Doctor Who 9x11 Heaven Sent - Edited

i just love your shirts

This is such a magnificent episode. Masterfully written, masterfully performed, and masterfully shot. It's oddly simple, yet incredibly complex. And that music! The music that plays over that montage is called "The Shepherd's Boy" and it's this story in music form. It's a simple loop of music that repeats itself over and over, but it gains more complexity as it goes; each loop more instruments join it. In the final repetition it is a majestic anthem. This episode just astounds me, and every facet of it is glorious.

I could write pages on "Heaven Sent", which I consider to be one of the best things Doctor Who has ever done. The script takes a stunningly original idea and works through its implications rigorously, and the production really can't be overpraised. The plotting proceeds with a clockwork elegance, apart from some minor fudging here and there regarding exactly how comprehensive the castle's automatic-reset mechanism is. Most importantly, the diamond wall doesn't reset because it's not part of the castle -- it's the outer wall of the confession dial. Also, Moffat's intention was not that the first time he left his clothes to dry would result in a naked Doctor running around the castle... In the first however-many cycles, the castle provided him with clothes (different from his own) which he used while his were drying, just as it provides him with food and a bed. Then, one time, the Veil caught him before he managed to change back into his own clothes, and the situation we see in the episode was formed and became self-perpetuating. Indeed, although the final montage gives the impression of a tightly constrained repeating cycle of virtually identical events -- because that gives the maximum impact to the final revelation -- this does not, in fact, preclude there being many cycles along the way that went quite differently. To me, it seems that the plot loop Moffat has constructed is impressively robust. The only invariants are: the Doctor arrives; he is pursued by the Veil; it eventually catches him and inflicts injuries that are fatal but not immediately so; and he must finally realise that his only remaining option is to return to the teleporter and restart the cycle. This last is the only element under his control, and the story spells out in the most forceful way that it's inherent in his nature to always find the way to win (where winning, in this case, means getting a chance to start over). Among the billions of Doctors there might be many that get caught prematurely by the Veil, perhaps failing to leave the BIRD message for their successors and leading to a number of cycles quite different to the ones we see, where no progress is made at punching through the wall. But sooner or later, like a spinning gyroscope, the sequence of events will right itself, leading ineluctably to the Doctor's victory. One of the most remarkable things about "Heaven Sent" is that, from a structural point of view, it's actually just a wonderfully elaborate detour between the episode before and the episode after it. But it's such a tour de force that it's not surprising that, in an interview in Doctor Who Magazine (#502), Moffat nominated it as one of the three episodes he had written that he was most proud of. The other two were "The Eleventh Hour" and "The Day of the Doctor" -- the two occasions where the external pressure of audience expectations was at its highest. But he explained his attachment to "Heaven Sent" in the following passage (apologies for the length, but it deserves to be quoted in full): "Usually, big dramatic things happen in Doctor Who, then the next week everyone's absolutely fine. I never found a way to have Amy and Rory grieve over their lost baby [after 2011's 'A Good Man Goes to War'], and I still don't know how I would do that. I'd think, 'Well, hang on, they don't lose the baby. The baby turned out to be two other people they already know and love -- that's not the same as losing a child.' You can't say 'They've lost their baby,' because people watching who've *actually* lost babies would, understandably, think, 'No, your baby's fine. Your baby's safe. That's not the same.' You can't portray that fantastical, whimsical sci-fi bereavement as the real thing, when the real thing has been endured by people in the audience. You'd be trivialising real-life tragedy. So I just cut forward several months, and rather ducked the issue -- they processed that not-quite-loss off screen, which I wasn't crazy about. "In 'The Snowmen' [2012], I tried to do the aftermath of the loss of Amy and Rory, but it's a rather romantic one, isn't it? It's the Doctor on a cloud, with a spiral staircase. It's a movie mourning. It's not like real despair. It's the greeting card version. So getting that kind of aftermath -- loss and grief -- right on Doctor Who was on my To Do List. Or on my Failure List, at any rate. They're both very long lists -- I get them muddled. "The problem is, Doctor Who is always about the new adventure, not the aftermath of the last one. Structurally, that's incredibly important to how the show works. So you have to make grief the centre of the story, not a hangover from last week getting in the way of a new adventure. *Grief* has to be the new adventure. ... Essentially, I was thinking, 'What is grief? How do I make grief the monster of the week in Doctor Who?' I thought, 'People always talk about grief as being alone,' so I made the Doctor absolutely alone. Grief comes and finds you every time you stop or rest, so I gave him the Veil. And grief is waking up to the same pain every day, and trying to smash through it, so I gave him a diamond wall to punch for the rest of time. Basically, he wore away a mountain with his tears. So that was an attempt to do aftermath: an insane, sci-fi, operatic version of the Doctor's grief at losing Clara and trying to move on. I can see why people would think it was a gimmicky episode -- God knows, I love a gimmick -- but I was trying for poetry. Tried for poetry, ended up with a gimmick. I've defined myself."

