History Fridge / DoctorWhoS35E12HellBent

* The Time Lord soldier tells the Doctor to drop all weapons on his person. It's funny on one level, because as viewers know, it's when the Doctor is alone, unarmed, and protecting children that he's at his ''most'' dangerous. But we later learn that the soldier has served under the Doctor before, at least once. It almost makes one wonder if he's already more on the Doctor's side than Rassilon realizes. The fact that he follows this up with giving the Doctor orders and not shooting him when he has the chance make this pretty clear.

** Plus, from the Raven/Quantum Shade's perspective, she hasn't gone anywhere. The Time Lords took her out of a single moment, and will (eventually) put her back where she came from, so the bird has launched itself towards her, and it will impact her and kill her -- thus no need to go hunting for her. If Clara somehow ''isn't'' back there when the raven should have hit her, then a Fixed Point will have bern altered and there will be ''much''bigger problems to deal with than one Quantum Shade whose prey may have already run into something far worse.

* The Time Lord soldier tells the Doctor to drop all weapons on his person. It's funny on one level, because as viewers know, it's when the Doctor is alone, unarmed, and protecting children that he's at his ''most'' dangerous. But we later learn that the soldier has served under the Doctor before, at least once. It almost makes one wonder if he's already more on the Doctor's side than Rassilon realizes.

%%* Way back in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS35E1TheMagiciansApprentice "The Magician's Apprentice"]], Missie says she's known the Doctor "since the Cloister Wars, since he stole the Moon and the President's wife, since he was a little girl." She then claimed that one of those was a lie. Now, we've seen the Doctor as a child, and he was definitely a boy, yet here we learn that it was ''also'' a lie that he stole the President's wife. Proof once again that Missie doesn't know the Doctor as well as she likes to think....
%%** Missy says one of her claims was a lie. She doesn't say ''only'' one. We know how she loves to mess with people's heads.

* The implication that Clara's death in "Face the Raven" may well be a depiction of a murder or a suicide. Consider: the moment the raven hits Clara and she dies we now know that the woman is untold years/centuries/millennia older than she was when she entered trap street. After she is forced to leave the Doctor, Clara knows that she must someday return to trap street, and appears unafraid of this. One reason for that is she has all the "wiggle room" she needs to travel, have adventures, maybe someday reunite with the Doctor, etc. She may not need to return to trap street for a million years, but we know that someday she will. Now the question is: what would make her finally decide to end her life? Will she be making amends for being cruel or cowardly? Will she be caught by the Time Lords and forced back into her timestream? Will she lose someone important to her? We may never know, but the "happy" ending of "Hell Bent" makes the ending of "Face the Raven" infinitely sadder.

** Of course, all the prior examples of TARDISes within themselves weren't separate ones, but the same TARDIS at different points in it's own time stream.

* Clara and Ashildr/Me just dump the Doctor on Earth, even though Clara has learned all too well through this storyline that '''he doesn't function well alone'''. She even said as much in "Face the Raven". How do we know that without any kind of MoralityChain to hold him back the Doctor didn't go on a killing spree or otherwise in the wake of his recent traumas before the events of "The Husbands of River Song", which does not appear to take place immediately after this episode's events?

%% This isn't Troper Tales or a forum. Refrain from first person entries, speculation, and "replying" to entries. RepairDontRespond is in effect here as much as any other page.

* During Creator/PeterDavison's run, the Doctor was declared the President of Gallifrey. Peter Davison went on to have a daughter named Georgia, who Creator/DavidTennant married -- so she could be considered the President's daughter and in a way the Doctor stole her....
** This also creates a BrickJoke to eclipse even the one from [[DoctorWho2013CSTheTimeOfTheDoctor The Time Of The Doctor]]... The reason he is so sure that they'll listen to him is that he is STILL more than likely President of Gallifrey, since all presidents serving after he left were acting as his regent!

* No wonder Type-40 [=TARDISes=] were retired. It doesn't take much to frazzle their Chameleon Circuits.

* The Doctor forgetting about Clara makes Clara's opening speech from "Name of the Doctor" more poignant: it's not just her echoes that he overlooks or forgets, it's ''all'' of his encounters with her. In a further bit of brilliance, the script confirms that the Doctor still remembers the actual events Clara was involved in, just not Clara specifically (and in fact even more specifically the script indicates he has only forgotten her personality and appearance). This allows all the previous adventures to still be remembered by the Doctor (i.e. wisdom gained, people encountered, etc. - plus major character and universe-development events such as the end of the Time War and the redemption of the War Doctor remain intact). "Run, you clever boy, and remember"; he does indeed remember, but he doesn't remember her specifically. Why not? Because "Me" is traveling with Clara.

