Heaven Sent: Review Round-Up

Andrew Reynolds is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

Wow. Where do you even begin? In the finest episode of the series thus far,the  Doctor Who crew have delivered something utterly brilliant and unique; and it has warranted some of its most uniformly positive reviews so far.

Calling Heaven Sent ‘an instant classic’ the Radio Times lavished well-deserved praise at the feet Peter Capaldi.

“This is Peter Capaldi’s hour and he has earned it. OK, the running time is five minutes shy of one hour, but this brilliant, bold, extended episode is a one-man show – a tour de force from the magnificent Capaldi. This year he has made the role his own, subtly made his cranky interpretation more loveable, and now he’s been rewarded with the chance to shine with no one else to play off. Almost.”

Sharing Radio Times sentiment, Digital Spy saw their ‘instant classic’ and raised them a ‘mind-bending masterpiece’ praising the sheer ‘balls’ of the Doctor Who production team and the BBC in choosing to follow the fluffy frock-a-thon Strictly Come Dancing with this dark, experimental mystery.

“’Heaven Sent’ is brilliant, but it’s also about as far from big, broad, family-friendly entertainment as you can get. The show’s been obtuse and a little odd before, but nothing quite like this, and its rejection of the standard Doctor Who trappings might be too much for some.

“But if you’re willing to see past that and embrace the weirdness, then you’ll end up captivated. Because this is demanding and intelligent science-fiction, the likes of which BBC One should be commended for airing in any slot – let alone straight after we’ve watched Peter Andre dance the American Smooth.”

Settling on a sole headlining adjective, the AV Club took the time to unpick the masterful character work at the heart of this ‘perfect’ episode – reinforcing Clara’s fatal mistake in last week’s Face the Raven.

“The deconstruction of how the Doctor’s blind leap out the window is anything but that is a marvelous bit of fun…The episode doesn’t even hint at this connection, but it’s interesting to look at how the Doctor’s decision-making process works in the light of what happened to Clara in “Face the Raven.” Even those of us who have been traveling with the Doctor for years—companion and audience alike—could so easily miss the insane amount of strategic thinking that goes into the Doctor’s every move, and so it would be tempting to think that it would be possible to replicate that for oneself. That was part of Clara’s mistake last week, after all.

 

“But the Doctor doesn’t just lead a charmed life, as really he’s two different kinds of genius. He’s a brilliant enough lateral thinker to always find the hidden alternative, and his brain is a powerful enough processor to work through all the variables to know whether his plan will work before he puts it into action. To borrow and twist Arthur C. Clarke’s old line, any sufficiently prepared plan is indistinguishable from magic.”

Another illusion that catch the eye of Den of Geek was the intricate puzzle work at the heart of the episode – which wasn’t quite as diminished (or not as hurt as Den of Geek maintains) as you would have thought given the fairly careless way the BBC have handled spoilers this year.

“This is Steven Moffat on very good form. He’s being confident and clever with time, without zipping backwards and forwards and asking us to hold on. There’s an inherent trust that the audience is on board with what he’s doing, and – in a recurring theme this series – there’s a genuine gamble with format and story.”

Giving the episode the five star treatment, Games Radar, looked ahead; hoping to tease out just what lies ahead for the Doctor, the Hybrid and Gallifrey itself.

“Regardless, “Heaven Sent” stands as the best episode of the season so far: madly surreal, ingeniously baffling, immensely creepy and downright gruelling in its latter stages, with a tremendously impactful payoff – that final reveal of the citadel of Gallifrey is even more gobsmacking than the death of Clara. Whether it will repay repeat viewings is uncertain, as its secrets are a present you can only unwrap once.  But on a first watch, it’s simply breathtaking.”

Although perhaps in those sterling last moments we were too swept up in the actual return of the Doctor to his home planet that we may have overlooked some of the bumps in the road along the way to that stunning conclusion.

That’s something that niggles at Kaitlin Thomas over at TV.com.

“I mean, saving the Time Lords was a pretty big deal and something that involved every incarnation of the Doctor. For that reason alone, their return deserved more than what happened here. The fact that the BBC carelessly revealed in the logline for “Heaven Sent” that the Doctor would be returning to Gallifrey, however, tells me that the folks involved with the show don’t agree and didn’t think the Time Lords’ return was particularly noteworthy, and if that’s the case, then I can understand why there’s been little build up. But to me as a fan, it feels a bit like we’ve been cheated out of a really great story. And in hindsight, it makes episodes like “Sleep No More” a little harder to swallow.”

So what did you think of Heaven Sent? Do you think Hell Bent will top it? Just how great was Peter Capaldi? And did the ending right the niggles along the way?

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