Timelord Thoughts 12 - Hell Bent

Apologies for the week-long delay on this final review.

It's the season nine finale - but probably not the one you were expecting...

Hell Bent

• It's a well know Moffat trope that he likes the second part of two-part stories (or in this case three part) to be markedly different to the first. So it comes as no surprise that after all the "Previously" montages of ravens, and confessional dial traps and apologies from Me, we start with a truck rolling across the deserts of Nevada.
• There really is a Jackson mountain range in Nevada. To the west is the Black Rock Desert. To the north (ish)  lies the Bilk Creek mountains, Kings River Valley and the Double Mountains. To the east are the Sleeping Hills and the Kamma Mountains. All very interesting names. Best of all southwest of the pass between the Jackson and Kamma ranges lies the ghost town of Sulphur. Just possibly that might where a diner selling "Snacks And Gas" lies

• "No matter where you go, there you are". That phrase is possibly most well known (well to me anyway) from the 1984 cult SF action adventure movie "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai in the 8th Dimension" (although it actually originates from the teachings of the ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius). The film starred Peter Weller as the multi-talented physicist, neurosurgeon, test pilot and rock musician out to save the world from the inter-dimensional Red Lectroids from Planet 10. The saying has gone on to be a bit of an "easter egg", popping up in TV shows, novels and even songs (not to mention the dedication plaque of the U.S.S. Excelsior  in 'Star Trek'). There are lots of different interpretations of what it means, but the one I like the most is "No matter where life takes you, you are still you. You must not change yourself or become manipulated into being something or someone that goes against your beliefs"...
• I guess one of the questions that will hopefully get answered is - where did the Doctor get the black suit, the pick-up truck and the guitar? Some time has passed since he emerge from the Confession Dial into the Dry Lands of Gallifrey.
• Even from the back you can tell that it's Clara behind the counter. The question is how? Is she another splinter of The Impossible Girl, is this set before she died (yes I'm still clinging to the vain hope that some of my time travel theory might not turn out to be total bobbins)? Is she a Life Model Decoy * ?
• I wonder who the jukebox is playing for? "Don't Stop Me Now" by Queen could equally apply to the Doctor or Clara. Of course this is the Foxes version from "Mummy on the Orient Express"
• "I don't have any money". Nothing new there then.
• Sonic shades uses number 1536 - a radio transmitter for instant guitar amplification.
• Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic...
• It's interesting that when the radio crackles both the Doctor and "Clara" look towards the back of the diner.
• At this point we don't know the rules of the games Moffat is playing, but this scene is wonderfully understated by both actors.
• There have been lots of example of diegetic music in Doctor Who, but is this the first example of a character performing one of Murray Gold's compositions?
• I'll admit that at first I was hugely resistant to the idea of the Doctor playing the electric guitar. It's first appearances seemed liked grandstanding and making the Twelfth Doctor kooky for kookiness sake. But as the season has gone on, it's grown on me. It's become an extension of the Doctor's character, allowing us an insight into his mood without the need for dialogue. Just a few notes of Clara's song on the guitar is very melancholy.
• "Nothing's sad till it's over. Then everything is". Never a truer word spoken. It certainly applies to the departure of companions (and even the end of series).
• The Doctor doesn't appear to recognise Clara, but knows to call his sad song after her? At this point she could be another splinter of the Impossible Girl, everything could be in his mind, or this could even be a fake reality inside the Matrix (we did last see the Doctor on Gallifrey after all). Who knows.
• And after the titles that's exactly where we see him, the Capitol dome dominating the skyline. It's a beautiful shot.
• The barn. A location possibly loaded with  more meaning and significance in the Doctor's life than the Panopticon, Earth and perhaps even the TARDIS. We've been here twice before, in "Day of the Doctor" and "Listen" and each time it's changed the Doctor's life forever.
• That zooming-in shot over the buildings and spires and in through the window of the Presidential chamber really shows of the size and scale of the Time Lord city.
• So the ringing of the cloister bells is not simply a warning signal in a TARDIS then. 
•  Lord President eh? The staff (the rod of Rassilon?) looks the same as the the last time we saw it in the hands of Timothy Dalton, but the robes and head dress have become even more ornate.

