Another look at Hell Bent (Doctor Who 9.12)

[unfeathered]

I watched this out of context the other day because I’m writing a fic with Clara in her ‘diner’, and really enjoyed it this time around so thought I’d write another review, six and a half years on. (Has it really been that long???)

Original thoughts here

I could really see this time just how desperate the Doctor was, how shifty he was around Clara, never meeting her eyes, acting really pretty damaged. How all that time in the confession dial and resulted in everything coalescing in his mind until he was completely focussed on just one thing: bringing Clara back.

Whether she wanted it or not – and once she’d got used to the idea, of course she fell in with that plan. That’s the whole point the episode was making about the hybrid, that the two of them together just egg each other on to take more and more risks. The only difference is that now they’ll be doing it separately.

The whole thing with Me was probably the worst bit as I couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t have changed much, beyond getting a bit calmer and even smugger, in all that time. And how she could remember stuff from 4.5 billion years ago so clearly despite all her claims about her mortal memory before. And without turning into the Face of Boe to give her head room to store all those memories. Also, I felt Clara was very quick to trust her and team up with her after what had happened in Face the Raven, but perhaps that’s just emphasising again how happy Clara is to take risks in order to have fun and adventures.

Anyway, a line I particularly noticed this time (because I was focussed in on the diner) was the Doctor’s “Shouldn’t this diner be over the other side of the hill?” Implying either that Clara’s TARDIS had modelled itself on the diner in The Impossible Astronaut because it was nearby and/or familiar to the Doctor, or that it actually was the diner in The Impossible Astronaut. That explanation had never occurred to me before, but I rather like it. Clara, the girl who’s saved the Doctor so many times in all her ‘echoes’, going on to help out subtly in the background even after he’s forgotten her. Neat. :-)

PS I realised from rewatching the ep that this icon is actually in Clara's diner - it's at the end when she's gone through the Elvis door into the console room!

Comments

[elisi]

or that it actually was the diner in The Impossible Astronaut.
Ooooh. That IS neat. Clara is EVERYWHERE. :D

And your icon is lovely - is it snaggable?

[unfeathered]

She really is! Or could be, at least. :-D

Icon is totally snaggable - I snagged it myself a while ago! :-)

[elisi]

Thank you. :)

And I went back to read my own thoughts, and goodness I really wrote a lot back then. Ahhhh, I miss Moffat. (Although I don't have the time to write now, so the lack of meta is probably a good thing. *g*)

[unfeathered]

LOL, you did, and it was all amazing! You obviously had the time and passion then, like I did when I first discovered LJ in 2007 and analysed and ficced and just basically lived the whole of TW S1 and DW S3 for that short while that I had the time and energy and passion and the bunch of like-minded people to do it with!

The fact that I apparently never commented on your post there is testament to how much my time/energy/passion had dwindled by that point, even though Twelve's second and third seasons are by far my favourites of Moffat's... I wish I had more time to spend. :-(

Still. Your comment here has got me working on my fic again, which is a good thing as it's due by tomorrow!!! It's not even very insightful or interesting, but these days I'm counting just writing a fic an achievement in itself! :-D

[elisi]

LOL, you did, and it was all amazing! You obviously had the time and passion then,
Thank you! And I find that if the passion is there, I somehow find the time. (Impacting on everything else of course.) I can't not write...

Although it depends, I love different things in different ways. Moffat Who & Good Omens - ate my brain, not room for anything else, wrote endlessly. Umbrella Academy & Russian Doll - love them to distraction, barely posted a thing.

Fannish brains are funny things. ^_^

Still. Your comment here has got me working on my fic again, which is a good thing as it's due by tomorrow!!! It's not even very insightful or interesting, but these days I'm counting just writing a fic an achievement in itself! :-D
I am glad, and the fic was delightful! <3

[unfeathered]

And I find that if the passion is there, I somehow find the time. (Impacting on everything else of course.)

Yes, indeed. Which I guess is why sometimes I still write reactions and reviews (and, very occasionally, fic), because something stirs enough energy in me and the words just keep coming. Of course, a lot of the time I just don't get round to writing them down. I 'write' a hell of a lot of comments, reviews and beginnings-of-fics that never get written down and therefore get lost, which is a hell of a shame! :-(

And yeah, different fandoms invoke different responses. My new 'current' fandom (as opposed to Supernatural which is new to me but has obviously finished for everyone else) seems to be the MCU, but there's just so much of it, and it's all movies and streaming TV so even if I could keep up with it there's no fixed air date or anything, so I don't tend to frequent forums in the same way I do the Doctor Who ones on Reddit (which seems to be where there are the most similar thing currently to how LJ/DW post-airing discussions used to be) and if I don't interact with people talking about a show, I don't process my own thoughts very thoroughly. I often dive into reviews and Den of Geek-type interesting thoughts, but if I'm just reading and not writing stuff myself, it's not the same.

Ah well. At least I have shows I'm enjoying watching, and doing a little bit of thinking about.

Anyway. Thank you for reading my little fic and I'm so glad you liked it! :-)