Doctor Who Series 9 Episode 11 : Heaven Sent
Trapped in a world unlike any other he's ever seen before, the doctor faces his greatest challenge of his many lives. One final test, and one which he must face alone.
The Doctor has just lost Clara, he is alone and he is angry and it is time for him to face a great test. This is probably the first time where we as an audience have seen the doctor this venerable. It's what last week's cliffhanger was all about. The whole point is that you are left in the dark with the doctor so that when you come in to this episode having no idea what might happen or what is going to happen.
The script was extremely well written by Steven Moffat and shows a whole new side to Capaldi's doctor. However, given the storyline to this episode, this episode could really work for all the doctors, not just for Capaldi, it would be interesting to see an episode with just the first doctor or the fourth doctor or the seventh doctor for instance.
This episode for me is just a simple outline of just how magical and wonderful that this show can truly be, and how gifted an actor Peter Capaldi is. Unlike the other recent doctors who in my view seemed to be very hit and miss in terms of their performance, you can see that Capaldi is learning all the time, and his doctor's character is not just improving with every story, it's improving with every episode.
Capaldi gives his most experimental performance as the doctor in this episode, and the plot of this seems to be very interlinked and everything starts off being disjointed so by the time you get to the end, it resolves itself into the cliffhanger.
I liked the setting for this, it was all very mysterious, isolated, dark and cold all at the same time. There is this on going theme with castles that they have to have the correct lighting done to them to make the whole thing have the right shade and tone in light from dark and its no easy task to make it look captivating, I think in some areas the lighting pattern works in other places in tends to phase out and the lighting gets over crowded and the mood is established differently as a complete contrast to that.
There wasn't much story in this episode, it did seem to me much like an audience with Peter Capaldi. Nothing about this really grabbed me, and I did loose interest in places very quickly. Overall there is not much I can say because there is not much to comment on other than Capaldi, the set and the story (which in this episode there was not much of) by the end it had become a live, sleep, die, repeat sort of thing and everything started to make sense a little by the end but I just didn't get this at all, in time maybe I will but for now it's a 2/5.
One thing I did really like, and probably what I liked most about it was that it had 80's soundtrack in it. The scene where the doctor is examining the painting of Clara, the soundtrack sounded a bit like 'Warrior's Gate' or an 80's soundtrack. So that was a touch I felt and gave everything a nice nod. But yeah 2/5 for now.
NEXT WEEK: The series finale!
