Heaven Sent (Doctor Who)

Plot

After witnessing the death of his companion Clara Oswald in "Face the Raven", the Doctor is teleported into a glass chamber located in a structure resembling a large castle operated by clockwork gears. Still emotionally shaken by Clara's death, he angrily speaks aloud to the entity that put him there, assuming that they are listening. The Doctor knows the distance that the teleporter is capable of sending him and he plans to wait until the stars come out and work out his location. Upon investigating the surrounding corridors, he finds a series of video screens scattered around the castle. The screens relay the vision of the Veil, a cloaked creature which is slowly and constantly stalking the Doctor around the building. The Veil chases the Doctor to a dead end. Admitting that he sees no way to escape death, the Doctor confesses that he is afraid to die, leading the creature to stop. The entire castle structure rotates and reconfigures in response, opening an exit at the end of the corridor that the Doctor was trapped in, beyond which is a bedroom with an ancient, faded portrait of Clara. The Veil follows the Doctor into the room, forcing him to leap out the window to escape. During his leap, the Doctor has an inner monologue, determining how he will survive the fall by imagining himself aboard the TARDIS answering questions written on a chalkboard from an otherwise-silent Clara. The Doctor lands in an ocean surrounding the castle, finding that the seabed is littered with thousands of skulls.

The Doctor returns to the castle, finding a room with a fireplace where exact copies of his clothes are drying. He swaps his wet clothes for the dried copies, leaving his old clothes drying in the same fashion as the copies he found. The Doctor quickly concludes the castle, elements within it, and the Veil are nightmares pulled from his memories specifically designed to frighten him for some purpose. Entering a courtyard of the castle, the Doctor finds a fresh grave and a spade, concluding that he is meant to dig the grave up. While digging, the castle's local sun sets and the Doctor notices that the constellations do not match any location within the range of the teleporter that brought him to the castle. After digging deep enough, the Doctor finds a stone with the message "I am in 12". The Veil then suddenly reappears and corners the Doctor once again within the grave. The Doctor experiences another inner monologue within the TARDIS, where he remembers his earlier escape where the Veil stopped after he told the truth and realises that the creature is designed to extract confessions from him. The Doctor admits that he originally left Gallifrey because he was afraid rather than bored. The Veil once again stops, allowing the Doctor to escape.

The Doctor searches the castle for Room 12, following the clue from the grave, however he cannot find any door labelled as such. During his search, the Doctor finds that the rooms of the castle are constantly resetting themselves, as rooms that he revisits have any changes he has made reverted by the time he returns. Returning to the teleporter room where he first arrived, he finds a skull next to the word "bird" written into some sand. Inspecting the stars again, the Doctor muses that 7,000 years must have passed since he was teleported, even though the teleporter did not transport him through time. The Doctor places the skull from the teleporter chamber on the castle ramparts, where it later falls into the sea and joins the others on the seabed. Upon finally tracking down Room 12, the Doctor finds that the door leads to another dead end and realises that he will need to confess to the Veil again to change the castle's configuration and open the way beyond.

The Doctor confronts the Veil again, confessing that he knows the identity of the Hybrid, a being prophesied by the Time Lords to be created from the mixing of two warrior races, and where to find it. This opens the route through Door 12, revealing a large wall made of Azbantium, a crystalline substance 400 times tougher than diamond. The Doctor realises that the message "bird" found in the teleporter room was a reference to "The Shepherd Boy", a fairytale by the Brothers Grimm, featuring a bird which slowly weathers away a mountain with its beak. With the Veil approaching, the Doctor again has an inner monologue in the TARDIS, where he admits that Clara's death and piecing together the scale and nature of the trap have damaged his will to continue. This time, Clara addresses him, telling him to get over her death and to keep going. The Doctor begins to punch the Azbantium wall, until the Veil touches his skin and burns him, disabling his regeneration process. The Doctor claws his way back to the teleporter chamber. As each chamber resets after the Doctor leaves, the teleporter chamber has been reset to its state before he initially arrived and thus carries a copy of him as he was at the conclusion of "Face the Raven". The Doctor recognises that he has been in a recurring cycle for over 7,000 years, beginning with him emerging from the teleporter and ending with him sacrificing himself to provide the power needed to activate the teleporter and create a new copy of his younger self to restart the cycle. The old copy of the Doctor writes "bird" on the floor before disintegrating, leaving only his skull behind.

