Hell Bent (Doctor Who)
On Gallifrey, the Twelfth Doctor has escaped from his confession dial[N 1] after four and a half billion years of imprisonment, alerting the Time Lords.
The Doctor then flees with Clara and steals a TARDIS from the workshops under the Capitol, telling her he held out confessing to have something to bargain for her life with.
The Doctor attempts to take Clara far enough away in the hope that her pulse will resume and she will not have to be returned to the moment of her death, despite potentially damaging time itself in the process.
The Doctor reveals his intention to erase Clara's memories of him with a neural block taken from Gallifrey, hoping that the Time Lords will not be able to find her.
The Doctor sets the record straight in this episode (albeit inadvertently in his babbling when reunited with Clara after over four billion years), claiming that it was his daughter, not his wife, and that he did not steal the moon, he 'lost' it.
[3] Foxes' version of "Don't Stop Me Now" is heard playing when the Doctor first walks into the diner; the song was also used in "Mummy on the Orient Express".
[2] Timothy Dalton, who had previously played Rassilon in "The End of Time", was asked to reprise the role but was unavailable for filming.
[7] Donald Sumpter previously appeared as Enrico Casali in The Wheel in Space (1968) and as Commander Ridgeway in The Sea Devils (1972).
[2] He also appeared in The Eternity Trap (2009), a story from spin-off series The Sarah Jane Adventures, playing Erasmus Darkening.
Jami Reid-Quarrell returned as a Wraith, after previously playing Colony Sarff in "The Magician's Apprentice" / "The Witch's Familiar", as well as the Veil in "Heaven Sent".
The site's consensus reads "'Hell Bent' swerves from the expected storyline for the finale, and instead delivers a heartfelt resolution for The Doctor and his companion".
"[20] Den of Geek's Simon Brew thought the episode was "a coherent, nerdy, often brilliant, sometimes a little frustrating, but always watchable piece of television".
