In which an amnesiac Doctor finds himself at a lonely diner, situated in the middle of the Nevada Desert. The waitress is Clara - but he does not recognise her. He tells her what he thinks is just a story...
On Gallifrey, the Doctor makes for the isolated barn where he spent time as a child. In the Capitol, the Cloister Bells are ringing constantly. President Rassilon wonders why he has not come directly to see him. The Time Lords are being visited by Ohila, leader of the Sisterhood of Karn, who attempts to advise him on how to handle the Doctor. He, meanwhile, has befriended the local people, but still won't go to the Capitol. Rassilon orders his General to send Chancellery Guards to fetch him. The Doctor refuses to go, and the Guard Captain, Gastron, refuses to use force against him, so Rassilon then sends representatives of the High Council. Again, the Doctor silently ignores them.
The President and the General then go to see him in person. Rassilon attempts to use force, but finds his troops disobeying him. The Doctor is regarded as a hero of the Time War to them. The General also refuses to follow the President.
Soon after, the Doctor is back in the Capitol, in the chambers of the High Council. They, meanwhile, have been forced into exile with Rassilon.
The General informs the Doctor that all of the Matrix prophesies warn of the coming of the Hybrid, which will signal the destruction of Gallifrey. The Doctor orders him to take him to an extraction chamber, which he uses to pinpoint the exact moment Clara was killed. Ohila joins them. He removes Clara from time in the split second before the Raven / Chronolock attacked. Clara is therefore still alive, but existing only in this single moment of time. This falls between heartbeats, as she discovers when she realises that she does not have any. When the General realises that the Doctor has no intention of returning her to the Trap Street to allow history to take its course, the Doctor snatches a gun from one of the guards. Confirming first that he is not in his final regeneration, the Doctor shoots the General and flees the chamber with Clara. The General regenerates into a younger female body.
The Doctor and Clara make for the Cloisters beneath the Capitol. Here they find a number of alien species - Daleks, Cybermen and Weeping Angels - which have previously attempted to infiltrate the Matrix. They have been captured and integrated into the Time Lord database. Also here are the "ghosts" of deceased Time Lords who have become part of the Matrix on their demise, via the APC Net. These are known as "Cloister Wraiths".
The General and Ohila are on their way down with Gastron to arrest them. Ohila knows that the Doctor has visited the Cloister once before as a boy - one of the only people to do so and emerge unscathed.
He tells Clara he knows of a secret way out of the area, which the Wraiths had told him about. They had also told him about the Hybrid, but not who or what it was.
Clara is shocked by the Doctor's actions - unhappy that he has resorted to violence.
He finds a maintenance hatch as the General, Ohila and Gastron arrive. They are unable - and unwilling - to enter the Cloister and can only address the Doctor from the entrance.
On hearing of the Doctor's billions of years trapped in his own Confession Dial, Clara loses sympathy with them, accusing them of being monsters.
This TARDIS is in its default form, appearing as a plain metal cylinder, and the interior is of the design which the Doctor had employed in his earliest incarnations. They have left the time zone in which Gallifrey is located, and the Doctor thinks that Clara should now have her heartbeat back again. He is unhappy to learn that she hasn't. He thinks the problem will be remedied as they move further from Gallifreyan time, but the Chronolock tattoo remains on her neck. They have arrived at the very end of the universe. Both are surprised to hear a knock at the TARDIS doors. Ordering Clara to remain in the ship, the Doctor goes outside. He finds himself in the crumbling ruins of the Cloisters, with the stars breaking up all around them. Sitting on a chair, watching the spectacle, is Me - the last survivor of the decaying cosmos. She has protected herself in a gravity bubble.
Clara uses the Doctor's sonic sunglasses to switch on the scanner to see what he is up to. The Doctor and Me discuss the Hybrid. He believes that it is her - the combination of human with Mire technology. She in turn thinks it is him - possibly half-human, which explains his preoccupation with Earth. She then tells him her real theory - that the Hybrid is not a single individual but two people, inextricably joined: a powerful Time Lord, and his human companion, who acts as his moral compass. Together, their recklessness is dangerous. She thinks this is why Missy had first brought the Doctor and Clara together. Me warns him of what harm the two of them may do next. The Doctor tells her that he is going to erase Clara's memories of him, not only to destroy the Hybrid but to prevent the Time Lords from tracing them. He is unaware that Clara is listening to all this in the TARDIS.
She quickly turns off the scanner as the Doctor brings Me into the ship.
The Doctor tells Clara of what he plans to do, as he thinks she has the right to know. She is unhappy at this. She warns that she has reversed the polarity of the neural block device which will erase her memories - so that it is he who will be affected. The Doctor doubts this is possible. Me watches as they use the device. It transpires that Clara was right, and it is the Doctor who collapses, his memories of her being taken away.
They take him to Earth and leave him in the desert to be picked up as a hitchhiker - taken by a truck driver to the diner where Clara is posing as the waitress. The Doctor is aware of a gap in his memories. He knows of a person named Clara, but not what she looks like. She goes through the back doors of the diner - into the TARDIS console room. The Doctor finds the diner dematerialising around him, leaving him alone in the middle of the desert. He then sees his own ship, its exterior still covered in Rigsy's painting. He notices the portrait of the woman from the diner - still unaware that it is Clara.
