Doctor Who, series 9, episode 12 – Hell bent

Memories become stories when we forget them. Maybe some of the become songs. Remember this because it is important.

Well, Clara Oswald is still dead. Kind of dead. And here starts the beauty of time travel stories: Clara’s death is a fixed point in time and space (it can not be changed without fracturing the entire time and space continuum), but the Doctor saves her. Kind of saves her. And he can not enjoy it very much because he is not remembering her (with the exception of some details more or less important) good enough to recognize her when he meets her in the restaurant he met once, several series ago, with Amy, Rory and River Song to save his own life.

Maybe that’s why the final episode of series 9 started with the expectation that Amy and Rory were about to enter in the restaurant with the Doctor, for an unforgiven meeting of the companions because of Clara’s version as a waitress serving the amnesic Time Lord.

And the fragmented story he told her is a very elegant solution to offer Clara the exit she deserve: back on Gallifrey, Doctor’s actions made a president to run in exil (he gave the orders that brought Clara’s death and her friend’s captivity), with all the necessary scandal and after a firing squad meant for the Doctor with all the soldiers missing their target. Started to do everything he can in order to save Clara, the Doctor takes her from her own time, shortly before her death, frozen in one moment in time, and he fights against his hown people. Again. And he steals a TARDIS in order to run. Again.

Not very long time ago, in the episode The Witch’s familiar, you and your friends got inside the catacombs used by the Daleks as graveyard, now you get inside the computer used by the Time Lords to keep the personalities of their dead fellows inside a matrix, and you will leave that place as fast you left during the previous episode. The events in this episode happen very fast, I won’t give you the details, but the Doctor breaks all the codes he assumed for himself, and he gets to confront his own actions and their consequences. He gets in a situation he can not ignore the debates about the identity and origin of the Hybrid, especially when Ashildr / Me is the one serving them to the Doctor, at the Universe’s end of life (about the same period of time the Time Lord brought another immortal – captain Jack Harkness – and the meeting between Ashildr and Jack should be something important to watch).

Two TARDIS-es flying in space and time? The Who universe should be adjusted to that. Probably we won’t watch Clara and Ashildr, or their TARDIS, in action too soon, just like we haven’t met Doctor’s daughter after several years of adventures in Universe. Maybe they will appear in some distant future and a galay far far away, the one full with Jedi knights.

Directed by Rachel Talalay, written by Steven Moffat. Cast: Peter Capaldi (The Doctor), Jenna Coleman (Clara), Donald Sumpter (The President), Ken Bones (The General), Maisie Williams (Ashildr), T’Nia Miller (Female General), Malachi Kirby (Gastron), Clare Higgins (Ohila), Linda Broughton (The Woman), Martin Sherman (Man), Jami Reid-Quarrell (Wraith), Ross Mullan (Wraith), Nicholas Briggs (Dalek – voice).

The next episode is the Christmas special one, it’s called The husbands of River Song.

It’s Christmas Day on a remote human colony and the Doctor is hiding from Christmas Carols and Comedy Antlers. But when a crashed spaceship calls upon the Doctor for help, he finds himself recruited into River Song’s squad and hurled into a fast and frantic chase across the galaxy. King Hydroflax (Greg Davies) is furious, and his giant Robot bodyguard is out-of-control and coming for them all! Will Nardole (Matt Lucas) survive? And when will River Song work out who the Doctor is? All will be revealed on a starliner full of galactic super-villains and a destination the Doctor has been avoiding for a very long time.