It was an thrilling new house for such well-worn characters to play in, and it took the season to some electrifying locations, culminating tragically with Clara’s hubris catching up together with her in “Face the Raven,” and the Physician’s hubris catching up with him in “Heaven Despatched” and “Hell Bent.”
Peter Capaldi’s Run Options An Epic Not-Epic Conclusion
One in every of many putting issues about what was successfully a three-part season finale was how totally different every of the installments felt from one another. By way of format, “Face The Raven” principally functioned like a conventional episode of the present, and its “alien lure road” conceit might simply have made for a memorable standalone journey, with the characters investigating a thriller in a wierd new location, assembly varied weirdos. However as soon as Clara took the chronolock from Rigsy, issues began to construct up a sickening velocity, main inexorably to the companion’s genuinely upsetting – if visually poetic – loss of life.
It’s essential to level out right here that the episode was written by Sarah Dollard, making a massively spectacular Physician Who debut – it’s truthfully ludicrous that she’s solely been introduced again for one episode since. Analysing “Face the Raven” as a part of Steven Moffat’s total design for season 9 doesn’t imply minimising Dollard’s work or giving Moffat undue credit score, it’s merely a reality of the showrunner mannequin that he was accountable for the general form and thematic / character thrust of the season, and would clearly have had a hand in shaping episodes he didn’t really write.
The tragic ending to “Face the Raven” led immediately into “Heaven Despatched,” which – even in a season containing a discovered footage episode – stretched the present’s format additional than ever earlier than. Quite than a “Physician lite” episode (the place the titular character options both sparingly or under no circumstances, normally attributable to manufacturing logistics), this was a “Physician solely” episode, with Peter Capaldi commanding the display screen for practically an hour in a mind-bending, baroque exploration of grief. Author, star, director, and manufacturing workers all introduced their A-game to an experiment that would have been disastrous, the form of experiment that you just solely get when a inventive staff has the talent – and confirmed success fee – to justify astronomical ranges of confidence.
Finale “Hell Bent,” whereas structurally extra conventional than its predecessor, was nonetheless a wierd and probably alienating proposition. Earlier season finales had seen the universe destroyed by an exploding TARDIS, all of time being squashed collectively, the Physician defending a planet from an countless siege, and the return of the Cybermen (together with a gender-swapped Grasp). However “Hell Bent,” with its ostentatiously lengthy scenes by which the Physician doesn’t say a single phrase, wasn’t about returning villains. It wasn’t about Gallifrey or the Time Lords, regardless of that includes them closely, or the (arguably half-arsed) “hybrid” plotline.
It wasn’t even actually about revenge, regardless of the Physician’s threats in “Heaven Despatched.” Finally, it was in regards to the Physician saving his greatest pal and going too far within the course of, and at last realising that it was too harmful for them to journey collectively. It was bizarre and uncomfortable and bittersweet, and rooted fully in character, fairly than epic spectacle.
