Heaven Sent

Hands down the best nuwho episode ever, I don't need to explain my reasoning if you've seen it you understand.

This is exactly what it's like to grieve the loss of someone you care about while desperately trying and failing to not blame yourself: living in what is explicitly your worst nightmare, a (metaphorical) dead body following you around that will kill you when you let it get to you, escaping into your own head when things get tough and imagining a world where they're still alive, a self-imposed torture cycle that you refuse to break because maybe this time when you punch the wall it'll fix everything, only for the dead body to reach you anyway. For (what feels like) more than two billion years.

When i first watched this in 2015 i just thought it was "doctor who monologues at the audience (extreme mode)" but now that time has passed and things have happened, this episode is far more resonant and deserves all the praise it gets. Stevieboy you may have some glaring writing problems sometimes, but other times you really nail it.

What is there to say that hasn't been said? Capaldi puts in the best performance the show has ever had, the mystery is amazingly teased (and INCREDIBLE on rewatch when you have all the facts and see the solution from the start) and the pacing is just right. Only minor criticism is that the cliffhanger is a little cringe, doubly so when you know what it means!

Best episode in the whole show, there's my review, bye.

I recently rewatched this episode as I wanted to see if it was as good as I remembered it. The short answer is: it wasn't. The performances were just as good as I remember, Capaldi can literally do no wrong but there was just something about the story that wasn't as good as I remembered it, I can't quite put my finger on what that was. Perhaps it was that we saw the monster a tad too early than what I would've like, perhaps it was some of the gravitas that had been lost as this was a rewatch with slightly older eyes. Whatever it was though, it doesn't detract from my enjoyment of the story it just means that sadly I cannot give this any higher than a 7 because there was just something that wasn't as good as I remember about this story.

Overall, this is a solid story with a fantastic performance from Capaldi which would probably have to go down as the finest in all of his tenure