• The Matrix now seems to be more of a physical place than it's previous appearances - or at least it's bowels do. Bells? Cloister Wraiths? Maybe this is just the place where they hide all the wiring that connects to the colourful interface we saw in "The Deadly Assassin". Then again, who can guess how Time Lord technology has changed in the years since they have been gone.
• This President is a grumpy old soul - scared of the Doctor too by the looks of it.
• The Sisterhood of Karn. On Gallifrey? Have they known where it was hidden all along and didn't tell the Doctor because he....didn't ask? Can they just come and go in the "pocket dimension" it's meant to be trapped in whenever they like?
• I still visit my childhood home because my parents have never moved, but imagine what it must be like for the Doctor to come back to a place that he's only seen once in nearly two thousand years. The sunlight shining through the wooden slats, the bells ringing in the background as the Doctor climbs the steps to the place he slept as a child. What memories that small structure must hold.
• That look on the Doctor's face as he hears the voice of the old woman. A ghost from his past has just reappeared. Equally she has the same reaction when she sees him - which he confirms with a curt nod.
• "It's for the boys, if any of them ever want to come...". I'm leaning more and more towards her being the Doctor's foster mother or matriarchal head of a home for "lost" children. Which makes me wonder - what happened to the Doctor's real parents?
• If this whole sequence wasn't being shot and lit like a Spaghetti western, then Murray Gold makes sure you know the analogy through his music...
• Where did all those people suddenly come from? There didn't seem to be anything for miles around the barn (except for the Time Lords). They don't look like the outlanders from previous stories, more like extras from "How The West Was Won". And all to watch the Doctor eat a bowl of thin tomato soup?
• As we hear the rumble of a shuttle craft landing and the Doctor looks up, with an annoyed look on his face, he really need a cowboy hat...

