Hate to double post, but as someone who at first felt
Hell Bent was kind of jumbled, messy, and disappointing the first time, after rewatching I still think as I've said before that it really is a masterpiece. I'd say it's my favourite
Who finale and maybe a top 10 episode. The fact that it's a character piece focused on Clara and the Doctor is what caught everyone off guard.
It's the perfect ending for perhaps the most special companion there's ever been for the Doctor, with him going farther than he has for anyone to save her. And the way he deals with the Time Lords, while it lasts, is just awesome in a way that actors like Matt Smith or Jodie Whitaker, as good as they may be, couldn't do.
While the Doctor's arc here is obviously similar to the Time Lord Victorious of
Waters of Mars, there's few other notable callbacks to Tennant here, like the Doctor referencing how he's used a mind wipe telepathically before (Donna) and saying "Four knocks. It's always four knocks." Capaldi points a gun at a Time Lord like Tennant did in
End of Time. His saving of Clara is reminiscent of Tennant saving the original Capaldi in
Fires of Pompeii. Like I've said before, there may be similarities between his Doctor and Pertwee, Tom Baker, etc., but Capaldi is Tennant pt. II.
I know Moffat intended the Hybrid to be both Clara and the Doctor, but the signs in the script point to it being solely the Doctor. "All Matrix prophecies concur that this creature will one day stand in the ruins of Gallifrey." I don't know how I didn't realize it before, but it's the Doctor standing in the ruins of Gallifrey when he's talking to Me at the end of the universe, and Clara never steps out. "It will unravel the Web of Time and destroy a billion billion hearts to heal its own." This is definitely the Doctor and not Clara, burning a billion billion of his own hearts in
Heaven Sent as he continually dies and is born again. Also the fact that he himself says "I became the hybrid."
I also realized how the Hybrid is both a kind of tragic Greek-style self-fulfilling prophecy and a Bootstrap Paradox, as mentioned in
Under the Lake - the Time Lords inadvertently kill Clara and capture the Doctor and interrogate him for billions of years in order to learn about the Hybrid, resulting in the Doctor becoming the Hybrid.
And while Clara's speech from
Listen referred to
The Day of the Doctor I love how it also retroactively ties into
Hell Bent.
"This is just a dream. But very clever people can hear dreams. So, please, just listen. I know you're afraid, but being afraid is all right. Because didn't anybody ever tell you? Fear is a superpower. Fear can make you faster and cleverer and stronger. And one day, you're going to come back to this barn. And on that day you're going to be very afraid indeed. But that's okay. Because if you're very wise and very strong, fear doesn't have to make you cruel or cowardly. Fear can make you kind."
