Moffat Era Rewatch: Notes on "Heaven Sent"

·      So, obviously, this episode is amazing and an out and out classic. And it rests entirely on the brilliant work of four people, all of whom bring their A game: Murray Gold, who delivers his best soundtrack for the show, Rachel Talalay, who gives Doctor Who the best direction it’s ever had, Peter Capaldi, who gives an astonishing performance, and Steven Moffat, who crafts an utterly perfect script. The only criticism I’ve seen of it comes from El Sandifer (who, to be clear, still rates the episode as a good one), who makes the not unreasonable claim that it unfolds much as you’d expect a one hander starring the Doctor, written by Steven Moffat, to. But while I agree that a story where Moffat tries something new (such as “Listen” or “Hell Bent”) is perhaps more interesting, watching him, and the other three key figures in the episode, do the things they are brilliant at as well as they can, is still an utter joy.

·      And the story is helped by the fact that it is not shy about its status as a puzzle box episode, or its invocation of classic Moffat tropes: the Doctor calls the castle a “killer puzzle box”, and the shot of the Doctor’s hand (not yet revealed to be his hand) vanishing at the start of the episode is, in many ways, a sick joke about the fact that this episode is a one hander with the Doctor. Other visual details, such as Capaldi’s face fading into the skull, and the moment where the Doctor hangs the clothes up by the fire are other moments that make it clear the episode isn’t trying to hide its loop, but steadily unveils the exact nature of the inevitable loop (that ultimately shows the story to be perfectly linear, in a fantastic sleight of hand) in a way that still takes on a great deal of weight. It’s the Sheer brutality of the Doctor’s fate that makes the episode stand out from Moffat’s other puzzle boxes. The Doctor’s description of “burning the old me to make a new one” is, as I remarked in my “Time Heist” notes, basically a disturbing twist on regeneration, and deliberately poses some unsettling questions about the nature of personal identity. Is the Doctor who vanishes at the end of “Face the Raven” the same person as the Doctor Who arrives on Gallifrey at the end of the episode, or even the “7000 years into the future” Doctor at the start of the episode, who would have already been “reset” thousands of times? The Moffat Era has, ultimately, settled on the conclusion that, as far as it matters, he is, over the course of the “who frowned me this face?” arc: the Doctor burns an old him to make a new one all the time, as long as he holds on to the values that make him the Doctor, which, as he made clear in “The Witch’s Familiar”, is a role he performs and aims to live up to. He may augment a new body for himself hundreds of billions of times over a four-billion-year period, but he is still definitely the Doctor. Nonetheless, the question really is posed in as stark and powerful a way as the series has ever managed.

·      The central concern of the story is ultimately its exploration of grief. At the start of the episode, the Doctor claims that, having watched his best friend die in agony, his day can’t get any worse. But at the mid point of the episode, he admits that “the day you lose someone isn't the worst. At least you've got something to do. It's all the days they stay dead.” The endless cycle of grief and manic depression becomes the Doctor’s literal trap in this story. Or, as Steven Moffat so eloquently puts it: “all of us are locked in the castle of grief sometimes”: in the Doctor’s case, it isn’t just a mental state, he is physically trapped in it.