The cycle continues for over four and a half billion years, with the Doctor wearing away part of the Azbantium wall each time before the Veil touches him. Eventually, he breaks through the wall and sunlight pours in, causing the Veil to disintegrate before it can touch the Doctor. The Doctor steps out from a portal into a desert landscape overlooking the Citadel on Gallifrey. The hole behind him closes, revealing that the castle was located within his Confession Dial. A small child then approaches the Doctor, who tells the boy to go to the city and let the Time Lords know that he has arrived, having "taken the long way around." The Doctor, assuming that whoever placed him into the trap can still hear him, then proclaims "The Hybrid, destined to conquer Gallifrey and stand in its ruins, is Me."

Continuity

As he walks down the corridor, the Doctor says to his unseen adversary "the Doctor will see you now". The Eleventh Doctor shouts this same line to the Atraxi in "The Eleventh Hour".

The Doctor tells himself "Assume you're going to survive. Always assume that." This is what Clara says of the Doctor in "The Witch's Familiar": "he always assumes he's going to win. He always knows there's a way to survive".

The Doctor confesses that he ran from Gallifrey because he was scared, and that the pretense of being bored was a lie. Originally, in The War Games, the Second Doctor admitted to his companions that "Well, I was bored".

Once he arrives on Gallifrey, the Doctor tells the young boy to announce that he "came the long way around", echoing the Eleventh Doctor in "The Day of the Doctor" saying that he was going "home, the long way around".

Production

This episode primarily features the Doctor, with the non-speaking Veil portrayed by movement artist Jami Reid-Quarrell (who also appeared as Colony Sarff in "The Magician's Apprentice" / "The Witch's Familiar" earlier in the series). Former companion Clara (Jenna Coleman) and an uncredited Gallifreyan child also make brief appearances.

Before series 8 began, Moffat promised a cliffhanger for series 9, and teased in Doctor Who Magazine Issue 475, "I've figured out the cliffhanger to the penultimate episode of series 9. And it's a whopper. Ohh, I don’t think you'll see this coming!"

The read through took place on 18 June 2015 and filming began on 24 June 2015. Filming for the Castle interior scenes took place in Cardiff Castle and Caerphilly Castle, in addition to constructed sets.

Reception

The episode was watched by 4.51 million viewers in the UK overnight, a 20.7% audience share. It received an Appreciation Index score of 80, despite receiving acclaim from critics and fans.

Critical reception

"Heaven Sent" received critical acclaim, with the majority of critics declaring it the greatest episode of the current series, and possibly one of the greatest episodes in the show's run. Many instances of extremely high praise were aimed towards Steven Moffat's script and Rachel Talalay's direction. Peter Capaldi's performance received universal widespread acclaim. The episode currently holds a score of 88% on Rotten Tomatoes, with an average score of 9.8, by far the highest average score of the series. The site's consensus reads "Peter Capaldi turns in a one-man command performance in this episode's exploration of grief, and a surprise turn of events sets up an explosive season finale".

