The truth of “Hell Bent” is that there are a few moments that are fan service, and even my cold dead heart(s?) flutter into higher rhythms at them. The moment where Peter is sitting outside the shack, surrounded by the proles of Gallifrey, and the Lord-President has to come and see him is great. So is the moment where the armed guards that the Lord-President brings lay down their arms, doing so to one man with no weaponry. Those stand-offs and displays of the disparity in Gallifreyan culture, the messianic figure the Doctor became to the lower classes, and the pomposity of the ruling elite that was so prevalent in the Classic seasons are great for hyped-up nostalgic fans.

It is everything else that I have issues with. Things such as Clara being alive, the Doctor saving her and giving her the Donna Noble treatment, her getting her own TARDIS, his actual use of a gun causing the regeneration of the Lord-President’s personal guard (Time-Lords can be Black & women), and just all of it. We’ve spent the entire series building to The Hybrid, a prophecy in Gallifreyan culture that says something that is half Time-Lord and half Dalek will bring about the fall of Gallifrey. To quote Peter last time out, “The Hybrid is not half Dalek. Nothing is half Dalek.” That’s why it is a Dalek and a Time Lord that will bring ruin to Gallifrey. This series arc was tripe on toast covered in smelly fan service.

The 50th-anniversary was a point to draw a line under the Doctor’s story, pick it up, and put it squarely in the bin. Sadly, I am time traveling here and can tell you that even series 10 doesn’t entirely improve on that. Neither does Chibnall’s run. Just you wait and see the nonsense about his Timeless Child, you’ll want to dropkick him through the telly and into the sun. Ok, joking aside about the several-year disparities between now and the original release of “Hell Bent,” my point that the Doctor’s story is done. It is tired, and its need to be reduced back to background details is one of the biggest issues I have had with Doctor Who in recent years.

Right here, it was a pity party to prolong the lie that Clara and 12 were the bestest of pals, ignoring their constant bickering and sniping at each other. “She’s my friend,” Peter/Steven, I don’t think you know what friends are. They are people you share interests with, care for, and do things for. Quite frankly, Clara just wants the adventure while the Doctor wants someone to fill in the gap of his loneliness. They have been using each other, and they have been pushing each other away because they can’t stand to be in the same room as each other.

Saying I hate Clara would be an understatement. I think she’s the worst thing in Doctor Who, next to Yaz and Chris Chibnall. A mystery wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in a sausage roll, fed through a series of filters, and made into the perfect non-character. She is a mascot, the Mario characterization, a symbol with no true thoughts or feelings. Yet, here we are with an entire episode to show how important she was to the Doctor. The same man who thought Rose was more than her weight in time energy (your weight in gold isn’t much). He gave up a regeneration to save her, for the love of Christ.

The writing is okay at best, it is the character as we’ve seen that doesn’t add up to such a grand send-off and such an emotionless reaction. The writing where I could believe Peter’s every moment in “Heaven Sent,” is lost in “Hell Bent”. The early diner scenes and the Gallifrey stand-offs are great and get the job done, but the Cloisters, moments with Ashildr (Me), and everything after the Lord-President is kicked off the planet fall flat. It was attempting to pay off a mystery that I wasn’t interested in, to begin with. Nothing grabbed me along the way to make that moment of saying goodbye to Clara even slightly resonate.

Of course, the problem we’ve had for a few years now needs to be addressed. The problem of a good director tricking Twitter into believing good screenshot material equals a good story. I think Rachel Talalay is fantastic, even if she didn’t Andrew Garfield everyone. Nonetheless, her ability to craft beautiful scenes doesn’t make up for writing and preceding character work that is lacking. Yes, a director can enhance a story, as we saw last time. Yet as we saw with Series 13, it can also be a disaster, even with appealing shots. Talalay’s direction was great as it was for “Heaven Sent,” I am not taking away from that.

Ultimately, “Hell Bent” is a story that stumbles across the line to finish an arc that didn’t need to be told, the one of the Hybrid. It was done under the pretense that I would care for Clara’s departure as was so tortured into Moffat’s writing. However, I didn’t care for her in the first place. Murray Gold’s penultimate series and thus penultimate finale brings a wonderful motif for Peter to play on his SG, even if it’s for a horrid character. The fan service scenes do achieve their goal, though in doing so, also make the rest of the episode remarkably forgettable in comparison.

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Doctor Who "Hell Bent"

4

Score

4.0/10

Pros

• Donald Sumpter as Rassion.
• Those early scenes of fan service will always make fans happy.
• Rachel Talalay's great direction.

Cons

• For the love of the almighty, just stop focusing on the Doctor.
• Clara now wants to be Jesus as well as the Doctor.