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YMMV / Doctor Who S35 E12 "Hell Bent"

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  • Alternative Character Interpretation:
    • Is the Doctor just being Time Lord Victorious 2.0 in trying to save Clara? He's coming off of not only her Senseless Sacrifice but hideous betrayal and Cold-Blooded Torture; might he have avoided becoming The Unfettered if he had been allowed to process his grief instead of immediately being forced to survive the confession dial? Could anyone have sustained their sanity in his situation? With the deck stacked so high against the Doctor, he's less a hero gone bad who must be brought back to his best self and more a mentally damaged man denied the help he needs by people so coldhearted that they don't realize/acknowledge there's a problem, and thus moved to dangerous, desperate acts in hopes of healing himself, and suffers even more for it in the end. Every major character aside from Clara ends up as a villain in this reading, and beyond Rassilon, most of them thus qualify as Karma Houdinis to boot.
    • Is the Doctor's choice to exile Rassilon and the High Council as cruel and cowardly as the General and Ohila claim, or is it better than they deserve considering the sum of their crimes, which would make the act a merciful one on his part and thus in line with his previous actions in Series 9 towards young Davros, Bonnie, etc.? Considering what the Doctor can be like when they give into their darker side and put aside their morality, combined with the maddening trauma they just went through, is it possible he was sparing them from an even worse fate at his hands, getting them out of range of his possible vengeance before he really lost his temper with the lot of them?
    • Does Ohila condemn the Doctor over his exiling Rassilon and the High Council because she thinks he's being too hard on them, just trying to save his own skin from further grief at their hands (and given his ultimate plan to save Clara, which they certainly would have tried to stop...) Or does she think he's being too soft and trying to avoid being punished by others by giving the villains what they really deserve, given that she clearly has no love for Rassilon?
    • Does Ashildr earn her happy ending of finally exploring the universe as Clara's companion after millennia of taking The Slow Path, perhaps fearing crossing the Doctor's path again all along, or is she a Karma Houdini who hasn't properly atoned for what she did to him (taking into account that Clara forgives her actions), or both? And since she suffers from The Fog of Ages, it's suspicious that her memory of the events of "Face the Raven" is still clear and she knows all about the Hybrid prophecy and why the Doctor comes to the end of time in the first place. She either really hung onto the relevant journals and learned the right things… or she may not have actually taken The Slow Path.
    • Is Clara actually willing to return to her painful demise at some point, or is she lying and going back to Gallifrey the long way 'round is just her way of delaying the inevitable until she has no other choice?
    • For that matter, does she lie to the Doctor about him having to accept her death so she can get a TARDIS of her own without having to worry about him holding her back? She is addicted to adventure and a Control Freak, after all, and in Series 8 lied to both Danny and the Doctor over this. She's been using the Doctor for a long time, never truly appreciating the depth of his emotions for her (but often manipulating/taking advantage of them) and how he really will go to Hell for her — and now she doesn't even need him anymore, she can just dump him in the desert.
    • Did the Doctor really not know which way the neural block would fire, or did he know it would target him and just pretend it was a matter of chance? If so, did he do so because he felt so guilty about having slipped into "Time Lord Victorious" mode again that he felt he deserved it, or was it because he wanted to spare Clara from having to knowingly rob him of the very memories she'd just declared were too precious to ever forfeit? Or was he subconsciously relieved to be able to shed four-and-a-half billion years of remembered grief and go back to being his best self?
    • Did the Doctor really lose his key memories of Clara or is he just faking it to make sure both of them can move on with no regrets? "Twice Upon a Time" put the kibosh on this; his memories are definitively restored in its denouement.
    • Since the mind wipe wasn't as thorough on the Doctor's memories of Clara as it was on Donna's memories of the Doctor, might it wear off on him eventually? The ending of the following season's finale, "The Doctor Falls", suggests that it has when Clara appears in his mind's eye montage of past companions, but in the end the Testimony completely restores them in "Twice Upon a Time", shortly before his regeneration.
  • Angst? What Angst?: This three-parter reconstructs the trope for both the Doctor and Clara when all is said and done.
