After forcing his way out of his Confession Dial, The Doctor takes on Gallifrey, Hell Bent on saving Clara.
We start this episode with The Doctor entering the diner from The Impossible Astronaut. There he meets a waitress who looks like Clara, and begins telling her a story.
The story follows directly on from the events of Heaven Sent, with The Doctor finding his way back to the barn of his childhood first seen in Day of the Doctor and revisited again in Listen. Here he is treated as a returning hero, a fact that only makes the Timelord High Council even more nervous. After refusing several personal visits of increasing importance, he eventually receives Rassilon himself.
The story follows directly on from the events of Heaven Sent, with The Doctor finding his way back to the barn of his childhood first seen in Day of the Doctor and revisited again in Listen. Here he is treated as a returning hero, a fact that only makes the Timelord High Council even more nervous. After refusing several personal visits of increasing importance, he eventually receives Rassilon himself.
Even negotiations
The Doctor is in no mood to parley though, and he immediately orders Rassilon off "his planet." Rassilon responds by ordering his soldiers to fire on The Doctor. The do, but every one of them elects to miss. This is shortly followed by a mass desertion. Rassilon makes to finish the job with his gauntlet, but is stopped by The General. Cut to a shuttle leaving the planet.
The Timelords still want to know about the Hybrid though, and The Doctor convinces them they need to speak to Clara about it. Using some Timelord jiggery-pokery, they extract Clara from her final moments in order to find out what she knows, her body time looped in its final heartbeat.
Of course it's all a ruse so that The Doctor can save Clara. They run. The Doctor is manic, and you can see he doesn't fully believe what he's attempting will work. But being The Doctor, he tries it anyway. Eventually stealing another TARDIS, he pushes to the end of the universe, trying to break Clara out of the time loop. When they arrive, he finds Ashieldr waiting. She's managed to out live the universe.
She doesn't look a day over a billion
We get treated to some banter about the nature of the Hybrid, with theories flung back and forth. Whilst Ashieldr's theory is supposed to be the one we believe, there is still enough wiggle room to bring something else into play. Perhaps for Christmas. We know River will make an appearance, and she's pretty much a Human/Timelord hybrid. It'd be fun if my bit about Missy came to pass though. Half Timelord, half Cyberman fits the prophesy too.
The Doctor also reveals he plans to use a neuro blocker to erase Clara's memories of him, in much the same way hid did with Donna Noble. After finding this out, Clara forbids it, saying her past is hers, and he has no right to rob her of it. With Clara having supposedly sabotaged the neuro blocker, they both decide to use it, with one of them sure to forget the other.
For a change it is The Doctor who is left abandoned, waking up in the Nevada desert. Eventually it is revealed that the Diner itself is the TARDIS they just stole from Gallifrey, and Clara and Ashieldr set off to return Clara to Gallifrey so that she can die as destined. Of course, Clara notes that because she is not aging at all, they can go "the long way round".
The Doctor returns to his TARDIS, where he receives one final message from Clara, along with his new Sonic Screwdriver. Thank the Gods, we have seen the last of those bloody sunglasses.
The Doctor also reveals he plans to use a neuro blocker to erase Clara's memories of him, in much the same way hid did with Donna Noble. After finding this out, Clara forbids it, saying her past is hers, and he has no right to rob her of it. With Clara having supposedly sabotaged the neuro blocker, they both decide to use it, with one of them sure to forget the other.
For a change it is The Doctor who is left abandoned, waking up in the Nevada desert. Eventually it is revealed that the Diner itself is the TARDIS they just stole from Gallifrey, and Clara and Ashieldr set off to return Clara to Gallifrey so that she can die as destined. Of course, Clara notes that because she is not aging at all, they can go "the long way round".
The Doctor returns to his TARDIS, where he receives one final message from Clara, along with his new Sonic Screwdriver. Thank the Gods, we have seen the last of those bloody sunglasses.
Victory!
All up this was a solid episode that tied everything together without trying too hard. My major issue was that nothing much actually seemed to happen. Much of the episode consisted of The Doctor telling Clara stuff. Or more accurately, The Doctor telling Clara about telling Clara stuff. It was a shame Timothy Dalton couldn't reprise the role of Rassilon. It took me a bit to realise he actually was Rassilon, and not some other Lord President. And now we've had an actual on-screen gender-swapping regeneration. I hope this keeps people satisfied for a while and they stop demanding it of The Doctor.
The whole bit in the Cloisters with random Daleks, Cybermen, and freaking Weeping Angels was a bit ripe. Had the whiff of Too many monsters, that did, especially as they'd just introduced a fairly interesting new Monster in the Sliders, which got rather overshadowed by these cameos. The Matrix is an interesting thing though, an it is clear that this was the technology Missy was using to create the Nethersphere in the Season 8 finale, and that would tie in nicely with my little idea for the Rani too.
Having Clara effectively still "at large" did, as I predicted, somewhat diminish her departure in Face the Raven. That said, how could you not get caught up in thinking about what her and Ashieldr could get up to in a TARDIS?
Not exactly perfection, but not a weak way to go out either.
8/10
Can we fix it?
Not a huge amount to do here, but first up, I'd dump all the additional monsters from the Cloisters. They added nothing but a few poor jump scares. The Sliders themselves are creepy enough, and could provide enough tension as the pair traversed the Cloisters.
I'm really not sure what to do about the big background dumps The Doctor has in this episode though. They are undoubtedly important, but just hearing The Doctor tell Clara stuff isn't exactly story telling at its best.
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