C+Q - Heaven Sent (2015)
If you're reading this when it first went up on the website, you'll know that I've jumped out of sequence a bit with my Series 9 reviews. There are two very good reasons for that: reason number 1 is that I'm dreading having to write about Sleep No More because it was so shit that I want to delay it as long as possible. Reason number 2 is that I'm dreading having to write about Heaven Sent because it was so good that I want to get it out of the way.
Personally, I think both writing and reading a solid page full of criticism or praise can be incredibly monotonous and boring which is why with every review I challenge myself to write something good and something bad about everything. That way it helps me keep an open mind and a somewhat fair and balanced viewpoint. But then we get to shit like this and I honestly dread having to write about it because I just know it's going to devolve into a big long list of everything good that happened in the episode. Heaven Sent was really, really, really, really, really fucking good. It's Peter Capaldi's best performance as the Doctor to date, Steven Moffat's best script for the show in years, and it reminded me why Doctor Who inspired me to be a writer in the first place. Those are my honest and true feelings about this episode, but some people might (completely fairly) label me hyperbolic or easy to please for expressing them. So, that being said, here's a paragraph of qualifying statements.
First things first: the term 'experimental' doesn't mean 'good'. Sleep No More is experimental and I hated that one. The hype that surrounded Heaven Sent on release focused on it only having a single actor, Peter Capaldi, for 99% of its run time, but that doesn't automatically score it bonus points for effort. My opinion of this episode has nothing to do with the fact that Capaldi is the only one in it. I think he's great in it, but I've said that of Capaldi in episodes where he's part of a large ensemble cast. The other big qualifying statement I have to make is that the ending cliffhanger does not in any way influence my opinion. A two second shot of Gallifrey does not immediately make 55 minutes worth of television good. With that out of the way, let's talk about what DOES make television good.
Something I've noticed about Steven Moffat's interpretation of the Doctor is that he treats the character less like a vast mythological entity like RTD did and more like a fixed finite series of absolute statements. Moffat has the ability to look at a Venn diagram of all thirteen different interpretations of the character and pick out the core fundamental principles that make them tick, an approach best summarised by Missy in The Witch's Familiar: "It doesn't matter which face he was wearing, they're all the Doctor to me." Face the Raven asked the question 'why is the Doctor so indestructible when his friends are so fragile?', and the answer, as we've learned from The Witch's Familiar, is that the Doctor always knows he's going to win. In a way, that's what this entire series has been about; the Doctor's very first words this year were "Your chances of survival are about one in a thousand. So here's what you do. You forget the thousand, and you concentrate on the one." This concept is so absolutely true of the Doctor and makes so much sense based on what we've seen on him before that I can't believe it hasn't always been canon. That's what I mean by making the Doctor a series of absolute statements. From 'the Doctor lies' to 'he always knows he's going to win' to 'he hates endings', Moffat's Doctor is by far the most well-defined version of the character in terms of his personality traits. In Heaven Sent, the idea that he knows he's always going to win is taken a step further with his Mind TARDIS (by the way, the lighting in these sequences is spectacular. This is the best that set has ever looked) and the notion that he egotistically imagines himself showing off to his companion as he thinks of a way to escape death. Again, this is a concept that works so well with what we've seen of the character before now that I can't believe it's taken us more than 50 years to see it be made part of the text. Steven Moffat clearly understands this character and never has that been more evident than in Heaven Sent, an episode where the Doctor would rather lock himself in a time loop for millions of years until he chisels away a diamond wall with his bare hands than ever admit defeat.
This brings me to the highlight of the episode: the montage. One possible criticism you could level at this episode is that the montage is way too repetitive and goes on for way too long, but while that's a perfectly valid opinion to have, I personally never wanted it to end. For me, the editing, the music, the acting, and the rapid-fire realisations that struck me one by one of how everything fit together combined into a masterpiece of visual storytelling. I've been thinking about the montage a lot since I first saw it. The incredible score, the Doctor's story about the bird, and the stunning imagery have really lingered with me and it'll creep into my head while I'm walking down the road to the shops or idly checking Facebook (my life's two settings). Rarely will a piece of television have such an impact on me (I think the last thing that did was Episode 6 of Cucumber and before that it was the ending of Breaking Bad) and it just reminded me that Steven Moffat is one of the best writers Doctor Who has ever had. By now, after the many mistakes of Series 6 and 7, I'm ready for a new showrunner to take over. That being said, Moffat's scripts have really improved since Capaldi became the Doctor and I always look forward to seeing his episodes. Simply put, episodes like Asylum of the Daleks are why I want Moffat to leave, but episodes like Heaven Sent are why I'll miss him when he does. If Steven Moffat wasn't already Doctor Who's showrunner, Heaven Sent would be cited as one of the reasons to make him showrunner.
It's at this point I'd like to take some time out to praise the often ignored work of Murray Gold. He's been responsible for the music of Doctor Who for over a decade, so when I hear a score by him that sounds like nothing he's ever done before it speaks volumes about his sheer talent. Despite having worked on the show since 2005 he still puts all he can into every episode and never relaxes into a comfortable safe zone of recognisable themes and melodies when he so easily could. From the energetic violin of the Sherlockian diving sequence to the triumphant and heartbreaking crescendos of the previously mentioned montage, Murray Gold nails every note here. Every single moment of 21st century Doctor Who owes some of its power to this guy and he really deserves to be acknowledged more often.
I'll stop this review now because I know if I don't I'll just keep covering it in positive adjectives until they cease to have meaning. Basically, Heaven Sent is the best episode of Series 9 and the Capaldi era, by far.
The 'next time' trailer for Hell Bent seems to be hinting that the Doctor is gonna regenerate next week. I highly doubt that and I hope the length of Capaldi's tenure surpasses even Tom Baker's but if he is going to regenerate at the end of his second series, Heaven Sent is a hell of a note to go out on.
Next: Hell Bent