Inside, the console issues him with a new Sonic Screwdriver. The TARDIS leaves.
The other ship, piloted by Clara and Me, sets out to explore the universe. Clara knows that she will have to return to Gallifrey eventually, to allow history to resume its course, but they are in no hurry to do this any time soon...
Hell Bent was written by Steven Moffat, and was first broadcast on Saturday 5th December, 2015.
It brings Series 9 to a conclusion, and rounds off the Hybrid story arc. It marks the final appearance of Jenna Coleman as Clara, beyond a quick cameo in Capaldi's final episode, as well as Maisie Williams as Me / Ashildr - though the door is open for one or both to return.
It's the first time we have seen the original Brachaki TARDIS interior design in the revived series, though one was recreated for the 50th Anniversary drama An Adventure In Space And Time. Fans had been hoping to see this again, but it actually comes across as very cold and clinical, and would no longer work as a full-time design.
For the first time we see a Time Lord change both gender and ethnicity on screen. Missy had already shown that they could change gender, and it had been said that the Corsair had been both male and female. The General actually states that her usual form has always been female.
Unfortunately the episode undermines the conclusion of Face the Raven, and is a very poor follow-up to the excellent Heaven Sent. It really is a case of going 'from the sublime to the ridiculous'.
It is annoying that the series rediscovers Gallifrey so soon after getting rid of it. The Doctor's quest to find it could have been something which it could have developed further, and we are left wondering why Moffat bothered in the first place.
The Doctor is seen to shoot down the General for no real reason. Checking what regeneration he is on is immaterial - he has still taken a life. We're supposed to think that this shows the depth of the Doctor's feelings for Clara and the extreme measures he will go to to save her, but as viewers we simply note how far the series has degenerated with its obsession with this particular companion. It may have worked had we cared about her - but we really don't.
With Timothy Dalton busy filming the final season of Penny Dreadful in Dublin, it was necessary to recast the character of Rassilon, last seen in The End of Time. The actor chosen is Donald Sumpter, who had featured twice before in the series, back in the 1960's (The Wheel in Space) and the 1970's (The Sea Devils).
Clare Higgins returns as Ohila, leader of the Sisterhood of Karn. She had previously been seen in The Night of the Doctor, the on-line prequel to The Day of the Doctor featuring Paul McGann's Eighth Doctor, as well as in the prologue to The Magician's Apprentice at the beginning of this series.
From the 50th Anniversary story Ken Bones returns as the General, and he regenerates into T'Nia Miller.
Gastron is played by Malachi Kirby. He had been a recurring character in EastEnders for a time, and went on to play Kunta Kinte in the 2016 remake of Roots.
Jami Reid-Quarrell, who had previously played Colony Sarff and the Veil, features as one of the Cloister Wraiths, once again making use of his hoverboard to glide around.
Whilst we see Me at the end of the universe, there is no sign of Captain Jack Harkness - so perhaps he really was the Face of Boe after all.
Overall, a dog's dinner of an episode which trashes the good work of the previous two instalments. We were all sick to death of Clara by this time, and Moffat deludes himself that anyone wanted her death reversed. Maybe any episode which had to follow Heaven Sent was doomed to look weak, but this manages to be terribly disappointing all by itself. I can't wait for the DWM 60th Anniversary poll to give this a 1 out of 10.
Things you might like to know:
- Me knocks four times on the TARDIS door - reminding the Doctor of the prophesy that foresaw the end of his Tenth incarnation.
- The diner was filmed in Eddie's Diner at Mermaid Quay in Cardiff Bay, and was the same venue seen in The Impossible Astronaut. The full size Elvis painting on the door is a dead giveaway.
- Could it be that this was actually Clara's TARDIS back then? It is stated that the ship operated by her and Me also has a dodgy Chameleon Circuit, and may be stuck in diner form like the Doctor's ship is a Police Box.
- There is mention of an animated scarecrow existing in the Matrix in the past. This may be a reference to the final Second Doctor strip in TV Comic - where the Time Lords send scarecrows to capture him to complete his forced regeneration and exile to Earth.
- References to other earlier stories include the barn seen in The Day of the Doctor and in Listen, as well as the jukebox in the diner playing Queen's Don't Stop Me Now - as heard in Mummy on the Orient Express.
- The Doctor plays Clara's Theme on his guitar - another example of Murray Gold's incidental music featuring within the fiction of an episode.
- Before collapsing, the Doctor gives Clara advice never to be "cruel or cowardly" - a description of the Doctor himself from the works of Terrance Dicks.
- Ordered by Gastron to drop his weapons, the Doctor discards his spoon - a reference to his using this utensil to fence with Robin Hood in Robots of Sherwood.
- The Doctor uses a device called a neural block to delete memories, but mentions how he once did this telepathically - a reference to Donna Noble's fate at the end of Journey's End. The Thirteenth Doctor would later delete memories without recourse to technology, such as in Spyfall Part II.
- After deposing Rassilon and the High Council, the Doctor once again adopts the Presidency. He then runs away in a stolen TARDIS - referencing the series' earliest days, as well as events of The Five Doctors.
- What was the ultimate fate of Rassilon and his colleagues? If they were still absent from Gallifrey they would have been spared destruction by the Master, and so are still out there somewhere...
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