• "At least move the children away". Would this greenhorn soldier really shoot unarmed civilians to get to the Doctor? He's terribly unconvincing.
• Oooh the Doctor has dropped his spoon. This means trouble.
• I love it. A literal line in the sand (it's also the title of a book about the battle of The Alamo, which is stylistically interesting).
• Even the General doesn't pique the Doctor's interest and he just gets a door in the face. The Doctor has yet to utter a word. They really are playing up the whole 'Man With No Name' feel. This could be Clint Eastwood or Henry Fonda.
• So after rescuing Gallifrey from the Time War and hunting for it for so long (remember how angry the Doctor was when it wasn't in the location Missy promised last series?), how come he seems so unhappy to be back now? Well I think I'd be slightly ticked off with the people that contributed to getting my companion killed and trapping me in a personal hell for several billion years.
• The President seems to have forgotten the pivotal role the Doctor had in saving Gallifrey , even if the General hasn't. I wonder how much time has passed for the Time Lords since they were saved from destruction and sent to the pocket dimension?
• Nope. If military force or the appearance of an old ally won't do it, then the High Council of Time Lords bowing in unison is not going to make the Doctor take notice. We already know his disdain for the members of that body. There can only be one person he is waiting for...
• The electrical crackle from that metallic glove as it smashes down on the table. We last saw a legendary figure in Time Lord history wearing that. Could it be...?
• "He just blames you". That just about clinches it. Even so, surely more than one person had a hand in the atrocities of the Time War. The military seems to be getting off very lightly here. Then again, in "Day of the Doctor" they seemed to be somewhat independent of the High Council. Maybe Moffat is trying to say that the soldiers did the "normal" fighting and Rxxxxxx and his lackeys were the ones who conjured up the hideous things that should never have been  (plus of course they did try to destroy the Earth way back in "The End of Time").
• I think they've worn out the comedy of the "foster mother" knocking and mouthing wordlessly at the next arrival.
• Forget the token hand of friendship. It's loaded with such meaning when the Doctor throws the confession dial at the President's feet. This is one time that the Doctor is not willing to forgive.
• "Get off my planet". Shades of Sheridan in "Babylon 5" stating "Get the hell out of our galaxy"?
• I'm still not really sold on this whole idea that the Doctor ran away from Gallifrey because of what he knew about the Hybrid and the Time Lords need to know his secret in order to protect themselves - hence placing him in the confession dial. It's a bit of a big retcon when there has been no evidence relating to this over the last 51 years. I'm all for revealing new takes on what we thought we knew (A hidden War Doctor worked because we knew nothing about the time between the Eighth and Ninth Doctors) but this is meant to be a prophecy that dates back through eons of time. If it had been seeded slower over the last couple of years then maybe I would have bought it more. It's almost as if Moffat needed a season arc, didn't have a better idea so went with this even though it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
• The President's order to fire on the Doctor is a bit odd too. He couldn't torture the truth out of the Doctor over those billions of years so why does he think that threatening to shoot him will make any difference? And if they do shoot and kill him, what will that have gained in terms of information about the Hybrid? 
• Still as "Clara" says when we switch back to the Diner without seeing the results of the shots, it would have made a great cliffhanger in the Classic series. 
• I've been to Glasgow and I don't remember it looking anything like Gallifrey. Where's the river, and the motorway running through the centre?
• This incarnation of the President seems a bit slow on the uptake. Of course the soldiers wouldn't fire on a certified war hero and want to side with him. The face that the "Doctor of War" was usually seen to be unarmed (despite us seeing him with a gun in the 50th anniversary special) seems to indicate that the John Hurt version did still hold true to the ideals of the Doctor, even if he was prepared to do some reprehensible things "without choice...in the name of peace and sanity".
• Add Skull Moon as the name of another skirmish in the Time War. At this rate we'll be able to build up a proper chronology.
• "Ever story ever told really happened. Stories...are where memories go when they are forgotten". It's a wonderful line. This could be akin to the many worlds theory - where every alternative event in history is played out somewhere in a dimension just out of phase with our own. It could also apply to Doctor Who and what is considered "canon" or "non-canon(ical). It reminds me of the last line from the start of Alan Moore's Superman story "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" - "This is an imaginary story - aren't they all?". In other words it ALL matters.Even the bits that don't make sense. Even though I'm sitting here picking apart a Doctor Who story, at the same time I want to celebrate the fact that we have it at all. Embrace the power of imagination.
• Absolute power has corrupted the President (that seems to be  part of the job description sadly). I love Donald Sumpter as an actor but I think he's playing this just the wrong side of hammy.