    • The Doctor's descent into madness is explicitly the result of him being unable both physically and mentally to move on (or run) from his anguish as he usually does. In the end, his choice to finally accept and move on from what he's gone through — and will go through in the future — and just keep running and helping others is presented as the best thing he can do, and the lessons he learns from this experience will allow him to finally earn a happy ending in "The Husbands of River Song".
    • Clara's tenure was a deconstruction of this trope as she became an increasingly reckless thrill-seeker in the wake of all the crises and tragedies in her life. But when her mistake meant she had to die in "Face the Raven", she realized what she became and why, accepted her fate, and faced death with dignity and courage. She later accepts that her mistake was part of what led to the Doctor's Sanity Slippage, and convinces him to come back across the Despair Event Horizon. Now more self-aware, she's free to have new adventures as a sadder, wiser, and hopefully more cautious woman.
  • Badass Decay: In his last appearance, Rassilon was the iron-fisted Big Bad of Time Lord society who casually vaporised people for disagreeing with him. Even the Doctor clearly feared him on some level, going as far as picking up a gun in a desperate attempt to ward him off the last time he came face to face with him. Here, he's a rather ineffectual old man who gets kicked off Gallifrey without even a real fight by the Doctor, who is calmly in control the entire time.
  • Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Clara's stand-off with the Weeping Angels and the Cyberman in the Cloisters has no bearing on the plot, and the Daleks' cameo had already sold how dangerous the place was.
  • Broken Base:
    • Clara's fate: She must return to the moment of her death at some point to keep the universe together, but until then is immortal and free to roam the universe in her own TARDIS, with Ashildr as a companion. Opinions vary greatly as to its effectiveness. In short, it is either the perfect end to her character arc or the total desecration of the perfectly good ending of "Face the Raven" that further supports a common complaint about Moffat's era — that recurring character deaths are not permanent. Whether you liked Clara or her exit in "Face The Raven" to begin with also plays a role in what you think of the ending.
    • Clara's "The Reason You Suck" Speech to the Time Lords is either justified in calling out the leadership of the Time Lords for unspeakable cruelty, or flat out blaming an entire race for the Doctor's four billion year hell when a lot of them were thanking him for saving them.
    • The resolution of the Story Arc of the Hybrid's identity — via The Unreveal — was either a wonderful subversion of expectations or deeply frustrating. Subverted, however, by Word of God, when Steven Moffat confirmed the Doctor and Clara as the true Hybrid of the series. There was frustration over that explanation, mostly because it made Clara the Most Important Woman EVER once again, but even so.
    • Are the Doctor's efforts to save Clara, which include shooting the General only after knowing he'd regenerate and risking tampering with a fixed point with an ultimately successful plan for not causing a Reality-Breaking Paradox, that much more extreme than the lengths he's gone to for other companions and even strangers in other episodes and the Expanded Universe (Exhibit A: Charley Pollard, whom Eight was willing to risk the universe for after their first encounternote ) — or is everyone unjustly picking on a grieving, mentally-damaged man who earned a happy ending and needs to be shown a better way?
    • And if the Doctor's efforts to save Clara are more extreme (and not justifiable by his mental state after thousands of years of torture), why does Clara warrant them but not other beloved companions — is she that much of a special snowflake? Even characters who the Doctor was canonically in love with (River Song, Rose) have been left to their fates (although River, at least, dies before they fall in love.)
    • Did the story waste the momentous event of the Doctor returning to Gallifrey for the first time in the new series by making it, ultimately, secondary to his efforts to save Clara, or is this actually in keeping with both his personality and how his homeworld and people were portrayed in the classic series?
  • Esoteric Bittersweet Ending: The ending leaves a lot of troublingly unanswered questions, many of which went unanswered by the time the Twelfth Doctor's tenure ended two years later.