* Rassilon seems unreasonably set on killing the Doctor, immediately, but if the Doctor's Confession Dial was set up so that his captors could hear his confessions, and if the Doctor was right that they could still hear him after he broke out, then the last thing they heard him say at the end of "Heaven Sent" was, "The Hybrid destined to conquer Gallifrey and stand in its ruins...is me." Especially given the tone of voice he said it in, that ''should'' scare the leaders of Gallifrey!
* The Doctor has ''always'' been on poor terms with the Gallifrey leadership. Hell, they already executed his Second incarnation and threatened it on at least three more! Seeing the barn of what used to be his home, Rassilon's comment that the locals of that area "don't matter," and that The Doctor was ''barely'' admitted to the rank of Time Lord in the first place, he's obviously from the wrong side of the tracks as far as their society is concerned. Yet, he achieved universe-wide fame by taking everything the aristocracy values and throwing it out an airlock, choosing to protect some backwater blue marble instead of representing what ''they'' wanted him to. And judging from the reaction from not only the desert dwellers but the Army, he's become one hell of a hero to the common folk, which is the ''last'' thing a cloistered oligarchy wants. He doesn't need to be "the Hybrid" to be the universe's biggest threat to their authority. Note that the Doctor's dislike of Gallifrey's upper crust may well have been Foreshadowed ''all the way back in 1963''. Waaay back when, he'd mentioned in "The Reign Of Terror" that the French Revolution was his ''favorite'' historical era.

* When Series 9 began, the audience was introduced to the Hybrid concept. What did the Time Lords and Daleks think the Hybrid would be? A mix of Time Lord and Dalek. In the first episode of Series 9, ''[[Recap/DoctorWhoS35E1TheMagiciansApprentice The Magician's Apprentice]]'', the plot mainly took place on Skaro, homeworld of the Daleks. Where does the majority of the Series 9 finale take place? [[BookEnds Gallifrey, homeworld of the Time Lords]], after a series' worth of searching. Yet neither race knows exactly ''what'' the Hybrid is.

* The music that's playing in the diner when the Doctor enters seems like a combination ContinuityNod to "Mummy on the Orient Express" and an anachronism, as it doesn't seem late enough in history for anyone to have cut a jazz cover of "Don't Stop Me Now" yet. But given how the episode ended, it's much more than that: Clara deliberately put that song, and that ''version'' of the song, on the jukebox to test if the Doctor would recognize it. She needed to test how much of his memories from their mutual adventures remained. In this case, it might have worked as the Doctor ''is'' able to recall there being a mummy on the Orient Express.
* Little wonder that diner was just in the right place for Eleven, Amy, and Rory to end up in - the owner has a vested interest in making sure his timeline went smoothly. Although the episode does end with a reference to the chameleon circuit being broken, that doesn't mean Ashildr and Clara don't fix it at a later time. The implication being that Clara's TARDIS could be present in any number of past and future adventures without the Doctor realizing. (Which in turn could be seen as allowing Clara to continue to fulfill the "born to save the Doctor" mandate of her echoes.

* Of course The Doctor's plan went off with barely a hitch. He had ''four billion years'' to plot it all out, and at least a couple incarnations that were scarily brilliant at XanatosSpeedChess if there were any contingencies he hadn't worked out. The one factor he hadn't considered ... was Clara herself.
* In hindsight, the fact that the TARDIS is able to travel back to the Doctor's childhood on Gallifrey is our first hint that, at some point between "The Time of the Doctor" and "Listen", the Time Lords figured out how to get out of the Pocket Universe and back into the "real" one.
* What better way to attract mortal company, especially the kind who might want to be full-time Companions, than by having the ultimate "pop up restaurant" that can travel anywhere there might be people willing to come on in and maybe stay a while?

