Half-Mooning: Heaven Sent
In which all of those other characters who get in the way of the Doctor talking to himself are gone so that the Doctor can spend the entire episode talking to himself.
It's a Moffat episode again, and you know what that means: Opening narration waxing poetic about something altogether irrelevant to the episode at hand!
The Doctor from a previous time loop crawls in and pulls a lever, teleporting in the next loop's incarnation of himself before he disintegrates.
... No, I'm serious, that was my immediate assumption of what was going on as soon as the episode started, based on knowing how Moffat writes. I spent the entire episode waiting to be vindicated.
The Doctor is in some kind of stone castle with flatscreen televisions that show him the location of some shadowy creature that keeps following him, like two people playing a split-screen first-person shooter and one player keeps cheating by checking the viewer of the other player to see where they are.
He finds a shovel and realizes he must be here to dig himself deeper.
The shadowy creature thing chases him to the end of a hallway with a door, and the Doctor uses his psychic mind powers to talk to the door and ask it to open for him, because... Moffat. But on the other side of the door is just a wall, and the creature catches up to him. The Doctor says he's scared, and the creature stops, causing the castle to rotate and open up a room.
Inside this room is a painting of Clara. And the creature again, because, you know, it was right behind him, anyway. The Doctor jumps out the window and then...
Is in his TARDIS again! Because Moffat REALLY REALLY liked his "Sherlock" cop-out of "lawl, how did he survive the fall?" and decided to put one in "Doctor Who" as well. But instead of going the "Sherlock" route, it turns out that the Doctor isn't actually in his TARDIS, just in his Mind TARDIS. ... Wait, that is still "Sherlock".
But, no, he just survived because there was water at the bottom, and water is all soft and cushiony, even when falling from hundreds of feet. He gets out of the water and finds a convenient wardrobe change left there by his previous incarnation.
The Doctor deduces that he's in his own personal Hell whose only purpose is to scare him and get him to divulge information. So... like with the "found footage" episode, the entire point of this episode is to just be scary for the sake of being scary, not actually advance any kind of narrative function. That's nice to know.
The Doctor goes back to the center courtyard of the castle, which is now a garden instead of water, and decides to just dig his own grave and bury himself because to hell with all this. But in the hole, instead he finds a note that says "I am in 12". Wow, we've never had an episode about the Doctor running from a fear that's in a room numbered after his regeneration number before!
The Doctor returns to the teleporter room and finds the word "BIRD" scrawled in the ground that he somehow failed to notice the first time he was there. "Bird" is apparently the password that opens the door or something, since a door opens and he follows a staircase. Room 12 is there, but it's another wall behind a door, and he has to tell the truth to the monster again to get the castle to move. He tells the monster that there was a prophecy about a Dalek-Time Lord hybrid, and that's enough to open up the room.
Inside the room is a wall of diamond, and the Doctor figures his TARDIS is behind it. The monster comes after him again, so he starts ineffectually punching at the wall until the monster gets to him and face-hugs him to death.
The Doctor then crawls back to the teleporter room and teleports in his next incarnation that was still held in the teleporter's memory, writes down "BIRD", and disintegrates.
So, yeah, time loop. Was I not supposed to know this right from the start?
Oh, but the Doctor has a plan. Even if he goes through billions of incarnations, each one takes a punch at that wall, slowly chipping away at it.
You know, it's a good thing he never established literally immediately before this that the rooms reset every time he leaves, otherwise punching through that wall is going to be really hard.
But one incarnation finally makes it all the way through the wall, and on the other side of the wall is...
Gallifrey! Because why not. The Doctor sends a kid to go tell someone something cryptic, then reveals that there actually is no Dalek-Time Lord hybrid, because it's Moffat tradition that whenever the Doctor is put into a situation that explicitly states he cannot lie, he still ends up lying. But, whatever. This is Gallifrey.
It's a Moffat episode again, and you know what that means: Opening narration waxing poetic about something altogether irrelevant to the episode at hand!
The Doctor from a previous time loop crawls in and pulls a lever, teleporting in the next loop's incarnation of himself before he disintegrates.
... No, I'm serious, that was my immediate assumption of what was going on as soon as the episode started, based on knowing how Moffat writes. I spent the entire episode waiting to be vindicated.
The Doctor is in some kind of stone castle with flatscreen televisions that show him the location of some shadowy creature that keeps following him, like two people playing a split-screen first-person shooter and one player keeps cheating by checking the viewer of the other player to see where they are.
He finds a shovel and realizes he must be here to dig himself deeper.
The shadowy creature thing chases him to the end of a hallway with a door, and the Doctor uses his psychic mind powers to talk to the door and ask it to open for him, because... Moffat. But on the other side of the door is just a wall, and the creature catches up to him. The Doctor says he's scared, and the creature stops, causing the castle to rotate and open up a room.
Inside this room is a painting of Clara. And the creature again, because, you know, it was right behind him, anyway. The Doctor jumps out the window and then...
Is in his TARDIS again! Because Moffat REALLY REALLY liked his "Sherlock" cop-out of "lawl, how did he survive the fall?" and decided to put one in "Doctor Who" as well. But instead of going the "Sherlock" route, it turns out that the Doctor isn't actually in his TARDIS, just in his Mind TARDIS. ... Wait, that is still "Sherlock".
But, no, he just survived because there was water at the bottom, and water is all soft and cushiony, even when falling from hundreds of feet. He gets out of the water and finds a convenient wardrobe change left there by his previous incarnation.
The Doctor deduces that he's in his own personal Hell whose only purpose is to scare him and get him to divulge information. So... like with the "found footage" episode, the entire point of this episode is to just be scary for the sake of being scary, not actually advance any kind of narrative function. That's nice to know.
The Doctor goes back to the center courtyard of the castle, which is now a garden instead of water, and decides to just dig his own grave and bury himself because to hell with all this. But in the hole, instead he finds a note that says "I am in 12". Wow, we've never had an episode about the Doctor running from a fear that's in a room numbered after his regeneration number before!
The Doctor returns to the teleporter room and finds the word "BIRD" scrawled in the ground that he somehow failed to notice the first time he was there. "Bird" is apparently the password that opens the door or something, since a door opens and he follows a staircase. Room 12 is there, but it's another wall behind a door, and he has to tell the truth to the monster again to get the castle to move. He tells the monster that there was a prophecy about a Dalek-Time Lord hybrid, and that's enough to open up the room.
Inside the room is a wall of diamond, and the Doctor figures his TARDIS is behind it. The monster comes after him again, so he starts ineffectually punching at the wall until the monster gets to him and face-hugs him to death.
The Doctor then crawls back to the teleporter room and teleports in his next incarnation that was still held in the teleporter's memory, writes down "BIRD", and disintegrates.
So, yeah, time loop. Was I not supposed to know this right from the start?
Oh, but the Doctor has a plan. Even if he goes through billions of incarnations, each one takes a punch at that wall, slowly chipping away at it.
You know, it's a good thing he never established literally immediately before this that the rooms reset every time he leaves, otherwise punching through that wall is going to be really hard.
But one incarnation finally makes it all the way through the wall, and on the other side of the wall is...
Gallifrey! Because why not. The Doctor sends a kid to go tell someone something cryptic, then reveals that there actually is no Dalek-Time Lord hybrid, because it's Moffat tradition that whenever the Doctor is put into a situation that explicitly states he cannot lie, he still ends up lying. But, whatever. This is Gallifrey.