BOOK OF LISTS: TOP 6 BEST EPISODES - PART 1

And so, at last, our end-of-year countdown draws to a close. Sorry that it ended up bleeding so much into the New Year, after all. I really was hoping to wrap it up sooner. Sadly, my career as an actor/writer has been keeping me busier, of late. I kinda have to give priority to that stuff cause it pays the bills. Truth be told, however, I'd rather just write these!  

Anyway, here's Number One:    



THE BEST SINGLE DOCTOR WHO EPISODE, EVER: 

Could it be anything else but Heaven Sent? It's not just the best episode of Who. It's, quite possibly, the single best episode of television, ever.  

I still remember when Series Nine was coming out and different members of the production team were giving little "teases" of what Heaven Sent was going to be like. It sounded very unique and interesting. Something like this, however, also had the potential to fall flat on its ass. But then I honestly thought to myself: "Steven Moffat, Peter Capaldi and Rachel Talalay. If anyone can pull this off - it's them!" In fact, even before the episode was transmitted, I was pretty sure it was going to be awesome. I just had that much confidence in this particular team.

My faith in them was not let down.

It's difficult to know where to start in the writing of praise for this episode. So, let's go for the obvious: let's start at the beginning.

Heaven Sent is riding a major shockwave from its predecessor. In the final moments of Face the Raven, we watch Clara Oswald die. As is often the case with major characters in sci fi franchises, there were people that loved her and folks that despised her. Whichever camp you're in, it was a brutal ending to the episode and a gigantic cliffhanger as the Doctor gets teleported to Parts Unknown. With this sort of ending to the previous week's adventure, Heaven Sent has a lot to live up to. Which can also equate to a lot working against it. It has to keep riding on all the tension Face the Raven has built up. Not only must it achieve this but, because it's the middle installment of a three-parter, it must be even bigger and better than Raven so that it can effectively take us into the final episode of the season.

Part of what makes Heaven Sent so beautiful is that, even with those high expectations placed upon it, it chooses the most unconventional direction to go in. There were so many good formulas that Moffat could've chosen with the story structure of this middle episode. Instead, he uses the most unlikely premise to keep the story going. He actually brings the whole thing to a grinding halt to allow the Doctor to grieve the passing of a dear friend.

How death is handled in science fiction has always been a great point of criticism for people who have studied the genre. It's a paradox, of course. You need to display danger so characters do need to get killed off from time-to-time. But then, because it's all meant to be an action-packed adventure, you can't slow things down too much to mourn the passing of these characters. The plot has to keep moving and your surviving characters need to seem relatively unaffected by it all.

Before Heaven Sent, the greatest sense of bereavement that we got was a snippet of dialogue at the beginning of Time Flight over Adric and a crying fit from Jo Grant during The Green Death which was really just a set-up for Cliff Jones to try to kiss her. Sadly, this still shows greater sensitivity towards death than most sci-fi adventure franchises have displayed. Consider something like Star Wars. Where Luke Skywalker mourns the death of Obi Wan in A New Hope for all of two seconds and then runs off to blow away some Tie Fighters By the end of the dogfight, he seems to have forgotten the loss of his mentor. 

Moffat very consciously tries to re-dress that balance with this episode. Heaven Sent is about the Doctor dealing with the death of a dear friend. Yup, there's a creepy veiled monster and a really cool puzzle-box castle - but that's all just really awesome window dressing. The real story is the Doctor facing all those various stages of anger, denial, sadness and acceptance. It's absolutely beautiful to watch this process. If ever we've been able to empathize with this larger-than-life alien character, it's in this episode.

Because the Doctor is alone for the entire time, Moff can't resist delving into the Doctor's psyche a bit more than usual. How much did we love it when we discovered he gets out of all his perils by imagining himself in the TARDIS console room bragging to his companion about how he escaped? All those scenes are wonderful to watch. They add a great extra dimension to all that we see going on in the castle.

Yes, I did just claim that the castle was a mere window dressing (in my defense, I said it was a really awesome window dressing) but the whole premise of the place is another great feature to the plot. The strange blend of the medieval and the high tech provides a great atmosphere. As we learn with the Doctor how the whole place works, we can't wait to find out what's in Room 12.

