@Bluesqueakpip

Yes I can see that too about the energy bolts.  Didn’t  Simm/Master prematurely age the Doctor in

Sound of the Drums.

and

@Tardigrade

It seems to me Missy gets something out of this more than just a tortured  Doctor.  She wouldn’t

just hand the Dial over without compensation.  Her new regeneration was part of some other ‘…[Read more]

@tardigrade

Yes, it’s a bit hard for me to see how Missy could not be involved, since she was the one with the confession disc.

Missy only has the confession disc from the (unknown) point at which the Doctor sent it to her, to the point when Colony Sarff confiscated it on Skaro. After that, the Doctor has it until he gives it to Ashildr at t…[Read more]

@mudlark  The inner eye of memory is no longer capable of *seeing* her there, nor can he recall how it felt to be in her company; and crucially as @Arbutus and @tardigrade observed, the emotional connection which bound them together so tightly has gone.

@bluesqueakpip  After all, if the idea is to protect Clara from ever being traced through t…[Read more]

@Frobisher

My default assumption with Time Lords is that if it’s a different actor, they’ve regenerated. 🙂

Incidentally, I did love the Doctor’s description of Time Lord death as ‘man flu’. Is this a tacit admission that he tends to milk his own regenerations for all they’re worth, lying in bed and getting people to bring him cups of…[Read more]

@CountScarlioni

Once the Doctor, assuming he truly did not remember Clara in the diner scene, got back into his own Tardis, would he not immediately search the Tardis’s data banks for “Clara” and recover at least some of the lost memories? For him, it’s surely only a temporary loss of some memories. Have I missed something? Is there somethi…

[Read more]

@arbutus  Did anyone notice that the Doctor, on being ordered to “lay down your weapons”, dropped his spoon to the table?

Yes!  Loved it, and a call back to what he’s come to get paid for by the instigators of the Dial ordeal: eating soup in the castle, asking himself if he’ll have to stay there . . . forever?  And the spoon slips out of his ha…[Read more]

@tardigrade

Don’t forget that the coordinates Missy gave the Doctor were correct in space. Just not in time.

She didn’t lie to the Doctor about where Galifrey was except for timeframe. So how did she know?

To me this implies collusion with the TL’s and Rassilon too.

SPOILER, SPOILER, SPOILER...

@geoffers    Thanks! Doctor’s trip to Ashildr/Me. he specifically says that it’s the last few hours of the universe, and that the time lords won’t be able to track him there. he also says to ashildr/me “go to hell, by my calculations you’ve got about five minutes…”  I’d wondered if there was a time stated in terms of how long in the future the…[Read more]

so, have come the long way around by reading all the comments.

wow.

So, nothing much to add except a couple of things.

I think I have similar reactions to Hell Bent as @tardigrade – for me I liked the episode (acting is great etc), I ‘enjoyed’ it, but I didn’t find it ‘satisfying’.
Clara had died. Now Clara gets to live.
“Having your cake and…[Read more]

@pedant    Right, I had forgotten that line. I should get a chance to rewatch later today and it will all become more fixed in my mind. But in any case, it’s still not complicated, which was my point in that post. People (in other places) seem to find it remarkably difficult to follow, which it has sometimes been, but I really didn’t think that m…[Read more]

On the third page! 🙂

@Morpho
It sounds as if, having agreed to treat the Eighth Doctor’s audio adventures as canon, Moffat’s going full tilt for the audio canon explanation of the Sisterhood – which is that the Sisterhood aren’t just neighbours of Gallifrey, they’re exiled Gallifreyans. Rassillon didn’t like their religion, so they had to do a…[Read more]

@tardigrade:

After all, Clara’s told him that she “reversed the polarity” on the neural block – let’s be honest – that means she put the batteries in backwards. In my experience that means a gadget just doesn’t work :-).

Note the way that the sonic glasses work, as Clara explained to Ashildr when they first met. You just think the thing you wan…[Read more]

Aaaand more of page 2 🙂

@Misterhoo and @puroandson

Apologies if someone else has already replied to your query – but The General stated quite firmly that Clara’s physical death is a ‘fixed point’. We’ve seen before what happens when someone’s death is a ‘fixed point’ – Rory, who simply could not die until he finally reached the place and time…[Read more]

@bluesqueskpip  Love your post #48897, above — great.  This:  it’s the Doctor who thinks he’s playing the starring role in a tragedy. However, the universe – in the person of the current producer – knows he’s playing the starring role in a comedy.

And this:  When we see Face The Raven in hindsight, as the ‘regeneration’ story of Clara into Doc…[Read more]

@Ozitenor

For what it’s worth, my take on the issues raised in your post #48938 points 3 and 4. is as follows.  I read the initial sequence of events as you did: when the Doctor regained consciousness he was in a very confused state – waking up in the desert with no idea how he got there would be enough to ensure that, even without the after ef…[Read more]

After two watches and reflecting on the series, which I think was been spectacular and brave, what’s most striking to me at this point is the directness. In S8 and S9,  Clara became increasingly like the Doctor, until at the end of Hell Bent she’s off exploring all of time and space with her companion/fellow traveller (?) with a Type 40 Tardis s…[Read more]

@tardigrade    I like the idea that the TARDIS prefers to look like a diner and so just sticks that way. Why not? We know the Doctor’s TARDIS has some firm views, and possibly prefers to look like a blue box.  🙂

@tardigrade    Actually, I think in some ways that it is Clara who is now more “adult” than the Doctor. It wasn’t Clara that threatened all of time and space etc. etc. to save her own life. That was the Doctor. Clara has grown up, she is ready for Time Lordish responsibilities now.

Nice bonkers theory on the life of the universe…[Read more]

@tardigrade

I didn’t interpret the sonic screwdriver as replacing lost sunglasses. He reads “Be a Doctor” on the blackboard, puts on his “Doctor” jacket and takes up his sonic screwdriver- apparently fully willing to be the Doctor full-time again.

That makes sense. Thank you!