• He's ever so slightly unhinged isn't he?
• "How many regenerations did we grant you?" I guess even the Time Lords don't know. The limit of twelve may be well and truly out the window, for the Doctor at least.
• And there you have it at last. Rassilon the resurrected. Older, grumpier and definitely not wiser.
• He might be banished from Gallifrey, but I am sure this is not the last we will see of the prime founder of Time Lord society. Could Rassilon be the 'Minster of War' we heard about back in "Before The Flood"?
• So if Gallifrey is at the extreme end of the time continuum for it's own protection (presumably from the threat of the Hybrid) then we have to assume the Time Lords moved it there. Which still begs the question of how they were released from the "pocket dimension" they were trapped in. Did Missy do it? Did Rassilon figure out a way? Does Steven Moffat even know?
• Another reference to the "long way round". This kind of confirms that all those millennia inside the confession dial happened in 'real time' too. It's a good job the Doctor didn't under or overshoot - Gallifrey might not have been there to greet him.
• The Doctor is really out for regime change. The High Council are banished too, which leaves a total power vacuum that I doubt he wants to fill himself.
• I'm getting giddy with all this zooming up and down the spires of the Capitol
• "At the end of everything one must expect the company of immortals". Oh Ohila you cryptic old minx. Maybe she's been reading about Sam and Frodo in "Return of the King". Actually that title could be apt in other ways...
• Okay, so if a confession dial is a "ritual act of purification" (very Vulcan 'Kolinahr') for a dying Time Lord before he is uploaded to the Matrix, then we have been led to believe that the Doctor used it before he went to see Davros. What demons did he see that time?
• Confirmation that Rassilon ordered the Doctor's imprisonment. Did he learn nothing after his last defeat?
• "...Are you just being cruel? Or just being cowardly". Another callback to words spoken by the Doctor in the 50th anniversary special. Originally coined by the legendary Mr Terrance Dicks no less and probably the phrase the Doctor most strives to live by. It must hurt to have those tenets turned back on himself.
• Have the Time Lords based all their recent actions on rumour and supposition and interpretation of the prophecies of the Hybrid? They don't seem 100% sure about anything.
• "Oh must be well hard then". Dismissive but also slightly cringe worthy.
• The General states that ALL Matrix prophecies concur that the Hybrid will one day stand in the ruins of Gallifrey and unravel the web of time... Since when did the Matrix start making prophecies of this kind anyway? I thought it was a just a repository of all of Time Lord knowledge (with maybe a little hack by the Master to feed the Doctor a hallucinatory vision of him killing the then President).
• "...and destroy a billion, billion hearts to heal it's own". Much like the Doctor went through in the confession dial then. Interesting...
• Just like that the Doctor undercuts the portentous, solemn nature of the General's speech. He's right though. Why can't prophecies be a little more...explicit?
• The Doctor offers to help Gallifrey if they give him the use of an "extraction chamber" to talk to an old friend. Maybe he's going to go back and talk to Adric and get some Block Transfer Computation done. Oh come on, we all know it's Clara he's talking about, but right now I'm not sure his motives are exactly focussed on helping his own race. For once the Doctor could be so unpredictable and angry that you can't trust him.
• I was afraid that this was going to happen. Much as I like the idea of a Doctor who has found the only way to save Clara is to deceive his own people, it totally undermines the whole dramatic moment of her death. Any kids watching can cope with the concept of people they care about dying - indeed some might say that they ought to be exposed to it. The series this year has spent a lot of time engaging with concepts around time and death and mortality (or lack of it). There is nothing wrong in them seeing that sometimes the good guys don't win and that people do make mistakes and sometimes they die. In Stephen Moffat's second script for the new series, "The Doctor Dances", he had the Doctor proclaim "Just this once everybody lives" and RTD swore that you would never see a companion die on his watch.  It seems to have become Moffat's mantra. He just can't let people stay dead. River Song, Rory Williams, the entirety of reality (in "The Big Bang") - all of them come out of things alive in one way or another. He's even used the Big Red Reset button. How can you have any real jeopardy if you know that all your main cast will always survive (or come back from the dead)? Now I'm not suggesting that Doctor Who needs to have "Game of Thrones" levels of deaths but at the moment it would be a pleasant surprise if occasionally dead did mean dead.
• I did like the slightly 3D offset effect around Clara's "extraction".
• I think anyone would be confused if they expected to die and suddenly found themselves in a completely white room with a couple of old men.
• Clara thinks things sound odd because she can no longer hear her own heartbeat, which has always been there since she was born. Is that really true? I don't hear mine if I put my fingers in my ears to block out exterior noise although I can perhaps hear it sometimes if I'm laying down on a pillow. I do know there is a condition called pulsatile tinnitus which affects a certain segment of the population and causes them to hear a regular pulsing. I think in this case it's just less about medical accuracy and more a narrative device to bring our attention to the fact that Clara's heart is no longer beating.
• I was right. The extraction of Clara in between the final nano-seconds of her life was not so the Doctor could use her knowledge to help save the Time Lords. It's all a ruse to get what he really wanted - his companion back from a untimely and undeserved death. My theory of the time-twisting nature of Clara's series nine adventures with the Doctor might have been shot down in flames, but I did predict that the Doctor would do anything to save her, even transgress the laws of time. That was also one hell of a punch.
• "On pain of death, no one take a selfie". Groan. Really? 
• Clara's pleading with the Doctor to put down the gun reminded me of Rose doing the same thing in "Dalek". This time though I don't think the Doctor is going to be quite so easily persuaded. 
• This is a Doctor who has been pushed completely over the edge. No other incarnation has deliberately shot and "killed" one of his own people before. I'm not sure I entirely like it. Even if "death is Time Lord for man flu", it's still possibly a step too far. Has the Doctor stopped being the hero and the man who saves people beyond his own selfish needs?
• With one swift regeneration Moffat makes it irrecoverably and definitively canon that Time Lords can change gender and race. There is no going back now and the role of the Doctor is wide open. Whether it needs to be is a debate for another time.
• I love the fact that the General's ninth incarnation was the only one that was male. No idea what this ego thing is all about though. We're not that fragile...
• This idea that the Cloisters are the "hell" of the Time Lords is another new twist in the mythology of the show. I just don't think it's very well defined. What is meant to be down there? If it's the bowels if the Matrix - a machine the Time Lords created to house their "souls" and wisdom and knowledge after they finally died - then why are they scared of it?
• Just like that Moffat hand waves away the explanation of how Gallifrey escaped being frozen. I guess he feels that any story he could tell would never be as good as the one in our heads, so he decided not to bother - or the Time Lords are ultimately too dull and the story he wants to tell is far more interesting (to him at least). The problem is, the escape story is the one I would have liked to have seen.  
• What's a Weeping Angel baby doing in the bowels of the Capitol on Gallifrey? Isn't that a bit...dangerous?