** When you combine that with other stories about why he left Gallifrey, you get something ''really'' interesting. Cardinal Braxietel apparently got made Lord Burner (the President's official assassin) after [[AssassinOutclassin killing the incumbent]]. He was then told to kill an old man and a young woman, but he tipped them off instead, because the old man is ([[LawyerFriendlyCameo don't say it too loudly]]) his brother. So the Doctor and Susan ran away from Gallifrey with a Gallifreyan superweapon. And if the Doctor stole the President's daughter, that means... the President is one of the Doctor's mysterious children, who's simultaneously trying to [[OffingTheOffspring Off The Offspring]] and become a SelfMadeOrphan. Oh, and Brax killed that President himself. It starts to look like they were fleeing a BigScrewedUpFamily.
* The General summed up the Time Lords' findings on the Hybrid thusly: ''"All Matrix prophecies concur that [the Hybrid] will one day stand in the ruins of Gallifrey. It will unravel the Web of Time and destroy a billion billion hearts to heal its own."'' Now think of how the finale panned out: 1) the Doctor claimed the Presidency of Gallifrey, in effect conquering the Time Lords, abeit in a bloodless way, 2) the Doctor and Ashildr/Me (the two candidates so far) stood in the ruins of Gallifrey at the end of the universe; 3) Clara and Ashildr/Me have mentioned that due to her continuing survival, "time isn't healing", 4) the Doctor burned his old body, including both hearts, billions of times in a desperate bid to bring back Clara and heal his own pain and loss. [[SelfFulfillingProphecy Rassilon and the Time Lords, by trying to prevent the Hybrid from ever coming, brought forth the Hybrid from the Doctor's grief (as he himself admitted)]].
* Although the narrative does take us to places were the Doctor would not have been privy to conversations (i.e. Rassilon and Ohila; discussions in the elevator between the General and her soldiers), the story is supposed to be the Doctor recounting to the waitress what happened on Gallifrey. He remembers many of the details of being there, including what he did with Clara. However, at the end he says he cannot remember what she looked like, or how she talked or laughed (code-speak for elements of Clara that made him fall in love with her in the first place). What else has he forgotten: apparently just one more thing - her words to him in the Cloisters. At the end Clara suggests that the melody the Doctor has been playing might represent those lost memories. What song, then, do we hear when the camera pulls away from Clara and the Doctor in the Cloisters ... the same melody. Even in recounting the story, the Doctor uses the melody to represent what Clara had to say.
* After having watched Hell Bent, go back to the beginning and start watching the Clara era from "Asylum of the Daleks" onwards and you'll find elements of her end strewn throughout her episodes, from being called "Clara Who" and thinking like the Doctor in "The Snowmen" to little things like the ''raven necklace'' she wears when she first meets the Doctor. Moffat clearly did his homework when preparing Clara's exit storyline.

* Whatever psychic or subconscious agency might select the Doctor's faces when he regenerates, it did a lot more than express his trust for Clara ''or'' hint that Twelve needed to live up to his Doctor-ly tradition of saving people when it selected Peter Capaldi's face. Had his "mid-life crisis" of taking on good-looking young bodies continued, he'd have been a '''lot''' less intimidating when he faced down Gallifrey's military, officials, and President: it took the age-marked face of experience (complete with Attack Eyebrows) to emulate John Hurt's level of gravitas.
* The notion of romance existing between the Doctor and his companions has been a bone of contention for the fanbase for years, and certainly since the series came back in 2005. The idea of romance between the Doctor and Clara is particularly controversial for number of reasons (real world and in-universe). "Hell Bent" (both on its own, and as taken as the conclusion of a season-long arc touching on the subject) is able to satisfy - to an extent - both opposing viewpoints. For those who favour romance, and in particular the Doctor and Clara relationship, it demonstrates the depth of the Doctor and Clara's perceived feelings for one another. For those who ''oppose'' such relationships in this series, it vividly demonstrates ''why'' the Doctor should never fall hard in love - because it's downright dangerous to the universe and to those the Doctor loves. Both sides of the issue come off vindicated. (With those who oppose romance getting a direct followup to this in the next episode, "The Husbands of River Song" when the Doctor [[spoiler: takes the wisdom gained by his experience with losing Clara to finally allow River to go to meet her final destiny, closing the door on another controversial relationship and leaving the Doctor unencumbered by such matters, for now.]])
* Way back in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS35E1TheMagiciansApprentice "The Magician's Apprentice"]], Missie said she'd known the Doctor "since the Cloister Wars, since he stole the moon and the President's wife, since he was a little girl." She then claimed that one of those was a lie. Now, we've seen the Doctor as a child, and he was definitely a boy, yet here we learn that it was ''also'' a lie that he stole the President's wife. Proof once again that Missie doesn't know the Doctor as well as she likes to think....
** Missy says one of her claims was a lie. She doesn't say ''only'' one. We know how she loves to mess with people's heads.