Patrick Mulkern of Radio Times awarded the episode a perfect five star rating, saying that "Peter Capaldi's one-man show is an instant classic". He continued "This is Peter Capaldi’s hour and he has earned it...but this brilliant, bold, extended episode is a one-man show – a tour de force from the magnificent Capaldi. This year he has made the role his own" and said that the episode's structure "works perfectly without ever seeming contrived". He further stated that "[Steven Moffat] has structured the narrative with his trademark intricacy. Capaldi plays it to perfection – in the moment, every moment. Rachel Talalay steeps the production in atmosphere and sustains the momentum right until the final revelations". Calling the episode a "mind-bending masterpiece", Morgan Jeffery of Digital Spy stated that it was also "one of the most surreal episodes to date". He further stated "Writer Steven Moffat cleverly subverts the expectation that this'll be a low-budget escapade, with a surplus of Capaldi awkwardly expressing his inner thoughts aloud. There's plenty of the Doctor 'talking to himself', true enough, but there's always a reason", before closing his review by saying "'Heaven Sent' is brilliant, but it's also about as far from big, broad, family-friendly entertainment as you can get. The show's been obtuse and a little odd before, but nothing quite like this, and its rejection of the standard Doctor Who trappings might be too much for some. But if you're willing to see past that and embrace the weirdness, then you'll end up captivated. Because this is demanding and intelligent science-fiction, the likes of which BBC One should be commended for airing".

Alasdair Wilkins of The A.V. Club gave the episode an 'A', for the fifth time this season, writing "This season has been a remarkable achievement for the show, and, pending next week’s finale, it’s got a real chance to go down as the best season of the revival, topping even Matt Smith’s debut in season five. And hey, maybe "Hell Bent" will be the perfect capper to this season, or maybe it won’t. But the genius of the construction of this season’s endgame is that "Hell Bent" could be an unmitigated disaster and it still wouldn’t really undo the genius of "Heaven Sent" or "Face The Raven" before it." Mark Rozeman of Paste Magazine also awarded the episode a perfect score (10.0), labeling it "a masterpiece of the highest order", whilst Ian Berriman of SFX Magazine also awarded full marks, saying "Heaven Sent stands as the best episode of the season so far: madly surreal, ingeniously baffling, immensely creepy and downright gruelling in its latter stages, with a tremendously impactful payoff".

Awarding the episode a score of 9.5, deemed "amazing" and the highest of the series, Scott Collura of IGN particularly praised the episode's conclusion by saying "It's a thrilling, brilliant twist to this episode that sends the whole affair cascading into a barrage of images and sounds that won’t soon be forgotten. The realization that the sea of skulls is actually a sea of Doctor skulls while the gentle guitar-driven score picks up and broadens beautifully is amazing". He further praised the "hybrid reveal" as well as Capaldi's performance, and closed his review by saying "A great episode of Doctor Who that serves to bring this mostly excellent season towards its finale, "Heaven Sent" features a breathtaking one-man show from Peter Capaldi and a twist-ending that makes this one of the best episodes of the modern series’ run". Referring to it as "an epic one man show", Tim Liew of Metro also acclaimed the episode, saying that he "loved it". He particularly praised Steven Moffat and Peter Capaldi, saying "Steven Moffat takes a bold step by stripping his story back to its bare bones and putting the burden squarely on Peter Capaldi’s shoulders. And Capaldi delivers 100%, carrying every scene and showing every facet of his Doctor. It’s a beautifully textured performance, underpinned by a superb new musical score from series composer Murray Gold. Many fans, myself included, had initial doubts over whether Capaldi could succeed as the Doctor. If there were any remaining concerns, this episode surely puts them to rest". He also praised the episode's structure, saying "As a story, the episode builds slowly, making a virtue of the Veil’s slow-moving gait with a knowing wink about all those enemies who the Doctor is always outrunning. But it’s only in the closing minutes that the pieces of the puzzle fall into place and the episode’s epic scale is finally revealed".

In 2016 "Heaven Sent" received a nomination for Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) but lost to Jessica Jones "AKA Smile". "Heaven Sent" is also the first episode of Doctor Who to be submitted for nomination for a Primetime Emmy Award, due to BBC America being one of the series' co-producers. The episode was submitted to support Capaldi for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, Moffat for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series, and Talalay for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series, in addition to several other Creative Arts Emmys. However, the episode was not selected by the Emmy committee for any of these award categories.