• Hang on - how on earth is wiping Clara's memory of the Doctor going to keep her safe? She's a no pulse extract taken from between heartbeats who is meant to be dead and whose continued existence possibly threatens all of time and space.She shouldn't exist at all. It's a very odd decision. Perhaps the Doctor doesn't really have a clue what to do next and is winging it hoping that a permanent solution will present itself. Making Clara forget will only create more danger to the timelines because she could end up getting killed before she dies (kind of like I was trying to theorise).
• I'll admit the Sliders are kind of spooky.
• The Dalek being in the Cloisters seems a bit like they had to shoehorn one in for licencing rights sake. It's all a bit like the Underhenge in "The Pandorica Opens".
• Another mention for the Cloister Wars, which seem to have been a series of attempted invasions of Gallifrey separate from the Last Great Time War. Maybe somewhere in the cavernous deep there is a Sontaran and a Vardan (it's baco-foil shimmering faintly in the half light).
• Likewise with the Weeping Angels and the Cyberman - they are just there to add some kind of ineffectual threat to what is basically a walk through a musty cavern covered in stone columns and cables. Clara did turn her back on one right at the end of the scene, but maybe she can't be transported back into the past because she is an undead zombie. At least it's good for the kids to play spot-the-monster.
• "The Time Lords have got a big computer made of ghosts in a crypt guarded by more ghosts". I can go with that. The "dead manning the battlements" thing was very Shakespearian though and in keeping with this Doctor's apparent obsession with death.
• The student that got stuck in the Cloisters? Had to be the First Doctor didn't it?
• So if the Doctor only lost the moon and really stole the President's daughter, then those must be the two things that Missy said were a lie in "The Magician's Apprentice". If Missy herself was telling the truth then the Doctor was a little girl at some point during his childhood...
• Eccentric, A bit mad. Rude to people. Not much has changed then. Maybe the first incarnation in a new cycle is always a cantankerous old grump to start with before mellowing after a few adventures.
• The Doctor's refusal to tell Clara how long it has been since he last saw her suggests that he somehow remembers every one of those billions of years even though he physically only aged around three days.
• So does the Doctor not consider himself the Doctor at this point? Has his experiences in the confession dial caused him to change to the man who became the Doctor of War? The mention of his new black jacket reminds me yet again - exactly where did it come from? We saw him change into it in the barn but there isn't a Saville Row tailor for billions of years in both time and space.
• "It doesn't matter what the Hybrid is". It's all another bluff. The Doctor has no more idea than the High Council. Even his statement at the end of the last episode -  "The Hybrid is me" - was just misdirection. I'm starting to think that the whole point of the legend of the Hybrid arc is to show what people will do if they believe in something that they can't prove exists.
• Four and a half billion years. So we only saw 50% of the ordeal the Doctor had to go through to escape, and it was all so that he could trick the Time Lords into bringing Clara back. That's dedication of the highest order. Or insanity. Or obsession. Take your pick.
• Clara is right. He should have let her go. Duty of care of not.
• We don't need to hear what the Doctor and Clara say to each other. How do you put that kind of relationship into words.
• Clara is right. The Time Lords have gone from being the stuffy old curators of time to the most feared and hated race in the universe because they let nothing get in the way of their need to destroy the Daleks. They even tortured the man who saved them from obliteration. It's a big change from their appearances in the Classic series. But the question is - does it make them any more interesting? What can you do with them as race - as characters - after this? Maybe they should stay lost at the end of time.
• Ha! A classic piece of mis-direction as the Doctor escapes into the workshop vaults.
• That gleaming white original TARDIS console room is a thing of absolute beauty.