    • The Doctor's aversion to travelling with other functional immortals like Ashildr was because they would grow detached from mortals and even heartless — a problem she was already struggling with on her own for centuries. Thus some fans aren't sure that one-heartbeat-from-death Clara and Ashildr/Me will make an ideal team for jaunting through time and space unless they pick up mortal companions. Series 9 hammered home the point that Clara considered the Doctor "essential" to her; it's uncertain whether travelling with Ashildr, who's almost an anti-Doctor, will be everything it's cracked up to be. It goes double with the idea that the Doctor and Clara together are a force for chaos that risks the universe: The Doctor is a hero who even in this episode is breaking the rules to save someone. Now Clara is travelling with Ashildr, an Anti-Villain already on the wrong side of the detachment from humanity the Doctor talked about, who backstabbed him with no remorse. That is not a step up. (At least the novelization of the 13th Doctor story "The Witchfinders" suggests they take the mortal Willa on as a companion at some point.)
    • Will Clara's mind be able to handle immortality, or will she end up like Ashildr and forget both her original personality and that she needs to go back to her death lest time be destroyed? The good news here is that Clara's had lots of exposure to the Time Vortex; the Expanded Universe novel The Crawling Terror and Doctor Who Maggazine comic "The Highgate Horror" both make a plot point out of the idea that her mind became "bigger" than most humans' as a result.
    • What will be the catalyst for Clara going back to her extremely painful death? Will she screw up so badly on her adventures she is Driven to Suicide, or be caught by the Time Lords and forced to go back?
    • The women got their newfound freedom on the back of the Doctor's suffering and anguish, though this can be interpreted as the Doctor unintentionally atoning for putting them in unhappy situations (immortality in Ashildr's case, not honouring her death in Clara's). Softened by the ending of "Twice Upon a Time" seeing his memories of Clara restored at last.
    • For all his trouble, the Doctor is the big loser: He lost Clara and his memories of her (he gets better shortly before he regenerates, though), and he's now a fugitive from his people and homeworld — again — for his actions during his Sanity Slippage. And will he ever mend his fences with his people and Ohila? While the Expanded Universe audio stories of 2017 suggested he does with the latter (more or less), the premise of the 2016 Doctor Who (Titan) miniseries Supremacy of the Cybermen is the Doctor having to Set Right What Once Went Wrong when Rassilon decides to team up with the Cybermen. Oops.
    • Is the Hybrid prophecy still an issue or not? Steven Moffat confirmed that it was the Doctor and Clara together, so if they ever meet again, will they be able to find happiness despite it all? "Twice Upon a Time" suggests the answer is "Probably", as he will be in a different incarnation if/when that happens onscreen.
    • And finally, the Doctor doesn't fare well alone...yet he's left alone at the end of this story. Worse, since "The Husbands of River Song" doesn't take place immediately after this story, who knows how long he travels without a Morality Chain, possibly leading to "Waters of Mars"/"Hell Bent"-style incidents or worse? At least there's a lot of Expanded Universe material set during this period, and if anything he thrives with one-off characters and short-term companions. In the case of Doctor Who Magazine's comic, he even gets back at an earlier incarnation of The Master who threatens, among others, a family Twelve had been staying with — with his experience in the Confession Dial suggested to contribute to his rage at the villain.
  • Fanfic Fuel:
    • Clara "taking the long way round" to Gallifrey with Ashildr as her companion and a diner TARDIS. And then there's the question of what will eventually convince her to finally return to her death. Major fanfic websites like Archive of Our Own had the first Clara/Ashildr stories posted within a few hours of the episode airing.
    • We also have the question of how many regenerations the Doctor currently has. Rassilon himself doesn't seem to know how many they gave the Doctor, but implies that it was quite a few, because he says he can take "all night" killing the Doctor to get the information about the Hybrid out of him.
    • Exactly what Clara says to the Doctor in their private time in the Cloisters is intentionally left unrevealed, opening the door to all manner of speculation. Within days of broadcast fans were already posting their ideas ranging from the humorous to the romantic.
    • Since the Doctor's now companion-less, this opens up a lot of avenues for short-term Original Character companions or straight-up solo adventures (as indeed was followed through by the Expanded Universe, specifically the comics). There is no indication given as to the length of the interval between this episode and "The Husbands of River Song", allowing further speculation.