·      As with much of the Capaldi era, “Heaven Sent” is built around a parallel to a classic myth: in this case, the Doctor is paralleled to Sisyphus, most specifically, Sisyphus as interpreted by Albert Camus for his philosophical theory of absurdism. Quoting Wikipedia for a quick description of the theory, according to Camus, the absurd is “man's futile search for meaning, unity, and clarity in the face of an unintelligible world devoid of God and eternal truths or values. Does the realization of the absurd require suicide? Camus answers: "No. It requires revolt." He then outlines several approaches to the absurd life.” One thing that often prompts people to decide that life is meaningless, that the universe is a cruel random, and hostile place, is, of course, the loss of a loved one, and the Doctor has (as far as he can tell for most of the story) just lost Clara, something that fuels his behavior and informs his mindset throughout the story. As a result, his actions place him as an absurd hero, trying to make meaning out of an event that was cruel and pointless, save for the meaning Clara gave it, a meaning the Doctor has failed to fully accept. And the cycle he is trapped in inside the castle, repeatedly going through the same incredible agony again and again, for billions of years, has an obvious parallel to Sisyphus, trapped in an eternal punishment by the Gods (just as the Doctor is interrogated and tortured by the Time Lords), and cursed to push a boulder up a mountain only for the boulder to roll back down the mountain upon reaching the summit, forcing him to start his task again. Of particular interest to Camus is the moment when Sisyphus goes back down from the summit of the mountain to start his task again: "It is during that return, that pause, that Sisyphus interests me. […] This is the truly tragic moment, when the hero becomes conscious of his wretched condition.” The Doctor’s “but you don’t understand, I remember it all, every time” outburst upon reaching the Azbantium wall and remembering the meaning of the word “bird” are his parallel to Sisyphus understanding his fate at the top of the mountain, the moment where the trials subside, just for a second, and he recognises the cruel and brutal nature of his fate, realizing that he has been trapped in the cycle for thousands of years, and will seemingly continue to do so for eternity. “It would be so easy, just tell them what they want” the Doctor desperately reasons, addressing suicide, which Camus describes as the “one truly serious philosophical problem”, as one potential response to this knowledge, as this action is potentially suicide for the Doctor. For all he knows, he is at the mercy of his unseen enemies once he gives them the information he needs. Yet he contemplates doing so, as it would mark a release from his seemingly endless trials. The could also live in ignorance, and seek out endless distraction to avoid noticing the absurdity of his fate, but the Doctor’s distraction involves seeking out knowledge (“Do I have to know everything?” he asks his projection of Clara, and the answer is yes, he does, that’s why she’s still asking the questions), so he will always reach the point at the top of the mountain, where he finally remembers his fate. The other option is to embrace absurdity, to accept the meaningless nature of the universe, and continue to do so, instead creating your own meaning, with Camus listing several ways this meaning is created. The Doctor’s meaning is a form of revolt, a determination to break the cycle he is trapped in, no matter how long it takes, or as Clara puts it: “get up, off your arse, and win”.

·      Which leads us to the episode’s exploration of the incredibly alien nature of the Doctor’s mindset. This is primarily explored through the storm room scenes, and his exchanges with the “Clara” asking him questions from the blackboard. This is revealed through gorgeous bits of writing such as the breakdown of the seemingly innocuous and random things he does to jude the safety of jumping out of a window, and the twisted yet inspired take on interrogation: “you are the only irreplaceable person in the torture chamber. The room is yours, so work it. If they're going to threaten you with death, show them who's boss. Die faster.” As with “The Girl Who Died”, the episode breaks down key aspects of the Doctor’s mindset that enable him to keep on fighting when others would just give up. The “torture chamber” line is particularly telling, linking nicely to Clara’s realisation in “The Witch’s Familiar” that the Doctor assumes there is a way out of any situation. It’s the culmination of the “how are you going to win?” thread of series nine: having seen the Doctor lose for two stories in a row, we believe him when he says “I can’t always…” before he sees the word “win” written on the blackboard, and his desperate cry of “why can’t I just lose?” carries more weight, he wants to be able to not just lose, but to truly accept defeat. The heroism the Doctor shows isn’t rooted in his ability to win out every time, but to always look for a way to win. And this applies to the the episode as a whole, as well as his ill advised jump out of the window: he plays an incredibly long game, on a scale and with suffering that most people simply cannot comprehend, to act out his plan while keeping the information he needs from the Time Lords.

·      And once again, at the heart of the Doctor’s plan is a fairy tale used to bring him home: the brothers Grimm story about the Emperor and the Shepard’s boy. Here, it is worth noting that the original myth of Sisyphus doesn’t portray Sisyphus’s return down the mountain as a moment of heroic acceptance of his fate. That aspect of the myth is something Camus adds to explain the nature of his philosophy. But just as the Sisyphus myth was retooled for the sake of absurdist philosophy, the Doctor escapes the castle by retooling a brothers Grimm fairytale. Instead of making the story about the weight of eternity, he makes it about the little bird, and its grim, unceasing determination. The original intent of the story is, obviously, to suggest the single bird is, in fact, many birds, who eventually, over billions of years, break through the mountain, marking the first second of eternity. And just as many birds break down the mountain, the Doctor has to clone himself many times to break through the Azbantium wall. But in his retelling of the story, the Doctor makes the bird an individual being with a singular purpose: “You might think that’s a hell of a long time. Personally, I think that’s a hell of a bird”. And that is what he becomes here: the bird, slowly chipping his way through the diamond mountain. Linking himself and his purpose to the story enables him to retain his memory and identity over the course of his ordeal. Of further significance is the way the story becomes a measure of his progression: the further he gets, the longer he keeps going, the more of the story he is able to tell. And so, against impossible odds, in defiance of the sheer absurdity of his situation, the Doctor uses the power of a story to get up, off his arse, and win. 

