ross Mullen (Wraiths) and Nicholas Briggs (Voice of the Daleks).
Writer: Steven Moffat
Director: Rachel Talalay
Producer: Peter Bennett
Composer: Murray Gold
Original Broadcast Date: 5th December 2015
Behind the Scenes
The General’s regeneration marks a number of firsts. It is the first regeneration in the revived series to show the regeneration taking place on someone who is lying down, as well as the first to depict a transition from a male to female actor and a white to black actor.
This story also marks only the second different TARDIS interior seen in the revived series, following the junkyard TARDIS built in The Doctor’s Wife.
Rachel Talalay wanted to get Timothy Dalton back to play Rassilon, however, he was busy filming Penny Dreadful.
Cast Notes
Donald Sumpter had previously played Enrico Casali in The Wheel in Space and Commander Ridgeway in The Sea Devils.
T’Nia Miller played Mrs Maitland in Mind of the Hodiac.
This marks Jami Reid-Quarrell’s fourth appearance in this series, having played Colony Sarff in The Magician’s Apprentice and The Witch’s Familiar, as well as the Veil in Heaven Sent.
Ross Mullan had previously played a Silent in The Time of the Doctor and the Teller in Time Heist.
Best Moment
I think that it’s a bit too long to refer to as a moment, but I really love that sequence with the Doctor out in the wilderness of Gallifrey, with Capaldi not speaking a word word until Rassilon appears outside the barn.
Best Quote
There was a saying, sir, in the Time War.
A saying?
First thing you notice about the Doctor of War is he’s unarmed. For many, it’s also the last.
The Impossible Blog 
One thought on “Hell Bent”