Doctor Who Series 9 First Impressions: Episode 12 (Hell Bent)

(Spoilers abound. If you're "hell bent" on avoiding them, then go watch beforehand. On with the show.)

I shan't apologize.

When I did Before The Flood, I quoted Patrick Troughton. Now I'm going to quote someone who has nothing to do with Doctor Who (unless you believed those old rumors I read about in About Time Volume 5, that she supposedly wrote Kinda and Snakedance); Kate Bush. Take it away, Kate.

I mean that in a positive sense, as well! At this point, I know what I'm about. The episode could be 40 minutes of the most trite shit, but as long as it has superbly done emotional beats involving Doctor and companion I'd still give the fucker a pass. To the episode's benefit, we have like what? A half-hour of stuff that doesn't quite stick the landing? The Gallifrey stuff sort of works but also kind of doesn't, but then again Gallifrey hasn't worked since 1976. This is the best Gallifrey has worked since then, so that's fine. It's all a feint, a setup to the real meat of the story for me. Still, let's do our best to get through the Gallifrey stuff before enjoying the big old surprise dessert. We're back in that barn Moffat loves so much, the Day Of The Doctor/Listen barn. Turns out it was just on the outskirts of one of them Time Lord cities. And here I thought John Hurt dragged the Moment to some random desert moon to blow everything up. Rassilon is back, but he's not Timothy Dalton any more. I didn't even know it was Rassilon until those last lines. It could have been any crusty old ass who didn't like the Doctor. So Gallifrey broke out of their little Cup of Soup bubble right at the ass-end of the universe, and now they want to learn about the Hybrid because they're all scared shitless. Everyone's scared shitless of the Doctor, too; except Rassilon, but he gets his ass banished to the dying embers of the universe. He'll be back one day. Oh yeah, and the Sisterhood of Karn is here for... some... reason. That old lady from the Sisterhood is a fine actress and all, but... why? They don't really do too much. Moffat must really love The Brain Of Morbius or something. Oh yeah, and the Matrix vaults or whatever. Spooky shit. We've got scary Time Lord no-faces, a Dalek begging for death (hey, a Revelation Of The Daleks echo!) and even some Weeping Angels and a Cyberman. They don't do much other than spook. Is that all about Gallifrey? Oh yeah. The general regenerates into a black woman. An on-screen gender/race regeneration change. It's canon now, kids. Good.

Alright, look, I don't give a shit abut Gallifrey in this episode. It's not pointless or anything, in fact it's integral to the setup... but I don't give a shit. It's neat that we're back here after so long, but Doctor Who doesn't need it. What Doctor Who needs is a powerful emotional core, and whoa. Here we go. We're undoing Clara's death from Face The Raven, and using Gallifrey to haul her away from the raven right before she dies, Chrono Trigger-style. I mean, it means more Clara so I'm sort of okay with it. At least, at the point when this happened on first rewatch. Look, even the day after it happened I had accepted Clara's death as a fitting end for me. It was sad, but I was able to accept it. Many others were. The one person who can't, though, is the Doctor. Hence all this taking over Gallifrey stuff has all been a front, using his knowledge of the spooky Hybrid to get the Time Lords to play nice until he could pull Clara from the brink of death. Then he shoots the General in the chest and runs. He lost Clara once before. No. He won't do it again. He will not accept it, even at the risk of time itself unravelling. It'll sort itself out. It has to. He's owed this much.

What we get next is a lovely bit in which Clara learns all about the way the Doctor got out of the confession dial, and how long it took. The perspective that both I, and the Doctor, took from that was that his mental imagining of Clara was letting him be brave enough to keep his mouth shut and be ever defiant in the face of a trillion trillion deaths. Of course, when the real Clara hears that the Doctor put himself through unending hell and disintegration for four and a half billion years, her reaction is more along the lines of holy shit Doctor you fucking idiot why in the fuck would you do that to yourself? Clara didn't ask for that. She died, and he somewhat violated her last requests. He got angry, but he didn't take revenge on Me or the Time Lords. He took his revenge and hate out on himself, and as his best friend, she absolutely didn't want that. Nevertheless, she goes along with his new scheme, and we once again go about things as they started; the Doctor steals a TARDIS and runs away, Clara in tow.

