Heaven Sent

Now, get off your ass and WIN!

In the past few years that I have started watching Doctor Who, I've yet to find an episode that was flawless. Heaven Sent has probably come the closest to that mark of perfection than any other story.

I'm not sure any Doctor other than the Twelfth could have pulled this one off. Almost the entire story takes place within an isolated environment where it's just the Doctor talking to himself and trying to figure a way out of the maze he is in with an unknown figure pursuing him. We've seen other Doctors talk to themselves, but to carry an entire episode where one is just talking to himself, working out clues half to himself, half to the audience, takes a strong acting talent that other actors may have not been quite up to.

This also was a genuinely scary episode. There were a couple of horror movie tropes but generally it was the steady volume of the flies that worked so well to unnerve the watcher. The Doctor would have moments of quiet where he could work out the puzzles, but then there would be the slow buzz of the flies. A single frame landing on a fly and it set the viewer off that the creature was approaching again. Some folks remarked that it was like a puzzle game where there is a hunter so you have to either solve the puzzle quickly or flee to a different room since there was no way to combat the creature. Very impressive.

I don't know how it was for other people but I keyed in pretty quickly that there was a time loop going on. I was half convinced that the hand we saw at the beginning was the Doctor's and then the laying out of the clothes tipped it pretty hard. The acknowledgement that the position was the same but 7,000 years in the future was also a pretty strong tell. I was just confused on how the Doctor was going to escape the time loop.

Even after he started punching the wall, I still didn't get it until we finally got a frame ahead where he was deeper and a little further in the story (I looked up the story as well to verify that it was real). Once the montage was going, I was reminded of a line from Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption where Andy asks the warden what would happen if a single drop of water fell on a rock once a year; that eventually the rock would break. It's effectively the same line as from the Grimm story and it was interesting to see it in action with the Doctor getting three or four punches in every couple of days over the course of two billion years.

It'll be interesting to see if the two plus billion years that the Doctor iterated in the confession dial was reflective of any real time or if was just perceived time and that he emerged from the confession dial only a short time after he entered it.

I think the only thing that might ding this episode for me is the rewatch value. It was so good on initial viewing, but that was with me having not completely figured it out. Knowing what the answer and the resolution will be, does that hinder the watchability of the story? I don't know. I think the montage of the Doctor iterating through the wall went a bit long and I wonder if that was indicative that I may not be as fully engaged a second time around. Or was it that I was champing at the bit to see him get through? I don't know.

A great episode regardless and I am very eager to see how it does in the rewatch value.

Overall personal score: 5 out of 5