** It's worse than that. If you count the War Doctor and the regeneration the Tenth Doctor used up in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E13JourneysEnd Journey's End]]", then at the time of "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E16TheWatersofMars The Waters of Mars]]", the Tenth Doctor was technically the twelfth incarnation of the Doctor. But in "Hell Bent", the Doctor here is the one known as the Twelfth. Now remember those two little details and think about the Valeyard. The Valeyard was said to have been taken from between the Doctor's twelfth and final incarnations. This phrase can go either way right now: It could've meant the actual twelfth incarnation, that being the Tenth Doctor, or it could've meant the incarnation known as the Twelfth Doctor. Meaning that there have been so far '''two''' possible times where the Valeyard could have emerged, and both of those occasions had the Doctor go against every rule he's ever had by undergoing a SanitySlippage, and then proceeding to try and change a fixed point in time. Now two things can happen which a fixed point in time is changed: Either the universe is destroyed, or [[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E13TheWeddingOfRiverSong time happens all at once]]. Meaning that on both of those occasions, the Doctor was willing to sacrifice the entire universe just because he didn't want the fixed point to happen.
** And then remember what [[Recap/DoctorWho2006CSTheRunawayBride Donna said about the Doctor needing companions as a]] MoralityPet. In "Hell Bent", Clara becomes horrified by the Doctor's actions, and manages to bring him back to sanity without any casualties (Aside from the General's regeneration, [[TheNthDoctor but still]]). Now since Clara is a companion, of course the Doctor would listen to her, especially with their implied romantic feelings for each other. But back in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E16TheWatersofMars The Waters of Mars]]", Adelaide Brook had to '''commit suicide''' in order for the Tenth Doctor to return back to sanity, because she wasn't a companion, and this was after he adopted an AGodAmI persona. Now it's arguable as to whether the Twelfth Doctor adopted this persona in "Hell Bent", but its extremely likely. What makes it even worse is that he's on a RoaringRampageOfRevenge in this episode, meaning that if Clara wasn't a companion, and just some ordinary Joe off the streets, then there could've been a far higher death toll because the Doctor wouldn't have listened to her, not to mention the destruction of the universe.

* Who's to say that exiling them isn't something the Doctor did, because he knew he'd end up ''doing something much worse'' to them if he didn't get them out of his sight as quickly as possible? Given what he did to the Family of Blood, and how much ''more'' reason he has to hate the Council...

* The Doctor gets much grief for becoming TheUnfettered here, but his experiences in "Heaven Sent" (see below) meant he never had a proper chance to handle his grief over losing Clara and heal himself as she asked of him. Being isolated and tortured by his enemies only encouraged a SanitySlippage by feeding into his fury and anguish. So he ends up punished for ''being DrivenToMadness and acting irrationally as a result'' with a MindRape. That's...that's really not fair.
* Clara’s death is a Fixed Point in Time, meaning that it has to happen, which is the danger to the universe if she doesn’t return. (We’ll ignore the reapers not showing up for now, though keep in mind they returned only after a fixed point was actually broken). But we’re also told by the Doctor that the Quantum Shade can and will track its victims across time and space as an explanation for why Clara can’t just run from it. But that’s exactly what she’s doing at the end of the episode. It seems possible that, unless she returns soon, the Quantum Shade might strike her down while she’s in the middle of some other adventure with Me, leading to disaster in whatever her goal at the time is.

* The Doctor is re-created billions of times, and each time he is fresh from seeing Clara die mere minutes before. He gets to start the mourning process, but it's cut short when he sees the azbantium wall and remembers all his past trips through. Then, he punches the wall a few times, spend a day and a half crawling in agony....and starts all over again with completely fresh grief. He spends almost the entire four and a half billion years in the sharpest, freshest stages of mourning, never getting the chance to move on and heal. When the Doctor begs to please just be allowed to ''lose,'' he's really/also begging to finally get to move on in his mourning, to accept Clara's death. But while the real Clara would be the first to tell him "Yes, for God's sake, stop!", the Clara in his mind represents his denial stage, and won't let him. Perhaps if he'd had more time alone in the castle without danger and death, he'd have reached acceptance and let her go, and thus not needed the bargaining chip so badly. Rassilon's choice to scare him and torture him backfired in a big way.
* Given that we see no signs of the universe falling apart, and Clara having "wiggle room" in her return to Gallifrey, is it possible that her death was NOT a fixed point in time and the Doctor was ''deliberately cheated of the [[EarnYourHappyEnding happy ending he earned]]'' by everyone lying to him and Clara, perhaps to avoid admitting that he had suffered unjustly between the Time Lords' plot and the confession dial -- and no one did anything about it at the time?

** This also creates a BrickJoke to eclipse even the one from [[DoctorWho2013CSTheTimeOfTheDoctor The Time Of The Doctor]]... The reason he is so sure that they'll listen to him is that he is STILL more than likely President Of Gallifrey, since all Presidents serving after he left were acting as his regent!