Holy shit oh my god the classic series TARDIS console EEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Sorry. Bit of a moment there. Wow, does that thing look good. Well, from here shit kind of goes bad. Time and the universe are probably going to blow up because the Doctor doesn't want to lose Clara. There's some great Capaldi moments here, particularly when he goes to the end of the universe and proclaims that he answers to nobody now that the universe is a dying ember and Clara had damn well better live. Then come the knocks. She will knock four times, and the one knocking at the end of everything is Me. I do so love Me's speech to the Doctor about Clara's death, mostly because it's a reflection of what all us Clara fans are thinking. Yeah, it was sad and poetic and beautiful, but it happened, Doctor. Deal with it. Of course, the Doctor won't just "deal with it", and that ties back into the Hybrid talk again. Is it Me, who is human with a touch of Mire? Is is the Doctor, and is Moffat about to make the half-human thing canon? No. Of course not. This is Steven Moffat we're talking about, and there's always a subversion. No, the Hybrid is the Doctor and Clara, together. A roaming Time Lord, and a clever and competent human girl, who have taken on aspects of each other. Two dark mirrors, infinitely reflecting one another, their co-dependence and refusal to lose each other so powerful that it threatens the very state of the universe itself. All of this,set up by Missy, the Queen of Chaos, who laughs at the end of time. She's won. The Doctor has darkened himself, all in the name of trying to save his friend. Even here, at the end, though... he realizes his mistake. He took a thing to wipe Clara's memory. He'll scrub her mind of his memory and let her live. Indeed, the framing device for the story is Clara as a waitress in Nevada, while the Doctor tells her final story. Before this aired, the assumption was that waitress Clara was one of her splinters. Now, on first watch, the assumption is that this is what has happened. The Doctor has fucking pulled a Donna Noble on Clara. God damn it.

Except that's not what happens at all. Clara knows. The Doctor respects her enough now to tell her exactly what he's going to do. He's giving her the agency he neglected to give Donna... but Clara refuses. As is her right to refuse. Her past is her own. Besides, she's a mirror of the Doctor. She can do all the shit he can do, and so she pulls a Jon Pertwee and reverses the polarity. So the Doctor and Clara come to an agreement; if they go on, they will tear the universe in two. As wonderful as their friendship is, they can't keep infinitely reflecting each other, or the world will become as shattered glass. So, they play a game of mindwipe Russian Roulette and pull the trigger together... and the Doctor loses. He whispers some last advice to Clara, and with that, he loses his memory of her... except, he can still tell the story to waitress Clara. Or, does he lose his memory of her? He has some vague idea of who she was and the adventures she has, but I don't think he lost it completely. He just needed a little nudge to remember, and waitress Clara helps give him that nudge. One last act of being Doctorish before her end... or is it? Clara Oswald died on the trap street. I accepted that. It is an inevitability, and it has to happen. Eventually. Clara is okay with that too. She accepts the rules. Rules are a fundamental part of the universe... but they're flexible. There's wiggle room. Clara Oswald is a mirror of the Doctor. Just two short years ago, he faced a final and inevitable death. All of the rules suggested that he had to die on Trenzalore. Then he didn't, because that was more interesting. Clara is the same, and why shouldn't she be? She's the mirror of the Doctor. Why shouldn't she get this? Because her name isn't in the title? Because she's an ordinary human? Fuck that. Those are the rules for most of us, but here's our wiggle room. Once in a while, we can bend the rules if if would be interesting. That's just what Clara does here.

Clara Oswald will die in the trap street when she faces the raven. On our screens, she already died. Then she came back, because that was more interesting. She bends the rules, and pulls the ultimate mirror trick; she flies off with Me in an American diner that can travel anywhere in time and space. Clara Who has become a real and tangible thing, and an infinite number of stories can happen with the two before she goes back to face the raven. (Even the Doctor actually speaks the words "Clara who?".) I accepted her death two weeks ago. This is better, and it had me grinning like an idiot. Clara earned this. Many will complain about Moffat's special little snowflake getting special attention over all the other companions. We all wish for better companion exits, but not all of them can go out like this. I accept that. But, every once in a while, can't we have a little fun? We can't do this all the time, but we are owed. Just this once, we are owed our treat of something better. So Clara goes out into the universe, an immortal time traveller in her own right.

The bells of Saint John ring in triumph. On the distant world of Akhaten, the song goes ever on. In 1976, Emma Grayling remembers that ordinary girl she met. Robin Hood and his Merry Men compose an epic ballad to the Lady Oswald. Shona wakes up from a dream she had after falling asleep watching Aliens, a dream of riding in a sleigh with some girl. In distant corners of the universe, across time and space, Clara Oswald has changed the world. Across the CVE of our television screens, Clara Oswald has enriched us all. She earned a better ending, and she gets it as we wave her farewell. Companions come and companions go. There was a time when Amy and Rory were my favorites, and now I barely remember how and why I loved them. Writing about Doctor Who is how I keep my feelings at the time alive. As the Doctor says, stories are just memories that have been forgotten. So too, is the act of blogging about Doctor Who. It is a way of keeping the memories intact, making them stories. After all, we're all stories in the end. This is the end of a chapter for Clara, but more stories could be made. We'll never know, but these words are the way I keep my memories of Clara. A new companion will come. Maybe they'll be even better than before. I don't know. What I do know is that, thanks to my writing, I will never forget Clara Oswald, even as she zips across the universe. There's only one way to sum it up.

Run, you clever girl. I'll always remember you.

Next time: Spoilers, sweetie. It's Christmas.