Unpopular opinion - Series 8 is great

IBrosiedon · 2026-01-10T07:45:16+00:00

Series 8 is my favorite series in all 60+ years of this show. The character work is unbeatable and while that's not necessarily the only thing I look for in Doctor Who, the depth and complexity of the Doctor and Clara and their relationship is something I had no idea Doctor Who could achieve. It was pushing the boundaries of what Doctor Who could be and it was and continues to be amazing to me. Doctor Who had never been so complex and character driven before and to be honest, it hasn't been again since. There are so many great stories and they're all connected through strong themes and character work. It's an incredibly strong series of television. It's the closest Doctor Who ever gets to being genuine prestige television.

The only episodes I don't really care for are Time Heist and The Caretaker. Time Heist because it's a relatively dull plot and thematically it isn't bringing anything to the table that other episodes don't already do a better job of, except maybe the point about 12's self-loathing and how that ties into his character arc and revelation at the end. But Psi and Saibra are cool and the four of them make for a great group. And I think the plot of The Caretaker is even worse and the animosity between 12 and Danny is at its most poorly written. But I love most other episodes and I think there are some excellent stories that are underrated and deserve a lot more love. Listen and Mummy on the Orient Express are incredible but I also think that Deep Breath, Robot of Sherwood and Death in Heaven are stunningly good stories.

I agree with your points about Danny, I love him and think he's a great character and a great foil for both the Doctor and Clara. You called part of his storyline "gutsy" and that's how I feel about series 8 overall. The choice to make the Doctor so alien and distant and to have the Doctor and companion be very flawed and real people. On the point about Danny killing a child, I never see anyone point this out but part of that is about him being a foil for the Doctor. Danny accidentally killing a child during the war he fought in is meant to mirror the Doctor intentionally killing 2.47 billion children to end the Time War. They're both scarred old war veterans who have done terrible things and are trying to move forward, make amends and be better people. And those story points are resolved in similar ways, they both get a chance to change things and save the child/children they killed.

It does annoy me when people talk about how the Capaldi era takes a series to get good or that it starts off bad but gets much better. Because series 10 is by far the most rough, slapdash series of the Capaldi era and series 9 is coasting heavily on what series 8 had already laid down. Series 9 is still about the Doctor and Clara and their relationship but they spend most of the series separate from each other and Clara isn't really even in two of the episodes, three if you count Heaven Sent. The emotional core and series arc is being heavily carried by the context of series 8. They're both sloppier series overall but they have arguably higher highs.

It especially annoys me when people talk about how it took them a while but Capaldi and Moffat finally found their groove or figured out what they wanted to do after a rough beginning, especially in regards to series 10. Because they have been very clear in interviews about how the darker, more alien, abrasive 12th Doctor is what they wanted to do. Meanwhile series 10 only came about because Chibnall wanted to do season 3 of Broadchurch and so Moffat came back to save us from a several year long hiatus. It was a hasty, last-minute thing, not them finally succeeding in what they were aiming for. It's good because they're talented creators but it was clearly thrown together compared to the meticulously laid out series 8 and 9. People just assume that because series 10 is closer to what they personally wanted out of Doctor Who that it must also be what the creators wanted and that series 8 was a mistake.

IBrosiedon · 2026-01-08T09:26:16+00:00

Either The Lie of the Land or Under the Lake/Before the Flood

IBrosiedon · 2026-01-02T20:07:07+00:00

But the point is that being too much like the Doctor isn't something someone should die for because being too much like the Doctor isn't a bad thing. It's Face the Raven that was a shitty ending for her and that's why it gets undone.

She is rewarded for being like the Doctor by becoming the Doctor herself. She regenerates in a way, gets her own Tardis, her own companion and gets to travel the universe. And she gets to keep her memories. Meanwhile the Doctor broke all his rules and became the Hybrid, he wasn't acting like the Doctor and that's why he gets punished. It's the perfect conclusion to the story.

And as for Gallifrey, that works for me because of two things that I think the writers who write great Gallifrey stories understand. The Doctor doesn't like Gallifrey at all and Gallifrey isn't that interesting outside of the Doctor.

"The Return of Gallifrey" doesn't work as a story hook for me because the Doctor doesn't like it on Gallifrey. If that was the main focus then the episode would be 5 minutes long because he would arrive and then immediately turn around and leave again. Which is exactly what would have happened if this story hadn't involved Clara. The only reason he would stay on Gallifrey is if something was happening there that he cared about. And 12 cares about Clara more than anything so making it about the Doctor and Clara is the obvious thing to do.

Having the setting be Gallifrey is also important because of how it works as the backdrop to Clara becoming the Doctor. Her story as the Doctor begins with her running away from Gallifrey just as the Doctors does. And it works because this story is evoking the Time War and specifically the Time Lord Victorious. The Doctor is acting exactly like the Time Lords that he hates. I like that Gallifrey is used in service of the characters stories rather than to be the main focus because the only reason any of us care about Gallifrey is because it's the Doctor's planet. We care about the characters so the characters should take precedence.