Moffat Era Rewatch: Notes on "Face the Raven"

·      Yes, I’m doing this one on its own. As I will for “Heaven Sent” and “Hell Bent”: I think regardless of whether you like to read them as a multi part story or three one parters, the best way to approach what these episodes of television are doing from a critical perspective is to read them one episode at a time. That said, just to record my position: they’re one parters, that are linked closely enough to form a wider trilogy. Think “The Hunger Games”: each part tells its own distinct story (The mystery on Trap Street, The Doctor’s escape from the castle, and Clara’s goodbye to the Doctor), while the three parts together form a wider story. It’s the natural culmination of Moffat’s decision to make each part in a multi part story distinct from the one before it: the individual episodes are now self contained dramas, in spite of the “To be continued” at the end of each part.  

·      And it’s an outright superb story, one of the many high points in season that is full of them. It’s built around a clear three act structure, switching to a new genre with each act, enabling Sarah Dollard to show a lot of range over the course of one script. The first act covers the search for trap street in act one, exploring a fun sci fi concept, and neatly exploring how such a place could exist within London. The second act follows the “whodunnit” mystery on trap street, exploring the culture of the street, and building enough elements to maintain an interesting, engaging, and well put together mystery. The third act concludes the episode with the “Doomsday” style apparent companion departure. Each act and genres require a lot of skill, and all are done very well. It’s fair to say Dollard can be added to the list of exciting new writers who have emerged over the course of the Capaldi era, alongside Jamie Mathieson and Peter Harness, as this episode demonstrates a range of skills necessary to writing good Doctor Who in the mid 2010s: strong sci fi concepts, skilful plotting, the ability to switch between genres, while grounding these elements in very strong character work.

·      For all that “The Zygon Invasion/ The Zygon Inversion” is known of as the big political piece of Doctor Who in 2015, this episode is arguably even more politically engaged, albeit in a less overt way. First, we have Rigsy, wrongly accused of murder and sentenced to death based on incredibly flimsy evidence. He faces harassment from police figures, and is used as a political weapon by a politician, something the population of Trap street mostly widely accept, for complicated reasons. There are pretty heavy implications come from giving that plot to a black man in the context of 2015: one can fairly assume that Dollard had the events of Ferguson, other viral filmed examples of street harassment, and outright murder by policemen in America, and the resulting Black Lives Matter protests, in mind when she wrote this part of the story.

·      The episode’s politics are also explored through trap Street and Refugee camps, which raises another recurring theme of this season: the difficulty of achieving cooperation between cultures, and the different ways people try to achieve it. Mayor Me and the Doctor both explicitly reference “The Zygon Invasion/ The Zygon Inversion”, with Mayor Me asking if the arrangements the Doctor made for the Zygons are any better than the ones she has made for the aliens on Trap Street, highlighting the return to the themes of that story, and acknowledging that the arrangement with the Zygons is not ideal, doing a little to help alleviate what seems to be the former story’s slightly dismissive attitude towards the plight of the Zygons. The Doctor also references tat story when he threatens to use the Zygons against Mayor Me’s refugee camps, a nice moment that further evidences the thought put in to the implications of the Zygons and Trap street living in secret on Earth, and what could potentially happen. Most interesting of all is the portrayal of the balancing act that goes into maintaining Trap Street. The idea that someone in the street could commit murder, specifically the murder of someone as empathetic as Anah, threatens the peace of the street, so the citizens latch onto the opportunity to blame someone from outside of their society. This all builds to create the sense of a makeshift society that addresses real world issues through parallels, but has its own distinct identity that enables it to work in the context of this story.

·      Also significant is the exploration of gender politics through the character of Anahson. She has to present as male to maintain her personal safety, as female Janus are more in danger of physical attack due to their inborn abilities: Sarah Dollard’s script shows an empathetic awareness of the kinds of things real women in vulnerable situations (such as those living in a refugee camp) have to do to survive, such as presenting as male gendered to ensure safety from assault and possible death, but has the subtlety to address these issues through a particular danger only faced by these fictional characters. This subtlety enables the thread of the story to address other related issues: Anahson even claims she would rather hide her gender, a note that has a slight “in the closet” subtext. Anahson is reluctant to use her abilities against Mayor Me, as that would risk outing herself as female, when she feels safer hiding her true gender, which rather nicely captures the complexity of the closet for many LGBT+ people. Plenty of LGBT activists have talked about the way the closet is often, though pretty much only in the short term, a form of protection, something that takes its toll if you are forced to go through it for too long, but that in certain situations, such as being financially dependent on bigoted parents, or living in a society where being open is to outright risk death, is an outright necessity. Ultimately, Anahson does accept the Doctor’s request to use her abilities, making some peace with her true identity, although it is unclear whether she will have to live openly as a woman going forward: she doesn’t out herself to anyone on Trap Street, and the script doesn’t argue that she is in any way obliged to until she is ready.