• "Face me, boy!" I reckon there is a longer, older relationship between the Doctor and Ohila than we first thought. Maybe that's why she keeps turning up at key points in his life. She also seems to have a higher position in the Time Lord hierarchy than you would expect for a member of the Sisterhood of Karn. A lot may have changed in the Sisterhoods relationship with Gallifry over the last few millennia - or she could just be making a bid for more power. I wouldn't be surprised if we didn't see her as the new female President if the Time Lords ever come back again.
• The Doctor is manic. Full of energy. "Cocktails with Moses". His audacious improvised plan worked. Clara is saved. He puts on a good show but we all know it's just a front. Nothing is that easy. The Doctor has broken the rules of time and Clara knows it. He's not fooling anyone
• The Doctor has supposedly been to the end of the universe before, in "Utopia". Just not this close to the end. Maybe it's like travelling near the speed of light. The closer you get the longer it will take to get there.
• The whole pulse thing is a bit over laboured but I can see what they were going for - the Doctor getting more and more agitated when things don't go they way he hoped. He must be starting to realise that he has miscalculated by now. His desire to rescue Clara has over-ridden any sense of  logic.
• "I am answerable to no-one". The Doctor is gone and the Time Lord Victorious is back. Right now he is more dangerous than anything else in the universe. He really has risked everything and will stop at nothing. Capaldi is magnificently scary at this point.

• "It's always four knocks". The heartbeat of a Time Lord and perhaps a signal from the universe that the Doctor's arrogance has taken him too far. It's certainly stopped him in his tracks. 
• Does anyone else feel that the name taken by Ashildr was only done to set up the series of deliberate confusions about the word "me"? I hope I'm being too cynical.
• Lovely to hear the classic style hum as the TARDIS doors open.
• "Even the other immortals are gone". Are we ever going to find out what happened to Sam Swift? If not, what was the point of giving him the other Mire chip? Maybe he was too dim and got fatally injured 30 minutes after he was given it. Even immortals can die (just look at "Highlander"). Since the whole episode seems to be in a nostalgic mood, it would also have been nice to have a passing mention of Captain Jack.
• "Me" knows the Doctor better than he knows himself. Living on the slow path has finally bought her peace and wisdom. She's right that the Doctor doesn't like endings. That's why he always leaves so suddenly after saving people. That's why he can't come to terms with the fact that Clara is dead and that it was on her own terms, not his. Clara chose to face the raven but he can't - and he won't face the fact that he might be wrong now.
• "We know summer can't last forever". Who else wanted her to say "Winter is coming..."?
• Look! This TARDIS even has the fault locator machine!