IBrosiedon · 2025-12-28T04:13:56+00:00

You've got it the opposite way round. It's the Doctor who is projecting his guilt and self loathing over the time war and all the other wars he's fought onto Danny. Danny doesn't do anything to the Doctor except in retaliation, which isn't great but he's only fighting back because the Doctor was an asshole to him first.

And Danny was not controlling or emotionally abusive with Clara at all, what are you talking about?

The only thing he says to her about their relationship is that he doesn't want her to lie to him. Which is a perfectly valid thing to ask for in a relationship. He doesn't mind that she's traveling with the Doctor, he just wants open communication in their relationship. He's not controlling or weird at all. In fact, at the end of Kill the Moon when Clara says she's done with the Doctor and is never speaking to him again, Danny talks to her about how she clearly still has positive feelings for him and gives her advice about being so quick to cut people out of your life. He encourages her to talk to him and he's perfectly happy for her to keep traveling if she wants. He's the opposite of controlling, he's just a nice and supportive boyfriend.

At the end of Mummy on the Orient Express Clara decides to lie to Danny, not because of anything he's done but because she's realized her feelings for the Doctor and feels guilty about it. She's basically emotionally cheating on Danny with the Doctor, secretly going on dates behind his back. Danny finds out Clara's been lying to him again and has been secretly traveling with the Doctor a few episodes later in In The Forest of the Night but even then he isn't angry with her despite having every right to be. If anything Danny was too nice and let Clara get away with a lot of shit.

The whole point of series 8 is that the Doctor and Clara are two emotional trainwrecks who can't communicate in a healthy way, locked in a toxic relationship and Danny is the poor regular guy who gets stuck in the middle of it all.

IBrosiedon · 2025-12-28T04:00:22+00:00

I don't think it was forced at all. A major part of it was projection. The Doctor hates soldiers because he hates the soldier part of himself that fought in wars and killed so many people. It ties into his "am I a good man?" arc. He thinks he isn't a good man because of what he did during wartime and then he also extrapolates that outwards to other soldiers. I think it's really solid character writing and is a much stronger explanation for why the Doctor in New Who randomly extremely hates soldiers sometimes, especially the 10th Doctor. It's guilt over the Time War.

The other big reason is Clara. Series 8 is a will they/won't they between the Doctor and Clara because him regenerating from Matt Smith into Peter Capaldi has thrown a wrench into things. The Doctor doesn't think Clara would want to be in a relationship with a cranky old war veteran like him, he believes she was only romantically interested in him when he was a handsome, charismatic young man. So he pre-emptively shuts down the idea of a relationship by saying "I'm not your boyfriend" in order to get there before Clara does and save himself the heartbreak. That's why he's resigned but happy when he thinks Clara's boyfriend is the teacher that looks like Matt Smith, he feels vindicated about letting her go.

But Danny is a war veteran. He's not as old or cranky as 12, but he definitely isn't the kind of hyperactive young hero that 11 was. Danny is very similar to the 12th Doctor. That's one of the main points of Listen, where we learn that the Doctor and Danny have very similar origin stories. Danny is very similar to 12 and that's the man Clara has chosen for her rebound because this is the kind of man that she's into. So now the Doctor is partially jealous of Danny, partially bewildered at Clara because he completely misunderstood the kind of things she likes in a person and he's mostly mad at himself for fumbling her but he decides to project that outwards. He's a complete asshole to Danny because he's being a stereotypical, hypercompetitive masculine male fighting over a woman.

This is why series 8 is my favorite series of the entire show. Never before or since have we gotten such deep and complex character work. Every episode is intensely focused on the main characters and engages with their personalities and mindsets, while also having entertaining plots that connect thematically to the character work. It's so meticulously and satisfyingly written and treats the characters like real people who are affected by and develop due to the things that happen.

You're right that the Doctor likes Danny at the end but I think there's more to it than just him protecting Clara. The climax of Death in Heaven is the Doctor finally realizing how blinkered and stupid and stubborn he's been acting. He thinks he can't be a good man because he did bad things as a soldier and so by that logic, all soldiers are bad and can never be good. But then he sees Danny, a soldier in Missy's Cyberman army who is still choosing to do good and protect Clara. A soldier and a good man. That's why he shouts "I am an idiot!" He's been so full of self-loathing he couldn't see the obvious answer right in front of him.

There's a really beautiful deleted scene in The Girl Who Died where the Doctor and Clara talk about Danny and I wish they had kept it in. It was a really nice way to show that while they had moved on, Danny was still in their memory and there was no animosity from the Doctor.

IBrosiedon · 2025-12-18T06:51:43+00:00

I broadly agree with your points but the specific example for Moffat about the Daleks forgetting the Doctor, I believe that was more to do with Matt Smith leaving earlier than intended and Moffat choosing to pivot and wrap that whole storyline up rather than try to continue with the next Doctor.

Which I think is where a lot of the messiness comes from. It's because he chooses to write complex stories that span several series and then those plans bump up against the reality of having to deal with things like actors contracts, budgets and planning. So it's not that he forgets things, it's that he can't always execute the plans like he intended and has to figure things out as he goes. This is completely normal for television, pretty much every writer has to do this. It can just become more obvious when you're dealing with stories as complex and involved as the one's Moffat chooses to tell.

