Hell Bent (Doctor Who)

259c – "Hell Bent"
Doctor Who episode
Promotional image for the episode
Cast
Doctor Peter Capaldi (Twelfth Doctor)
Companion Jenna Coleman (Clara Oswald)
Guest Donald Sumpter – The President Ken Bones – The General Maisie Williams – Ashildr T'nia Miller – Female General Malachi Kirby – Gastron Clare Higgins – Ohila Linda Broughton – The Woman Martin T. Sherman – Man Jami Reid-Quarrell, Nick Ash, Ross Mullen – Wraiths Nicholas Briggs – Voice of the Dalek
Production
Directed by	Rachel Talalay
Written by	Steven Moffat
Script editor	Nick Lambon
Produced by	Peter Bennett
Executive producer(s)	Steven Moffat Brian Minchin
Music by	Murray Gold
Series	Series 9
Running time	3rd of 3-part story, 60 minutes
First broadcast	5 December 2015 (2015-12-05)
Chronology
← Preceded by "Heaven Sent" Followed by → "The Husbands of River Song"

"Hell Bent" is the twelfth and final episode of the ninth series of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, and the third and final episode of the three-part finale of this series. It was first broadcast on BBC One on 5 December 2015.

This episode sees the return of Ohila and the Sisterhood of Karn after previously appearing in the ninth series premiere "The Magician's Apprentice". This episode also sees the return of Gallifrey and the Time Lords, after last appearing in "The Day of the Doctor", while also briefly featuring the Daleks, the Weeping Angels, and the Cybermen.

Plot

In Nevada, the Doctor enters a diner and encounters a waitress physically identical to Clara. He begins to tell her a "story" about Clara; neither appears to recognise the other. The episode then flashes back to Gallifrey, where the Doctor has escaped from his Confession Dial, setting off the Cloister Bells in the city that alert the Time Lord President, the High Council, and the Sisterhood of Karn. The President attempts to have the Doctor imprisoned and arrested, but others, including the Gallifreyan military, see him as a war hero, and instead they help to exile the President, who is revealed to be Rassilon, and the High Council. The Doctor learns that he had been trapped in the Confession Dial for over 4 billion years by Rassilon, for fear that the Doctor was the Hybrid of the Gallifreyan prophecy that would conquer Gallifrey and stand in its ruins. The General and Ohila attempt to learn more about the Hybrid from the Doctor, but the Doctor asserts that they must ask Clara Oswald about it.

The Doctor has the Time Lords use an "extraction chamber" to retrieve Clara from her timeline just before the instant of her death, with her biological processes suspended in a time loop to stop her from dying, keeping her alive but leaving her without a pulse and unable to age. The General attempts to explain the situation to Clara, but the Doctor steals his sidearm and, after confirming that he can still regenerate, shoots him to cover his and Clara's escape. The Doctor takes a neuro block from the lab before the pair flee to the Cloisters containing the Matrix, the computer system that serves as a repository of the knowledge of dead Time Lords. While looking for the exit and avoiding the Cloister Wraiths that protect it, the Doctor tells Clara about one Time Lord who managed to escape the Cloisters, leaving him mad. Clara recognises this was the Doctor himself, having learned of the prophecy of the Hybrid from the wraiths that would lead him to leave Gallifrey in the stolen Type 40 TARDIS. The newly-regenerated female General and Ohila give chase and attempt to convince Clara to come with them and for the Doctor to tell them what he knows. Clara turns the tables, distracting them long enough for the Doctor to steal a new TARDIS from the workshop below the Cloister, just as he did when he originally left Gallifrey.

The Doctor attempts to take Clara far enough away from Gallifrey that she will break away from the time loop and regain her heartbeat, with the Doctor hoping that he can escape having to return her to the moment of her death, despite potentially damaging time itself in the process. When it becomes apparent that Clara's timeline is not readjusting, the Doctor pilots the stolen TARDIS to the extreme end of the Universe, minutes before it is due to totally collapse. Having travelled only in time, not space, the TARDIS has materialised in the ruins of Gallifrey. The Doctor answers a knock at the door and finds Ashildr waiting for him, having lived through the whole lifetime of the universe and becoming the last immortal being left. He accuses her of being the Hybrid, being a human modified with Mire technology. After dismissing the idea that the hybrid may instead be half-Time Lord and half-human, Ashildr presents her own theory on the Hybrid's identity: that the Doctor and Clara together are the Hybrid, since they are so alike, each pushing the other to potentially catastrophic actions. The Doctor then reveals his intention to erase Clara's memories of him, hoping that if she is left on Earth without memory of the Doctor the Time Lords will not be able to find her.

Clara, who has been listening to them from inside the TARDIS, attempts to reverses the polarity of the neuro blocker using the Doctor's sonic sunglasses, so that it will backfire on the Doctor. When the Doctor and Ashildr return, Clara reveals she had watched them, and tells the Doctor that she is happy to accept her death but insists on retaining her memory. The Doctor doubts that Clara has successfully reversed the function of the neuro blocker, but concedes that he has gone too far to save Clara, having become the Hybrid that he feared he would become in the process. The two agree to activate it together, not knowing which one of them will be affected. The device affects the Doctor, who says his goodbyes to Clara before passing out. The Doctor wakes in the Nevada desert with no idea how he had arrived or any idea who Clara is.