    • The Doctor's unwillingness to confirm Ashildr's questions about whether he's a pure-blood Time Lord allows for more speculation about his past, as do still-shrouded in mystery incidents such as the Cloister Wars, what happened to him in the Cloisters the first time round, and how he borrowed the moon and stole the President's daughter afterward.
    • Who is the woman at the barn who seems to know the Doctor well? Who are "the boys" who never visit that she mentions? What about Gallifreyan society in general, given that this episode further establishes the planet has a caste system?
    • The now-female General and Ohila seemed to make a good team, leading to the potential for Gallifrey-based stories involving the two.
    • Just as many fanfic authors came up with ways for Donna Noble to safely reclaim her wiped memories and Character Development, stories in which the Doctor somehow regained his wiped memories and crossed paths with Clara again — the order of said events could be reversed — sprang up in the wake of this finale. Many writers came up with their own scenarios detailing how Clara eventually returns to face the raven; most of said stories involve the Doctor, of course. The Series 10 finale "The Doctor Falls" subsequently implying that the mind wipe wore off added more fuel to the fire, with the complication that said episode led directly into Twelve's final adventure. "Twice Upon a Time" saw his memories completely restored in its denouement, but he regenerated into Thirteen shortly afterward, shutting the door on this specific pairing and associated storylines for good except as Alternate Continuity.
    • The above Alternative Character Interpretation that the Doctor either did not actually lose his memories of Clara or managed to successfully reconstruct all of them and simply hid this from her in the diner was also the basis for fanfics, though again "Twice Upon a Time" rendered them Alternate Continuity.
  • Harsher in Hindsight:
    • The Doctor arguing that he's entitled to have Clara back after everything he's done for everyone else but especially the Time Lords, and Ohila showing No Sympathy and shooting the argument down, is much more upsetting after the revelations of "The Timeless Children". The Doctor died and regenerated an untold number of times while still a child as they were being experimented on, a process that eventually led to/allowed for the creation of the Time Lord race, and went through many subsequent adult regenerations while serving the Division — all memories they lost at some point before becoming the First Doctor.
    • Also, that Twelve's karmic punishment ends up being what's actually yet another mind wipe is a lot harsher knowing the revelations of the latter episode.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
    • When the Doctor visits the last planet in the universe in "Listen", he comments on a marooned time traveller, "The last man standing in the universe. I always thought that would be me." Fast forward to "Hell Bent" and we reach the very last little fragment of the universe, only five minutes to go, and what do you know, the last one standing in the universe is... Me, as in, Ashildr. (Sadly for the Doctor, when he and Ashildr enter the TARDIS, Ashildr follows him in, so he can't win on a technicality unless "man" is taken to specify male.)
    • Also, come the reveal in "The Timeless Children", Rassilon's threat of burning through all the Doctor's new regenerations becomes this with the knowledge that the Doctor/Timeless Child has infinite regenerations. Or at least originally did.
  • Improved Second Attempt: Donna's departure, which sees The Tenth Doctor forcibly erase her memories in an effort to save her life despite her protests, is often considered the most heartbreaking departure for any companion, and one of the Tenth Doctor's worst moments. Here, 12 is rightfully lambasted by Clara for his attempt to do the same to her, with her stating that she is entitled to her memories of their time together, and 12 ultimately accepts a compromise where which of them is forced to lose their memories is left up in the air, ultimately losing his memories as a form of karma.
  • Just Here for Godzilla: Some fans were more entertained over the fact the Doctor got a new sonic screwdriver at the end than anything else in the episode. Others were just there for Gallifrey and were extremely frustrated by the story's final third as a result.
  • Memetic Mutation: In the weeks after broadcast, a meme emerged where fans tried to guess what Clara said to the Doctor in the Cloisters. Ideas ranged from the silly to the deadly serious.
  • Moral Event Horizon:
    • Rassilon, who made the poor Doctor, the man who saved Gallifrey, go through more than 4 billion of years of Mind Rape in his confession dial in "Heaven Sent" — possibly solely to extract information about the Hybrid from him — has definitely crossed this if he hadn't before. Rassilon gets off easy by being exiled — and Supremacy of the Cybermen just makes matters worse because he's still able to cause trouble!
