BWW Recap: The Doctor is 'Hell Bent' to Save Clara on DOCTOR WHO

The Doctor's motives in "Heaven Sent" become apparent in the Season 9 finale of DOCTOR WHO. At the end of the previous episode, we found out that The Doctor spent billions of years breaking through the wall, instead of just giving up what he knows about the hybrid. The people who wanted that information were the Time Lords, who trapped him in his own confession dial. When The Doctor returns to Gallifrey, and since he is a war hero to the people, he is able to take over Gallifrey and become president.

The Doctor does all of this just to get the use of an extraction chamber to talk to Clara. He is able to freeze her in time the exact moment before she is killed. However, instead of just speaking with her for a moment, he planned to save her for real. The Doctor was willing to fracture time itself in order to save Clara. He endured 4.5 billion years of hell just for a chance to protect her.

However, The Doctor realizes he's gone too far, and when he brings Clara to the end of the universe, he hears four knocks on the TARDIS door. Initially I expected it to be Missy, but it was Ashildr waiting for him at the very end. In talking to Ashildr, The Doctor realizes that he's gone too far. His inability to accept endings has led him astray, and he broke all of his own rules on the path to trying to prevent one very specific ending: Clara's.

Ashildr points out to The Doctor that it isn't her or him who's the Hybrid, but both The Doctor and Clara together. Ashildr reminds him that it was Missy who brought he and Clara together, Missy who loves chaos. Clara and The Doctor are bad for each other, and in this moment--at the end of time-- they both realize they can't be together any longer.

This realization leads to The Doctor losing all memory of Clara forever. Instead all he has are fragments of memories, places they've been, things they've done, but he can't remember her face, her voice, anything. This allows Clara to say a proper goodbye, as a waitress in the very same restaurant that Eleven, Amy, and Rory met in a long time ago. Clara reminds The Doctor of something he said, that "stories are where memories go when they're forgotten," before she leaves him alone. The Doctor may have forgotten Clara, but her memory lives on.

When Clara leaves The Doctor in the diner, she gets in the stolen TARDIS where Ashildr is waiting. Clara, realizing her pulse has yet to return, knows she must die because she's a fix point in time. However, she decides to take the "long way round" to Gallifrey, and she and her companion, Ashildr, set off to explore space and time. I think this was the most fitting way to say goodbye to Clara Oswald. I was quite certain she was gone for good in "Face the Raven," so it was a pleasent surprise to have her back for a little bit longer. She goes out in a much better way, too. Over the last two seasons, Clara has grown to be more of an equal to The Doctor than a companion, and the truth about the Hybrid made sense, because they were so dangerous together. Both could do almost anything, and the universe couldn't handle them together (thanks, Missy). Even though Clara knows she still must go back to that alley and die, she isn't in any rush. Instead she goes out in the best way possible, in a TARDIS travelling through space and time, but this time she is at the helm with a companion at her side. And this gives us fans hope that maybe, even for just one episode way down the road, Clara Oswald will return before she finishes her trip back to Gallifrey. If not, I'm glad I got to say goodbye to Miss Oswald in a much more positive manner.

"Hell Bent" is definitely a testament to how people cope with loss and pain, which in The Doctor's case isn't very well. Most people wouldn't sacrifice 4.5 billion years in order to save someone, but The Doctor is different. However, this truth doesn't make itself evident until halfway through the episode---a very interesting twist, Steven Moffat devised. At the end of "Heaven Sent" we found ourselves back on Gallifrey, a place it seemed we'd never return to. But instead of making the season finale about The Doctor's homecoming and the repurcussions it would have on the planet, Moffat made it about The Doctor, which it has always been about. Gallifrey was never the story, the story was the young Time Lord who stole a TARDIS and ran away. It wouldn't make sense to end one of the best season's yet any differently. Even more so, it was about The Doctor's pain and his undying love for his companions, especially Clara. Though all previous companions are just as important in their own right, Clara was The Doctor's intellectual match. She became so much like him that the universe couldn't take it. They were the Hybrid, and though neither of them would ever trade a moment of it, they had to face the consquences: memory loss and death. Both were fitting, however, since The Doctor spent 4.5 billion years remembering Clara, it was time to let her go, and since Clara could never go back to a normal life without The Doctor.

So, The Doctor is left to his TARDIS, alone again, with only a new jacket, new sonic screwdriver (thankfully!), and a message to keep him going: "Be the Doctor."

Stray Thoughts:

-What significance does the lady in the barn have to The Doctor?

-"Get off my planet."

-Time Lords die and become computers in a crypt. how sad. Also, was it just me or did one of those computers look kind of like David Tennant? (Probably just me).

-Even though they weren't the villians, seeing the Weeping Angels gave me so much anxiety

-This episode just made me sad for Donna Noble

-Tomorrow's promised to no one, Doctor, but I insist on my past, I am entitled to it, it's mine."

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Well that's it for Season 9! Check back here on Christmas Day for my recap of "The Husbands of River Song!"

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