There is this great sequence in the story that I think sits with me strongest. It begins with a sort WTF?! moment. What's been going on in the puzzle-castle becomes immensely clear. We realize all the skulls in the water belong to the Doctor (we also have to guess that, on at least one occasion, the Doctor wandered about nearly naked to leave dry clothes for himself) and that he is just repeating this whole process over and over. It then becomes like watching a time loop. Key moments flash by as we become almost aghast at this horrible repetition that he is putting himself through. Why is he doing this?!

The music is our first clue. From some odd reason, it seems to hold a sense of hope. And then there's the Doctor commenting on the position of the stars and how many years into the future he is. I could, literally, feel my mind straining. What is Moff up to, here?

And then there's that triumphant shot of the tunnel the Doctor has been slowly pounding through the Azbantium wall. The music wells up even more hopefully as it all becomes clear. I don't know about everyone else, but I was genuinely awestruck in that moment.

There are many beautiful aspects to Heaven Sent. Far too many to enumerate here. My review barely scratches the surface, really. But it would be a crime against all that is Well and True if I didn't spend some time dwelling on our first view of that tunnel he's been building.

It is, quite simply, a beautiful statement of the Doctor's credo. He knows, just by the nature of his torture chamber, that he can't give away the full mystery of the Hybrid to his captors. That's part of who he is. Regardless of the situation, he will not surrender to an enemy who he senses is corrupt or even evil. There is a beauty to that whole element of the plot. But when we see the tunnel - we realize another important core trait of the Doctor. Regardless of the nature of his opposition, he will search and, inevitably, find a brilliant way to defeat it. He will put all his intellect and resources into solving the problem and we will always marvel at his creativity. While his foe might be trying to pound him down with brute force, he only uses intelligence to fight back. His victories become all the more wonderful because of this.

Yes, many other stories have illustrated this point. But Heaven Sent does it with magnificent succinctness. As the tunnel continues to be forged with the time loop effect, I found myself physically cheering.

"This," I proclaimed aloud as the Doctor escapes out of his Confession Dial, "is why I love Doctor Who!"

The episode still has the coolest of endings, too. After two seasons of being aware that Gallifrey stands, he finally finds it. I love that, once more, Moff subverts expectations. We thought finding his home planet again would be joyous. But there is an insinuation of the exact opposite. Although we've watched this protracted grieving process play out - the Doctor is still mad about what happened to Clara. And he knows the Time Lords were behind it all.

As he delivers: "The Hybrid is Me!", we know all hell is about break loose on Gallifrey. We shiver just a little bit from the moment. And the episode becomes even more enjoyable because of its ominous ending.

Where all this will lead gets revealed in the next episode. For now, we get to sit back and realize we've just watched what might be the coolest thing Television has ever produced.

Heaven Sent is awesome. That's all I really needed to say about it. Nothing summarizes it better. But it was fun spending way too many paragraphs trying to be a bit more detailed!




Well, that about wraps things up for the Best Episode Countdown. Again, sorry for taking a bit longer than I expected. Hopefully, I can sneak in one more entry before the end of January. I have subjected you to quite a bit of opinion over the last while. I think I might try something ANALYTICAL, now. That's, pretty much, the anti-thesis of my opinionated nonsense. I suddenly have to find facts to back my ideas up. The challenge is always fun! 


Here's the rest of the countdown: 

Part 6:
https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2018/11/book-of-lists-top-six-doctor-who.html

Part 5:
https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2018/12/book-of-lists-top-six-doctor-who.html

Part 4:
https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2018/12/book-of-lists-top-six-doctor-who_14.htm

Part 3: 
https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2018/12/book-of-lists-top-6-doctor-who-episodes.html

Part 2: 
https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2019/01/book-of-lists-top-six-best-episodes.html








Like my Countdowns? Here's the tenth best Doctor Who story ever. Keeping clicking on the next entries to read the rest...

Number Ten: 
https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2015/12/book-of-lists-top-ten-who-stories-10.html