* Say, you guys remember way back when the Tenth Doctor [[Recap/DoctorWhoS4E16TheWatersofMars tried to change a fixed point in time]]? Remember how he didn't have a companion with him at the time, and how because of this, he started calling himself [[AGodAmI Time Lord Victorious]]? Who's to say this Time Lord Victorious persona didn't reemerge in this episode, and how close he was to fully becoming it.
** It's worse than that. If you count the War Doctor and the regeneration the Tenth Doctor used up in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS4E13JourneysEnd Journey's End]]", then at the time of "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS4E16TheWatersofMars The Waters of Mars]]", the Tenth Doctor was technically the twelfth incarnation of the Doctor. But in "Hell Bent", the Doctor here is the one known as the Twelfth. Now remember those two little details and think about the Valeyard. The Valeyard was said to have been taken from between the Doctor's twelfth and final incarnations. This phrase can go either way right now: It could've meant the actual twelfth incarnation, that being the Tenth Docto, or it could've meant the incarnation known as the Twelfth Doctor. Meaning that there have been so far '''two''' possible times where the Valeyard could have emerged, and both of those occasions had the Doctor go against every rule he's ever had by undergoing a SanitySlippage, and then proceeding to try and change a fixed point in time. Now two things can happen which a fixed point in time is changed: Either the universe is destroyed, or [[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E13TheWeddingOfRiverSong time happens all at once]]. Meaning that on both of those occasions, the Doctor was willing to sacrifice the entire universe just because he didn't want the fixed point to happen.
** And then remember what [[Recap/DoctorWhoCS2006TheRunawayBride Donna said about the Doctor needing companions as a]] MoralityPet. In "Hell Bent", Clara becomes horrified by the Doctor's actions, and manages to bring him back to sanity without any casualties (Aside from the General's regeneration, [[TheNthDoctor but still]]). Now since Clara is a companion, of course the Doctor would listen to her, especially with their implied romantic feelings for each other. But back in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS4E16TheWatersofMars The Waters of Mars]]", Adelaide Brook had to '''commit suicide''' in order for the Tenth Doctor to return back to sanity, because she wasn't a companion, and this was after he adopted an AGodAmI persona. Now it's arguable as to whether the Twelfth Doctor adopted this persona in "Hell Bent", but its extremely likely. What makes it even worse is that he's on a RoaringRampageOfRevenge in this episode, meaning that if Clara wasn't a companion, and just some ordinary Joe off the streets, then there could've been a far higher death toll because the Doctor wouldn't have listened to her, not to mention the destruction of the universe.

* Who's to say the exiled Rassilon and Time Lord High Council won't attempt to take revenge on the Doctor in the future?
** ''[[ComicBook/DoctorWhoSupremacyOfTheCybermen Supremacy of the Cybermen]]'', the 2016 Titan Comics multi-Doctor miniseries, picks up on this exact plot point. Turns out the Doctor didn't consider that the last of the Cybermen might cross paths with Rassilon; they cyberconvert him, and chaos ensues. And this is just an ExpandedUniverse adventure!

* The notion of romance existing between the Doctor and his companions has been a bone of contention for the fanbase for years, and certainly since the series came back in 2005. The idea of romance between the Doctor and Clara is particularly controversial for number of reasons (real world and in-universe). "Hell Bent" (both on its own, and as taken as the conclusion of a season-long arc touching on the subject) is able to satisfy - to an extent - both opposing viewpoints. For those who favour romance, and in particular the Doctor and Clara relationship, it demonstrates the depth of the Doctor and Clara's perceived feelings for one another. For those who ''oppose'' such relationships in this series, it vividly demonstrates ''why'' the Doctor should never fall hard in love - because it's downright dangerous to the universe and to those the Doctor loves. Both sides of the issue come off vindicated. (With those who oppose romance getting a bonus in the next episode, "The Husbands of River Song" when the Doctor [[spoiler: takes the wisdom gained by his experience with losing Clara to finally allow River to go to meet her final destiny, closing the door on another controversial relationship and leaving the Doctor unencumbered by such matters, for now.]]

* The notion of romance existing between the Doctor and his companions has been a bone of contention for the fanbase for years, and certainly since the series came back in 2005. The idea of romance between the Doctor and Clara is particularly controversial for number of reasons (real world and in-universe). "Hell Bent" (both on its own, and as taken as the conclusion of a season-long arc touching on the subject) is able to satisfy - to an extent - both opposing viewpoints. For those who favour romance, and in particular the Doctor and Clara relationship, it demonstrates the depth of the Doctor and Clara's perceived feelings for one another. For those who ''oppose'' such relationships in this series, it vividly demonstrates ''why'' the Doctor should never fall hard in love - because it's downright dangerous to the universe and to those the Doctor loves. Both sides of the issue come off vindicated.