• So it's revealed at last. The Hybrid is "Me". Not Dalek and Time Lord but human and Mire.
• Except maybe it not. Instead it's the Doctor. Half human on his mothers side (or so the Eighth Doctor said). A nice nod to the biggest part of the shows history that every fan has decided to ignore.Then again why *would* the Doctor run away from himself?
• Third theory - the Hybrid is the explosive combination of the Doctor and Clara brought together by Missy (way back in "The Bells of Saint John"). As she put it: "The control freak and the man who should never be controlled. You'd go to Hell, if she asked. And she would". Missy was right - the Doctor did go to Hell for Clara and she has become more and more like him rather than being the reality check he sometimes needs. He did die a billion billion times and now he is standing in the ruins of Gallifrey. It's the version that ties in most with the themes of this series. I'm not sure they really qualify as a hybrid but then again Moffat does love twisting the meaning of words.
• I'm also coming back to the thought that Moffat is trying to say that who the Hybrid is really doesn't matter. It's the *idea* and the fear of that idea that has made everyone behave the way they have. Fans can chose their own theory. The one they like (or can live with) best. The journey is the thing, not the destination, and this journey has been about how far would you go to protect the ones you love.
• Again, "Me" is able to tell the Doctor the things he has becomes too blind to see for himself. The risk he has taken with the lives of  everyone else just because he misses Clara.
• The Doctor still doesn't get it. "Doing a Donna" on Clara and wiping her memory won't stop the fact that she is an anomaly in time.and a risk to all of creation. The only way to put things right is to send her back to her death. It's a good job Clara was watching.
• "I reversed the polarity". At last someone has done what it actually means !
• Jenna Coleman is doing brilliant things with these scenes of Clara expressing her right to live her life (or death) the way she wants to.
• Finally the Doctor comes to his senses. He knows that his relationship with Clara is ultimately destructive for both of them and one of them has to forget the other. It's such a sad moment for this ancient lonely time traveller, because you know that he's always in charge and knows what he is doing. The look on his face says it all:

• Will the neural block actually really work on the Doctor? Wasn't it configured for humans back on Gallifrey?
• Capaldi rings every last drop of emotion out of the scene where he collapses and starts to forget about Clara. Some of those lines are worthy of a regeneration. Clara has been around for over half the Doctor's life (more if you count the splinters) and now he won't remember a thing about her. It's a brilliant performance.
• So the Doctor remembers all his adventures and that he travelled with someone called Clara but not what she looks like or who she was. There is just a hole. At this end of the episode its now obvious that the girl in the Diner is Clara checking that the Doctor really has forgotten her. Still no explanation for where he got the pick-up truck or guitar from. 
• Could those words that Clara said to the Doctor while in the Cloisters come into play in future series? Part of me hopes not.
• There is a terribly sad flicker of emotion across Clara's face as the Doctor looks right at her and doesn't recognise her. It's beautifully played.
• A nice reference to Amy and Rory and the diner in "The Impossible Astronaut". That one was in Utah so it can't be the same. The Doctor thinks something is odd though...
• "...memories become stories when we forget them. Maybe some of them become songs". I so hope that's true..
• And there's the final twist. The diner was the stolen TARDIS all along. It's a nice touch. But surely when it dematerialises the Doctor would recognise the sound immediately? He's lost his memory of Clara, not all his intelligence. And where did the truck vanish to?
• I'm not even going to try and guess how they got the Doctor's TARDIS from London to Nevada and parked it outside the diner without him noticing.
• Errr...um...hmmm..not sure what to say about that last scene in Clara's TARDIS. So her transformation into a Doctor-like figure is complete. She can't die. She's travelling with an immortal companion. She has a TARDIS with a broken chameleon circuit (stuck as an American diner) and she going back to Gallifrey the long way round. It could't be more blatant if it tried. I'm not particularity impressed. I'm quite happy  to have just one Doctor rattling around the universe thanks all the same. Maybe this is to silence those who want the Doctor to be a woman. More likely it's Moffat''s way of empowering his female characters  to ridiculous levels. Clara had already become the most important companion through the Doctor's whole time stream, now she's turned into the "mad woman in a box" . It's really not to kind of send off I wanted for the character, plus it still means THE WHOLE WEB OF TIME IS AT RISK !! 

