Dear Gary—
If I were to describe Heaven Sent in one word, Gary, what
would that one word be? Tedious.
There, now I don’t even have to write any more.
OK, so I’ll explain.
The Doctor spends the hour trapped in his own confession
dial endlessly repeating each day and each action over and over for billions of
years, his skulls piling up beneath him, as he meticulously works out where he
is and why, and as he slowly chips away at the hardest wall in existence in
order to reach Gallifrey.
Peter Capaldi does his level best to make this interesting,
and there are some genuine moments of suspense along with an air of mystery,
but over all there is a lot of running in place and hitting one’s head against
a brick wall (or I should say hand against an abzantium wall). And in the end I
can’t help thinking, wouldn’t it have been easier if he just used that shovel
rather than his fist? Even his shoe would have shaved off a couple hundred
thousand years and saved some wear and tear on him. I briefly wonder why his
whole arm isn’t worn down to a bloody stump by the end, but then I remember
that everything resets each day—and then I wonder why the wall doesn’t reset as
well and I am thrown down an even deeper abyss of futility.
“I’ve finally run out of corridor. There’s a life summed up.”
Doctor Who revels in corridors and this line is a clever play on that; I do
appreciate it; so why, I ask myself, am I not impressed?
The Doctor finds himself trapped, running in circles in a
treadmill of corridor as he tries to escape a grizzly specter, and stymied by
brick walls. Now he turns and makes a confession: “Oh, this is new. I’m scared.
I just realized that I’m actually scared of dying.” Voila, like a secret
password those words make the pursuing Veil disappear and the impenetrable
walls move to reveal a doorway.
This is what I find wrong with it. The Doctor doesn’t run
from ghostly figures. He confronts them and tries to communicate with them. The
sight of a wraith reaching out to him wouldn’t instill the fear of death in
him. And I just don’t sense any terror in the Doctor.
“It’s a killer puzzle box designed to scare me to death, and
I’m trapped inside it. Must be Christmas.”
That’s more like the Doctor. He isn’t scared, he’s
delighted.
Except I don’t sense delight in the Doctor, either.
He’s relentless.
And that’s what this episode is. Relentless.
It is a single-minded working out of the riddle.
The Doctor sets out on his endless path of discovery,
retracing his steps, echoing his words, over and over, day after day, year
after year, century after century. In this the episode succeeds brilliantly. It
conveys to perfection the wearisome way the Doctor has chosen. The scenes with
the shadowy and silent Clara in the TARDIS are expertly done to show the inner
workings of the Doctor’s mind.
But here is the thing, Gary. For me at least, this is not
the Doctor. This is Peter Capaldi. This is Peter Capaldi doing some fine acting
to be sure. But it is not the Doctor. I just do not see the Doctor in any of
this. And this is more than Peter Capaldi. This is Stephen Moffat. This is
Stephen Moffat writing some clever scenes to be sure. But it is not Doctor Who.
I just do not see Doctor Who in any of this.
And then the Moffat touch becomes too much.
The Hybrid.
I knew from the moment this was first uttered in The Witches Familiar that the Hybrid would rear its ugly head in some unsatisfying way and
I dreaded it. Now here it is. Some shaky prophecy about a Hybrid has thrown the
mighty Time Lords into a dither. A prophecy that has been kicking around for millennia
and never caused a raised eyebrow before. Now, when the Time Lords have already
been nearly extinguished and have been banished to the end of nowhere, now they
suddenly decide to worry about a mythical Hybrid, as if their worries weren’t
enough already.
And now the Doctor claims to be the Hybrid? Claims to be the
foretold destroyer of the Time Lords? Didn’t he already play that role? Wasn’t
that what the whole Moment thing was about? OK then, over and done with. No
more to worry about.
But no. Here we go again.
I’m just bored by the whole thing.
And angered. Here we go again with the tampering of the
show's rich and textured history. “I didn’t leave Gallifrey because I was bored!
That was a lie! It’s always been a lie!” So the entire series has been a lie up
until now just so Stephen Moffat can play his clever games with Hybrids and
birds and confession dials and divinations.
All of the ingenuity; all of the atmosphere; all of the
emoting cannot overcome this one word summation: Tedious.
And if anyone asks, Gary, how I came to this conclusion, “tell
them I came the long way round.” No. Tell them, Gary; tell them I took the slow
path.
