By Steven Moffat
“You
said memories become stories when we forget them. Maybe some of them become
songs.”
The Clara Who series
finale er, wait a minute, The Doctor Who series finale Hell Bent has to go down
as one of the better Moffat finales, but far from great, since the show came
back onto our TV screens back in 2005.
One of the faults and there are many of Steven Moffat is his inability
to give us a properly written series finale without going for the big
production of bringing back tons of characters including the kitchen sink. This time he bridges the series finale along
through three stories to give us a story that wraps up the Clara era pretty well
which we all thought was done two weeks ago in Face the Raven.
The thing about the new
series is that a companion just cannot leave the show. They either leave and come back or get killed
and get resurrected and fly around time and space with an immortal in a TARDIS
in the shape of an American Diner. This
is also a trend in most Sci-Fi shows and done all the time in comic books. When a character dies just wait a moment they
will come back alive. At some point no
one will believe them anymore and it will just be looked at as a ratings grab
as it will be a massive publicity event to get people to watch. Now with Clara I thought she should have
stayed dead. Her death in Face the Raven
was heart-breaking and a shocking end.
Now we have a story where she comes back and apparently cannot die
somewhat like Owen Harper from Torchwood which is too bad as I preferred that
send off and I just wish companions could just leave and not come back or stay
dead. At least Adric stayed dead.
I found it hard that the
all-powerful Rassilon just got up and left Gallifrey without giving up much of
a fight. Really the guy with a power
glove that kills Time Lords just leaves with his tail between his legs. Really found this hard to take that he would
leave because The Doctor says too. This
is minor and not that big of a deal but it wasn't really needed in this
episode. It seemed more like pandering
and a filler as this first part of the story wasn’t needed as the story ended
up being about saving Clara and not about stopping the Time Lords at all for
what they did to him and Clara. In my
mind Gallifrey was wasted. Here was a
golden chance to have a story set on Gallifrey having Rassilon as the main baddie
and then bringing Gallifrey back. You
still could have the Hybrid in it as The Doctor was protecting ME since he made
her The Hybrid.
With the revelation that
this three-part arc was about saving Clara really cheapened Heaven Sent as we
saw The Doctor being tortured about who or what the Hybrid was when in fact it
turned out to be The Doctor and Clara or was it, we never really did get that
answer even when The Doctor confessed to being it but then why would he run
away from himself. To me it felt like we
did not need the events in Heaven Sent because if he wanted to save Clara he
would have just said some fake lie about the Hybrid and ended up on Gallifrey
instead of being in there for 4 and a half Billion years. That’s a long time to wait to save someone
and just doesn’t make much sense to me why The Doctor would torture himself
like that when he could have just lied to get out of the Confessional Dial.
This story was a quandary
for me as I did not overly enjoy it but nor did I hate it. There were bits that I did like for example
The Doctor staring down the Time Lords outside the cottage and the final
farewell between The Doctor and Clara. I
thought most of the story from where The Doctor meets up with ME again was
pretty good and it gave you a good sense of what was going to happen and if you
didn’t guess from the beginning of Hell Bent that The Doctor would be the one
losing his memory of Clara well then it would be even sadder moment for
you.
I also really liked the
old school TARDIS console room. I really
liked that they recreated the old Hartnell era design and it looked really
good. I would actually welcome seeing
that one used again and since they have a set for it maybe they will.
Like I said above I wasn’t
all that crazy about Clara more or less becoming a time traveler and hybrid
immortal or Doctor like which was the complaint a lot of fans had about her
character. Sometimes it felt like the
Clara show with her companion The Doctor.
It did feel like that and Steven Moffat most likely gave those fans a slap
with her and ME going off in their own TARDIS.
Whatever that was for one thing that’s for certain Clara will be gone
now and the show looks to be rebooting with a new companion and let’s hope the
show becomes more Doctor centric in Series 10.
Hell Bent closes a really great Series 9 as every story was pretty
strong with a few exceptions and they tried different things some good and some
bad but that is to be expected but at least they tried going in a different
direction as we saw with the finale.
Grade B
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