Oh Juliette, I've literally been waiting for this one since series 1, episode 1. It's that one episode I hope and pray every reactor sticks around for because it's so beautiful, so tragic, and so magnificent. Knowing the ending, you probably caught this during editing, but that transition from the Doctor's face to the skull on rewatch is just *chef's kiss*! There are so many moments in this episode when my heart absolutely breaks, but none more than "can't I just lose? just once, why can't I lose? I would be so easy." The Doctor never talks like that, and it's that moment I realize he's carrying the weight of the 7000 years he doesn't consciously remember. If that's the case, does he carry the weight of the 2+ Billion years? Gauging by his reaction when he breaks free, my guess is yes. To leave you on a lighter note... Q) if the Doctor finds the previous Doctors' clothes on the drying rack, what did the FIRST Doctor in the confession dial find? A) Just the drying rack. That means the first version of the Doctor spent the rest of his time in the castle completely naked! Enjoy the mental image that has no doubt seared onto your brain 😂😂

I've been waiting for this one! Even knowing you'd have to get through the previous episode to reach here. It's such a well done episode, easily my favorite episode in all of Who (knocked Blink down to second place). To clarify, the whole thing took place inside the confession dial (it's bigger on the inside). Your instincts when you heard that confessions stopped the monster were spot on.

This one is commonly highly ranked in the lists of best ever Doctor Who episodes in the entire series. Everyone is firing on all cylinders, here. Moffat's timey-wimey writing, Capaldi's beautiful acting, Gold's stirring music, and Talalay's perfect direction and cinematic shot composition. It's just a tour de force. And it never gets old to watch. ^_^

Best episode of Modern Who EVER!and easily my most rewatched, the setting music are just on point in this and 12's running commentary is just amazing and definitely adds aother layer to the Doctor.

There's a little ambiguity, but what 12 says suggests that there is a moment when he actually remembers what happened in all the previous iterations. I don't quite know how thaat would be, but there is some continuity in his existence as a single being in that his matter keeps being converted to energy and then back to matter.

Here it is, maybe the greatest one hour piece of television of ever filmed. I'm so excited you're finally here! Capaldi is the greatest actor to ever play the Doctor, even if I do slightly prefer Series 4!

Best take away anyone can have from this is "Don't be the mountain, be the bird."

The moment someone starts Doctor Who it's like 'OK cool let me know when you get to Heaven Sent' lol Just double checked the air date, 28th Nov 2015, at the end of this month this episode will be ten years old! I've rewatched this so many times, and will do so many times more, Capaldi is the Goat, pulling of a solo episode like this is so difficult and breezes through it like it's nothing, incredible. There's not even a point picking one point to comment here because then I'll have 50 more to talk about, where do you even begin! The song at the end is call 'The Shepherds Boy' it's on youtube and spotify, add it to your playlists, you'll listen to it so many times.

The definitive 12th Doctor episode! An absolute classic!

Peter Capaldi may not be the greatest Doctor. However he may be the greatest actor lol. Incredible performance

Wonderful reaction to this truly phenomenal episode, voted the best Doctor Who story ever in the lead up to the 60th anniversary. Brilliance all around with Steven Moffat's writing, Peter Capaldi's performance, Rachel Talalay's directing and Murray Gold's music. It's clever, it's beautiful and it really hurts.

he should have gotten an emmy for this one! i'm so very, very excited to see what you make of the finale. i am very partial to the finale as i think it really helps clarify and crystallize the emotional arc of the series in a way that really rewards a rewatch. i'm so happy you enjoyed this one and it was fun seeing you pick up on the breadcrumbs in time with the doctor!

Yep, that's the Confession Dial which held The Doctor within a mental do-loop - not a time loop, because a time loop would be exactly repetitive, opposed to a do-loop which is incrementally progressive in nature. It's a mental battle shown by the lack of damage to the Doctor's hands when he exits on Gallifrey. Incredible performance from Peter. The skull, btw, is based on Peter Capaldi's own. The music is very adagio of Beethoven's Seventh. I love The Doctor's opinion on gardening.

The music during the montage at the end (called "The Shephard's Boy") has got to be one of the best pieces of music made in Doctor Who. Just like the episode itself, the music is also a masterpiece. Also, don't let this masterpiece of an episode make you forget that the very first Doctor didn't have a previous Doctor's outfit to change into, and as the outfit would always be there for the next one, he must've then walked around from that moment forward completely naked 🤣 It makes you think though, how different would the original Doctor's run have been? He wouldn't have had the "Bird" clue. No skulls. No altered stars. He would just assume he teleported and that was it. How would he think to set it up? How would he know sacrificing himself would work? He obviously would likely work out that the teleporter would reset like every other room. But even so, he must've been extremely hopeful when sacrificing himself to reinitialise the teleporter.

It's wonderful to see you get to this one, arguably Capaldi's Magnum Opus as an actor as he carries it pretty much single handedly. Just from what you wrote in your post it's clear how much you loved it as much as everyone else. It's an amazing revelation that the Doctor was going through the same thing countless times over millions of years. The one minor criticism fans have is the idea that the Doctor left Gallifrey because he was scared. While the show has never and will never provide a detailed backstory for the Doctor, including the circumstances of his departure from Time Lord society, what had otherwise been revealed or implied was that it was more to do with boredom or a need to escape a life that didn't suit him. That probably works better, not that the show is entirely consistent with anything across all these decades (it turns 62 this month).

Jules, you may want to correct the title. This is Heaven Sent (brilliant). Hell Bent is the next one...

Capaldi takes the top 2 spots in my finale rankings for sure and this episode really shows why

The best episode of Doctor Who by a mile