In the present, managing to piece together everything about Clara except what she looks like, the Doctor finishes telling his story to the waitress, who encourages him to keep going. She then goes to a back room, revealing Ashildr and the TARDIS console; the diner is in fact the new TARDIS the Doctor stole, and the waitress is indeed Clara herself. The TARDIS departs, leaving the Doctor behind and revealing his own TARDIS, still covered with Rigsy's painted tribute to Clara. Ashildr reports that the chameleon circuit isn't working, so their TARDIS is stuck in the form of an American diner. Clara declares her intent to return to Gallifrey to die and restore the timeline, as her death is a fixed point in time. But since she is now ageless, she decides to "take the long way around", and sets off with Ashildr to travel the universe.

Inside his own TARDIS, the Doctor puts on his own coat and finds a message from Clara on his chalkboard: "Run you clever boy, and be a doctor". Taking heed, the TARDIS tosses him a new sonic screwdriver, and the Doctor closes the doors with a snap of his fingers, ready to continue his adventures.

Continuity

When the Doctor first walks into the diner, Foxes' version of "Don't Stop Me Now" is heard playing, first heard in "Mummy on the Orient Express".

When the Doctor first arrives on Gallifrey, he returns to the barn on the Dry Lands where he spent time as a child, as seen in "Listen", and would later be where he debates the use of the Moment in "The Day of the Doctor".

The Cloister Wars were mentioned by Missy in "The Magician's Apprentice", along with the Doctor stealing "the moon and the President's wife." The Doctor sets the record straight in this episode, albeit inadvertently in his babbling when reunited with Clara after over four billion years, claiming that it was his daughter, not his wife, and that he did not steal the moon, he 'lost' it.

This is the first episode since The End of Time to feature Rassilon. He was first mentioned in The Deadly Assassin and made his first appearance in the twentieth anniversary special "The Five Doctors".

The Doctor claims he rescued Clara because he has "a duty of care", a theme first mentioned in "Under the Lake".

The TARDIS that the Doctor and Clara steal to escape the Cloisters is modelled in its interior as to the original TARDIS from the original series as seen in An Unearthly Child. The outside is also the same as the exterior of the Doctor's TARDIS when he fled Gallifrey as shown in "The Name of the Doctor".

When Ashildr knocks on the TARDIS's door, she knocks four times, which the Doctor points out. This is a reference to the Tenth Doctor's regeneration and the prophecy stating "He will knock four times" just before his death.

Ashildr refers to the Doctor as possibly being half-human and thus may be the Hybrid. The Eighth Doctor made a similar statement about his lineage from the 1996 television movie.

When the Doctor decides to wipe Clara's memory of himself to save her, the Doctor mentions he has done it before, telepathically, referring to the Tenth Doctor's wiping Donna Noble's memory of him and her travels in the TARDIS in "Journey's End".

Clara states she "reversed the polarity" of the memory wipe device, a phrase most associated with the Third Doctor, but also used by the Fifth, Tenth, Eleventh and Twelfth Doctors as well.

The Doctor recognizes the diner as the same one he visited in his prior incarnation in 1968 in "The Impossible Astronaut" with companions Amy Pond and Rory Williams.

At the end of the episode, a new sonic screwdriver is introduced, the first appearance of one since "The Witch's Familiar".

Production

The read through for the episode took place on 4 August 2015, and filming began on 10 August 2015. The external scenes were shot over three days in Fuerteventura during late August.

Cast notes

Maisie Williams, who played Ashildr in "The Girl Who Died" / "The Woman Who Lived" and "Face the Raven", appeared in this episode, as did Ken Bones, who reprised his role from "The Day of the Doctor" and Claire Higgins, who played Ohila. Donald Sumpter previously appeared as Enrico Casali in "The Wheel in Space" and as Commander Ridgeway in "The Sea Devils". He also appeared in "The Eternity Trap", a story from spin-off series The Sarah Jane Adventures, playing Erasmus Darkening. Jami Reid-Quarrell returned as a Wraith, after previously playing Colony Sarff in "The Magician's Apprentice" / "The Witch's Familiar", as well as the Veil in "Heaven Sent".

Reception

The episode was watched by 4.47 million viewers overnight in the UK, a 20.0% audience share.

Critical reception

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
Rotten Tomatoes (Tomatometer)
Rotten Tomatoes (Average Score)
The A.V Club	A-
Paste Magazine
SFX Magazine
TV Fanatic
IndieWire
IGN	9.3
New York Magazine
Radio Times

"Hell Bent" received positive reviews. In his review for Digital Spy, Morgan Jeffery said the episode was "at points thrilling and affecting" but "it's the shaky climax that people will remember, and unfortunately that could end up overshadowing the episode's (many and various) good points." Den of Geek's Simon Brew thought the episode was "a coherent, nerdy, often brilliant, sometimes a little frustrating, but always watchable piece of television".

External links

• "Hell Bent" at the BBC Doctor Who homepage
• "Hell Bent" on Tardis Wiki, the Doctor Who Wiki
• Template:Brief
• "Hell Bent (Doctor Who)" at IMDb