Okay. We’re here. The two part finale to the season. Clara’s dead and the Doctor is off to fave Ashildr’s mysterious partner. Let’s do this.
Be warned: Spoilers!
1. Everything Lite Episode
This was a minimalist episode in all the great ways. No annoying guest stars. No ham-handed attempts at political commentary. Just the Doctor, a monster, and a bizarre location. And I have to say, the monster in here was a much better one than say… the Eye-Booger Created Monster that I am still having trouble believing was actually a thing that was put on this show.
2. CAPALDI!
A massive boon to the minimalism here is that Capaldi is literally the only actor in this episode (apart from a hallucination of Clara but she got like three lines). As such, there is a lot of monologuing, fourth wall breaking and a full gambit of rage, fear, astonishment, confusion, despair and finally resolve from the actor. There are those actors/actresses who really need someone to bounce off of to project emotional resonance, but not here. While the speech in “The Zygon Inversion” was a bit over the top with the acting (not to mention the contents of it being kinda really self-righteous), there was a proper balance struck here. This is a performance to watch.
3. “I’m Not Scared of Hell. It’s Just Heaven for Bad People.”
I won’t lie, when I started learning about this weird location the Doctor was in my first thought was: “Oh no, the Doctor is stuck in Anor Londo. Really don’t think sonic sunglasses will cut it against Ornstein and Smough!” The medieval aesthetic, rotating architecture, fracture sense of time, scary thing lurking behind a corner. This is totally a location right out of Dark Souls. There is, however, a bit of a plot hole here. Okay, so with each essential “reset” of the architecture, everything from the furniture to the flowers reset as well. Okay, fine. And the Doctor gets himself caught in a loop of death and rebirth without realizing it. Okay. But with each reset, he is chipping away at a super dense material blocking the exit, to the point it takes two billion years worth of resets to finally chip through. My question… why didn’t the material reset too? Maybe there was a line that I missed? Seems very contrived (yes, I’m aware of the show I’m watching!)
4. Long Way Around
Oh. Clever you, Moffat.
Yes, in “Day of the Doctor”, Eleven said he was going home to long way around, and Moffat managed to do that in a way that didn’t involve time travel whatsoever. Yes, when Twelve manages to exit his own personal torture device he is back on Gallifrey. The Time Lords stuck him in that device/castle/thing to get information on the mythical “Hyrbid” that could destroy Gallifrey. And there is supposedly the reveal of what the Hybrid is at the end of this episode and yes, it’s a kind of nod I guess to a certain attempted revival that starred my favorite Doctor.
I’m going to reserve judgment on this until next week’s episode.
5. This Was More Like It
Over the last couple of weeks, I may have given off the impression that I go into Doctor Who wanting to hate the episode. I don’t! It’s just the last few episodes were just very bad to me (okay, “Face the Raven” was okay)! So do you have any idea how happy I am that I not only got to like this episode but like it a lot?! I’m ecstatic!
Having said that, I am still remaining cautious. Why? Because last season’s penultimate episode, “Dark Water”, was an episode I really liked too, but then its sequel “Death in Heaven”, cause all that good will to evaporate. I’m not going to be fooled again! This was a really damn fine episode and I am glad I watched it. But I am going to keep in mind that I’ve been let down before.
