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TARDIS Guide

Overview

First aired

Saturday, December 5, 2015

Written by

Steven Moffat

Directed by

Rachel Talalay

Runtime

60 minutes

Story Type

Series Finale

Time Travel

Present

Tropes (Potential Spoilers!)

End of the Universe, Reverse the polarity

Story Arc (Potential Spoilers!)

Me, The Hybrid

Inventory (Potential Spoilers!)

Spoons

Location (Potential Spoilers!)

Gallifrey

UK Viewers

6.17 million

Appreciation Index

82

Synopsis

After being tortured for billions of years inside his own confession dial, the Doctor has been pushed to the brink of madness. Returning to Gallifrey, he must face his own people, the Time Lords, but how far will he go in his quest for vengeance? Does he have another confession? And how fiercely does his rage towards them for causing Clara's death burn?

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3 reviews

This review contains spoilers!

totally forgot that the general is such a rat for being the one to banish rassilon only to turn around and tell 12 off like "ummm it was kinda mean banishing him sir... he was a good man once..." tbh i would have shot him too after that


I do not care about Clara Oswald. How do you follow up Heaven Sent THIS badly?!


This review contains spoilers!

This very much should have been a good story. We're back on Gallifrey! We're doing cool stuff with Rassilon and seeing new places on the planet! The Doctor's president now! These things should make for an unforgettable episode. Instead, Hell Bent is best left forgotten, Most of the Time Lord stuff kind of feels like background to the main focus which is on Clara, the Doctor, and Me. What little we did get of Gallifrey felt muted in its creativity and execution.

Little details like Clara's growing horror at the situation, acted really well by Jenna Coleman by the way, or Peter Capaldi playing Clara's theme at the end - there are small hints of what could have been a quality story. Instead, it is an enormous faceplant after Heaven Sent. An embarrassing one only made less embarrassing by the Chibnall era.

Boy, did Maisie William's character go nowhere. She is SO awkward in these stories and it badly affects how I view the performances in Hell Bent. If I didn't know her from Game of Thrones I really would think she was a rubbish actress, and absolutely feels miscast for the role. Otherwise, the performances of Capaldi and Coleman really go a long way to provide some weight to an otherwise bizarre and disappointing finale. I still don't really get what the point of her, or the whole Hybrid story line was here. I doubt Moffat could even tell us.


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Statistics

AVG. Rating586 members
3.95 / 5

Trakt.tv

AVG. Rating2,067 votes
4.19 / 5

The Time Scales

AVG. Rating159 votes
3.50 / 5

Member Statistics

Watched

1208

Favourited

147

Reviewed

3

Saved

3

Skipped

0

Owned

9

Quotes

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DOCTOR: Nothing’s sad until it’s over, and then everything is.

— Twelfth Doctor, Hell Bent

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Transcript Needs checking

(Nevada USA. A pickup truck drives along a lonely dirt road and pulls up at a snacks and gas stop at Jackson - no matter where you go, there you are. The Doctor gets out of the passenger's side, wearing his sunglasses and with his guitar and a pack slung over his shoulder. He enters the Diner.)

[Diner]

(Welcome to Eddie's Diner, Mermaid Quay, looking pretty much as it did in The Impossible Astronaut. The sole employee has her back to us but we know who she is, in that royal blue mini-dress uniform. The music system is playing Foxes' jazz cover of that Queen classic, as performed in Mummy on the Orient Express.)

FOXES: ♫ Don't stop me now, I'm having such a good time, I'm having a ball ♫
CLARA: Hi. What can I get you?
DOCTOR: I don't have any money. But I play.
CLARA: Okay.

(The Doctor sits on a stool at the counter.)


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