      • In addition, something of an afterthought in comparison to the 4.5 billion years of torture, but further proof of what a malicious asshole Rassilon is: his implied threat to burn through all of the Doctor's regenerations. As a Time Lord himself, Rassilon will know full well that it's possible to be killed before regeneration can take place, so it wouldn't be necessary to kill the Doctor over and over again. He just wants to.
    • The Doctor comes as close as he ever has to crossing this line by becoming The Unfettered to save Clara since it risks destroying the universe, to say nothing of their friendship. Everything comes down to whether he'll force Mind Rape on her. In the end, he can't bring himself to do that and accepts losing both her and his memories of her by way of atoning for violating his own principles; it's even possible that he intentionally mind-wipes himself, given that the audience and other characters only have his word to go on that he doesn't know what will happen when they activate the device.
  • Romantic Plot Tumour: If you interpret their relationship as romantic. Many fans argue that the Doctor and Clara's relationship wound up devouring the momentous event of his returning to Gallifrey for the first time since the Last Great Time War in this adventure. The opposing argument suggests that their relationship (and the Doctor's fear of losing her) is a fundamental part of the plot as a focal point for the Character Development of the Doctor, as he finally accepts (for now) the inevitability of losing everyone he loves.
  • Shocking Moments: After the previous episode suggested the Doctor was in the confession dial for more than 2 billion years, viewers — along with Clara — are taken aback by the revelation he was actually in there for 4.5 billion years (which, incidentally, is also the estimated age of the Earth)... punching a wall harder than diamond. With his fists. For Clara. Clara's facial expression upon learning this reflects the trope name without her having to say anything.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Probably the most consistent complaint levelled at this episode: Namely that the Doctor's return to Gallifrey after nine series of taking the long way 'round, and his confronting Rassilon and the other Time Lords, should have been the centre of the plot rather than splitting the focus with saving Clara and wrapping up the Doctor/Clara storyline. Trailers Always Lie and focused on the return to Gallifrey and the prophecy of the Hybrid. An alternate viewpoint is that the idea that the Doctor would handwave away centuries of searching for Gallifrey, especially after a stark reminder of how his homeworld was never a shining city on a hill, simply to save a loved one is perfectly in keeping with the character (and Gallifrey for that matter) as established in the modern era. It doesn't help that nearly five years later the Series 12 premiere had Gallifrey destroyed again offscreen, making this episode even more of a wasted opportunity in hindsight.
  • Unintentionally Sympathetic: The viewer is supposed to be horrified by the Doctor's Sanity Slippage and Anti-Villain behavior, but between all his suffering in the previous two episodes — all because No Good Deed Goes Unpunished — the apparent lack of any actual damage caused by his actions save for the shooting of the General, and most of the major characters coming off as smug jerks who have No Sympathy for his suffering, it's hard not to root for him going bad in pursuit of healing and happiness. That his choice to return to the side of good effectively leaves him with less than he had at the beginning doesn't help.
  • Unintentionally Unsympathetic: The remaining Time Lords, Ohila, and Ashildr, thanks to their show of No Sympathy for the Doctor. Ashildr has a smidgen of compassion for the Doctor's trials but still mocks his sorrow and grief, and all this is more her fault than anyone's. The General and Ohila's opinion of what was done to him in the dial is "Well, Rassilon had his reasons; that's the way it goes and the Doctor should have let it slide." Add to that the facts that apparently no Time Lord aware of what was going on was brave and/or compassionate enough to try and free the Doctor, no one even considered what his grief over Clara's demise might do to him mentally on top of Cold-Blooded Torture (no matter how tough he was in the Time War, that doesn't mean he's immune to trauma), and the General and Ohila wring their hands over Rassilon being exiled for his monstrous deeds; they not only look stupid in handing him the keys to the kingdom, but their accusations of the Doctor being cruel, cowardly, and selfish come off as hollow.

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