Hell Bent: a subversive masterpiece

First of all, let be me clear that Hell Bent is not perfect. There's at least 15 or 20 episodes of Doctor Who written by Steven Moffat that I would consider better than it. It makes a few odd creative choices: the Doctor joking around before shooting the General; the lack of Missy when her presence is heavily signposted; and the Monty Python-esque firing squad. But these quibbles pale in comparison to what this episode gets right. At its heart, Hell Bent plays by its own rules, refusing to do what is expected of it, and the end result is masterful.

Hell Bent understands what kind of stories are worth telling. Steven Moffat knows that attempting to write a Gallifreyan epic is ultimately a doomed endeavour. So he doesn't even try. The return of Gallifrey was only ever one big Macguffin. There is no mileage in trying to make compelling television out of the Doctor's backstory (just look at The Timeless Children and how that managed to turn 65 minutes of revelations about the Time Lords into a tensionless snoozefest). Instead, Hell Bent focuses squarely on what the heart of Doctor Who has always been about: the relationship between the Doctor and their companions. The citadel of Gallifrey is literally built on a ruin of continuity in the form of the old monsters that litter the cloisters. Gallifrey exists solely to demonstrate how far the Doctor will go to protect his friend. The life and safety of Clara Oswald is fundamentally more important than rudderless continuity references, and it is the former that Moffat correctly chooses to focus on.

The episode dismisses the idea that Clara should be punished for trying to be like the Doctor, or even more insidious: the notion that a human woman *cannot* be the Doctor. Instead it opts for a resolution that is altogether much more hopeful. Russell T Davies had a tendency to build his companions up to be like the Doctor, but then assert that that situation could not be allowed to stand. Both Rose and Donna suffer tragic endings from being too much like the Doctor. It looks for a while, following the end of Face The Raven that the same thing has happened to Clara. Moffat instead contends that Clara should be rewarded for trying to be like the Doctor, and so she gets her own TARDIS, her own companion, and all of the universe to explore in the time before her next and final heartbeat. It's a fundamentally fitting resolution for the character that has undergone so much over the last two and a half seasons.

The episode is also a fantastic deconstruction of the Doctor's character and his mistakes. The Doctor isn't just wrong in Hell Bent. He has to stand there and listen while all the women in his life (Clara, Me, Ohila, and even The General, fantastically regenerated in a wonderful screw you moment to anyone complaining about Time Lords changing gender and race) tell him that he is wrong. The Doctor thinks that what Clara wants is for him to break all the rules to preserve their friendship. He is fundamentally mistaken, as the scene in the Cloisters demonstrates. He breaks all his own rules and he does it because he fundamentally cannot let go, and instead it is for those other characters, one by one, to line up and tell him that he has to let go. It's character deconstruction of the finest kind. There is no villain here (Rassilon himself is a faded antique who is dispatched in the first fifteen minutes) except the Doctor's own failures. His understanding of those failures is the central resolution.

Moffat leads us down the road of thinking that Clara's story will end in the same way as Donna's, before firmly rejecting Donna's resolution. What the Doctor does to Donna in Journey's End is a profoundly unacceptable violation against her will. Clara point blank refuses to let the Doctor rob her of her agency because her past belongs to her. Here, the episode is openly mocking television and film tropes. The idea that a female character should suffer so that the Doctor can have something to be angry or mournful about is fundamentally rejected. To have the Doctor wreak terrible revenge on the Time Lords as some sort of catharsis for Clara's death would fall instantly into that trap. Instead, Clara and the Doctor make a pact as equals, recognising the unsustainability of their situation and deciding to do something about it together. Instead of a story about revenge fantasy, it is a story about acceptance and empowerment. So much of Hell Bent is substituting what we expect with something that is far, far better.

Many fans have complained at the ambiguous resolution to the Hybrid arc. My problem with most of that criticism is that it seems to rest on the assumption that this is not a deliberate choice. This isn't incompetence on Moffat's part, he knows exactly what he is doing with this story. Hell Bent fundamentally rejects the idea that concepts like the Hybrid are remotely notable or interesting, because "prophecies, they never tell you anything useful." What the Hybrid is matters not one bit to the narrative that is unfolding because the question doesn't matter and the answer would ultimately just be ticking a box of continuity with no real substantive meaning. The Doctor doesn't know what the Hybrid is, he's bluffing on empty, but he's worked out that the Time Lords care enough about discovering the truth that it will give him the chance he needs to save Clara. And that's all the Hybrid is good for. There's a degree to which Moffat is deliberately baiting the audience here, and I can understand why that leads to frustration, but I don't care.

I often compare the Capaldi era to The Last Jedi. I think now that, much like The Rise of Skywalker, the Chibnall era has come along and in the same vain attempted to recapture old glories while fundamentally misunderstanding what made those stories great in the first place, that comparison is even more valid. The problem with the Capaldi era, much like The Last Jedi's relationship with the rest of Star Wars, is that it is fundamentally better than the franchise it is built out of. Series 8, 9 and 10 are Doctor Who's most successful attempt to be a proper TV drama, as opposed to the fun and slightly ridiculous show it has been throughout most of its history. It is as much a deconstruction of the show as it is an era of the show itself. It grapples with themes and ideas that are incredibly rich and compelling, and generates a great deal of controversy for even attempting to do that. Hell Bent is the perfect distillation of that controversy. It is the most subversive episode of Doctor Who ever made. There are many people out there who dislike it intensely, and that is of course their right, but I can't help feeling that a lot of that hate comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of what the episode is trying to do. For me, it is part of a run of stories from Face The Raven to The Husbands of River Song that represents the pinnacle of Doctor Who storytelling and, for that, I can't help but think it's great.