·      The story’s political threads and themes surrounding gender culminate in Clara’s death: as Janine Rivers brilliantly points out, the increased political engagement of the Capaldi era reaches its clearest expression hen we get a story in 2015 about a young woman dying in a refugee camp. And as has become common for the Moffat era, and season nine in particular, the episode is aware of the gendered tropes surrounding Clara’s death: fridging very nearly explicitly referenced in the text by Clara, who basically instructs the Doctor not to turn her story into a fridging when she tells him not to turn her death into a reason to take revenge. “Don’t insult my memory” she says, memory of course having already been discussed as a key theme throughout the Moffat era, particularly in Clara’s story. Only here, it’s not about what Clara remembers, but how she is remembered: she doesn’t want to be remembered as the prompt for the Doctor’s revenge, but for the way that she lived, to “die right”, like Danny Pink did. However, the value Clara places on her own memories is also stressed here: her dislike of memory wipes is, made clear through the juxtaposition of her and the Doctor’s reactions to Rigsy’s retcon: the Doctor is quite casual about it, while she is clearly deeply angered at the thought Rigsy has had twenty four hours of his life stolen from him. Similarly, she reacts angrily to Mayor Me’s suggestion that her memory will be wiped to: both these moments are important foreshadowing for “Hell Bent”.

·      At the heart of the episode’s conclusion is, of course, the relationship between Clara and the Doctor, something underpinned by both the text and the visuals of their final exchange. El Sandifer has argued the direction is blatantly trying to hide the limited amount of time they had to get Maisie Williams for filming, but I’m less sure of that argument. Mayor Me is present throughout the scene, even in shots towards the end. However, as the scene moves from the Doctor and Clara’s desperate bargaining with Mayor Me to their goodbye, the camera moves towards close ups of their faces. As the scene becomes more about the two of them, the visual focus moves towards the two of them.

·      The core of their exchange is rooted in Clara’s claim that she “never asked” for the Doctor’s protection, and the Doctor’s response that she “shouldn’t have to”. Once again, the season focuses on the Doctor’s paternalism towards Clara, and her desire to not be defined by that paternalism, even if she understands the genuine love and care that motivates it. Clara does not want to let him make her death about a perceived mistake on his part when it is her death, and she wants it to be about her: she has always looked for control in her life, and her story, and as such, tries to gain as much agency as she can have in the way it ends. The story is built to make sure that Mayor Me’s plan wasn’t meant to hurt anyone, that none of the characters in “Face the Raven” are truly villains, and that Clara’s death is something that comes out of decisions Clara made as an active agent in the plot, and then faces on her own terms.

·      What’s really telling about series nine’s attitude to fridging is its determination to show the range of alternative stories to just killing a female character to give a male character some angst. In “The Witch’s Familiar”, Clara gets a faked death to show the folly of the Doctor’s grief fuelled reaction while she and Missy come to rescue him. In “The Girl Who Died”, Ashildr has her death reversed, and gets a character arc where we see the consequences of that reversal. Osgood, meanwhile, really does die, but that death becomes part of her story, and her legacy in the world, her name living on through other Osgoods after her death, which becomes about more than Missy’s petty attempt to mess with the Doctor: the character dies, but lives on due to the way she acted in her life. This episode shows how a female character’s death can be a part of her own story, and a genuine ending, instead of something that turns her into a prop in someone else’s story.

·      Except the imbalance in power between the Doctor and companion means that this ideal isn’t fully possible for Doctor Who in this scenario. “Why can’t I be like you?” Clara asks, and the Doctor responds by pointing out that he is nothing special, he is just “less breakable” than her: he can regenerate. But the phrase “less breakable” is a telling one for the Doctor to use, and has metafictional implications: the narrative can afford to kill off the main companion, because the show can keep running with a new character in her (because the main companion is usually female, even in the Classic series) place, but even if the Doctor regenerates, he can remain the same character with the same history, and set of experiences. The structure of Doctor Who’s narrative is built to favour the Doctor over the companion. The underlying issue here is not that killing female characters is always bad storytelling: this episode has just shown how to do so with respect to the character in question. But the power imbalance (and as the Doctor has always been male, it is a gendered power imbalance) between the show’s two leads remains. And that is something the remainder of the season will seek to address.