• Run you clever boy and...be a Doctor. It's a triumphant scene as he steps back into the TARDIS and it hums to life. The familiar theme rises. The velvet jacket is waiting. A shiny new sonic screwdriver flies out of the console. A click of the fingers and the doors close. This is the Doctor I want. The one and only.Two final stunning shots. One of the spinning rings of the time rotor and finally Rigsy's graffiti peeling off. The Doctor is back.

Conclusion:

I'll admit that the first time I watched this I really wasn't that impressed. It wasn't the finale I wanted after all that build up - especially after the masterpiece of "Heaven Sent". I wanted an epic confrontation with the Time Lords, resulting in them coming back for good or staying lost. I wanted a definitive explanation for the Hybrid (yes I know we got *an* explanation but I still feel that it has been left open to interpretation). Instead what we got was an unexpected homage to spaghetti westerns (which I do love), a somewhat lacklustre match against the Time Lords, with the main villain sent off stage very quickly and then another extended goodbye to Clara, which undermined her heroic death of two weeks previous. Moffat managed to contradict or wave away his own stories and the series mythology, some of the seeds from the beginning of the series (the confession dial particularly) made poor sense and the less said about the "Diner" TARDIS and Clara's eventual fate (or lack of it) the better.On second viewing I was less harsh. There are still problems and it's certainly not the strongest Moffat finale (that trophy still lies with "The Big Bang") but I can see that the story was really about how far we would go for love and what we are willing to sacrifice. I didn't see the twist with the Doctor being the one to lose his memory coming and you have to admit the whole thing looked fabulous. 

The thing is, the Doctor being the kind of man he is - a man who will spend four and a half billion years punching through a wall or digging into why we all dream of monsters under the bed - would not let a blank space in his memory where a companion should be stay a mystery for long (if he has indeed forgotten at all). It's the kind of thing that would drive him to investigate relentlessly until he uncovered the truth. I can understand why erasing his memory will allow him to move on from the loss of Clara and get back to doing what he does best, but that missing piece won't stay lost forever. That's why I don't think we are completely done with Clara and Ashildr and the American Diner TARDIS. Much like Donna Noble making an appearance in "The End of Time" or Amy Pond turning up in the final moments of "The Time of the Doctor", I think The Girl Who Won't Die will feature in the Twelfth Doctor's last story.

Overall it's been a very very strong season with only a couple of clunkers ("Before The Flood" and "The Zygon Invasion" I'm looking at you). I even enjoyed "Sleep No More" - more than some people did -  even if it was flawed, it did try something different. Capaldi has got better and better with each episode with the real highlights being "The Zygon Inversion" and of course "Heaven Sent".If they can keep away from the poor quips and forced humour and let him ACT, then he's going to really rise in my estimation as the Doctor. I'm glad Clara is gone now though, as I think it will give Capaldi a chance to shine without the baggage of a companion with such a complicated back story.

Mr Moffat has said that he likes to shake things up each year with a different feel. So for series ten you know what I'd like to see? No series arc at all. By all means have a couple of episodes that are sequels to previous stories - bring back the exiled Rassilon or the Daleks or even the Jagrafess - but don't link the stories together. Let's say eight stories across twelve episodes which are just adventures. No hybrid or "darkness is coming" or "four knocks". Just the Doctor and his companion travelling across time and space righting wrongs and having fun. Wouldn't that be different?

Roll on Christmas Day.

* Yes I know that you'll only get that reference if you are a Marvel comics fan.