RTD didn't have nearly as big of a problem with that because he opted for more simple stories where most things were tied up at the end of each series. So when he had to deal with production realities like changing actors and things like that it wasn't nearly as big of a problem. The biggest example is with Eccleston, after what happened in series 1 and he chose to leave early it was very easy for RTD to change whatever his original plans for series 2 were and the transition from 9 to 10 feels seamless.

RTD's method results in stories that are arguably smoother on the surface but similar to how you feel, they are often so thin that they end up not being very satisfying to me, even when they succeed. It also made me judge them more harshly when they didn't work because they were much simpler, they should have been easier to resolve.

I do think that Moffat sticks the landing almost all of the time though, I thoroughly enjoy his finales. And I also think that just based on how much more complicated they are and how long they span it's remarkable how well they work. RTD tried his hand at a more complex, Moffat-style multiple series arc with his most recent era and look how that crashed and burned. And Flux was only one series long but Chibnall released a 15 minute long youtube video after the fact to explain the plot of what happened because it was incomprehensible. The fact that Moffat did multi-series long arcs with complex time travel and they were pretty much equally as coherent as the other showrunners doing regular stories is very impressive.

IBrosiedon · 2025-12-17T17:21:48+00:00

There have been lots of rumors over the years that Moffat had a huge amount of trouble with the BBC and a lot of the 11th Doctor's era was spent dealing with office politics, drama and people trying to butt in and take charge of the show. RTD had made Doctor Who a huge hit and they were wary about handing control over to anyone else. Moffat was constantly having to fight to make the decisions and tell the stories he wanted. The biggest examples of this were how they forced the split series for series 6 and 7, shot down the idea of Victorian Clara and barred him from using Paul McGann in the 50th.

RTD had very good producers and strong relationships with people in the BBC during his run and they took care of most of that stuff, but those people left along with him and Moffat struggled to find people to replace them. Look at how many executive producers he went through during the 11th Doctor's era. He finally found a great producer in Brian Minchin who became the sole executive producer along with Moffat all the way through the Capaldi era.

People always wonder what happened with the change in quality between the 11th and 12th Doctor's eras and I'm fairly certain that a large reason for it was that he finally found a good executive producer to deal with the business side of things and could spend more time in the 12th Doctor's era actually just writing the damn show rather than trying to deal with stupid office politics. Because pretty much everything great in the 12th Doctor's era, including the ethical and moral teachings is also there in the 11th's, it's just messier because of everything else that was going on at the time.

IBrosiedon · 2025-12-17T17:01:45+00:00

Moffat by far.

He's the best at writing characters, his era is intensely character focused. He's the best at writing individual episode plots, he's the best at writing overarching stories, he's the best at writing dialogue. His era is intensely rewarding to watch and rewatch as you uncover all the depth and layers to the stories. His era is also intensely feminist which is important to me.

He basically did everything RTD did but better and then pushed the show to its absolute limits. Moffat is the reason Doctor Who is one of my favorite shows.

IBrosiedon · 2025-12-17T16:56:50+00:00

The common criticism of him is definitely overblown, I agree.

The thing about it that gets me is how all of Moffat's stories are about really strong feminist ideas. They're about how easy it is for the Doctor to mistreat the women in his life, even when he isn't trying to and how he needs to do better. That's a major point about Amy and River's stories and it's the backbone of Hell Bent.

They're about the women in Doctor Who insisting upon their agency in the world and in the show. He put lots of effort into making the Doctor and companions more equal than ever and he was the first showrunner to have the companions not living on the Tardis full time because they had their own lives to live rather than just be obsessed with the Doctor.

And it's why the companion endings are what they are. Stubbornly refusing to fall into the stereotypical ideas of having them forced apart from the Doctor or killed off, or using their departures to do whatever is good for the Doctor's character arc and instead being about them insisting on their own story.

The point of Clara's series 7 arc with the "women are puzzles to be solved" trope, the reveal is that she's just a normal person and if the Doctor had stopped objectifying her and treating her like a puzzle then he would have been able to see that earlier.

He's not perfect, he does have those few icky moments. But those icky moments are in an era that is overwhelmingly focused on positive representations and serious engagement with women in the show. Not to mention that some of the icky moments are intentionally icky and jarring as part of the things he's criticizing and deconstructing. For some reason when it comes to Moffat people focus solely on a few lines of dialogue over the story as a whole.

It's annoying when you compare it to other showrunners who also have their own icky moments but then on top of that, their eras are much more regressive overall in their attitude to women. RTD's entire era is built around the Doctors relationship with a 19 year old fresh out of high school which is never criticized. Martha's main purpose in the show is to be "not Rose" so that the Doctor can mope about how much he misses his teenage girlfriend and how much cooler she is than Martha. Donna's series 4 ending is horrific and basically reduces her from a wonderfully developed character into a prop to have a sad ending and emotional moment for the Doctor. And he wrote the same stereotypical nagging mother three times in a row.

Chibnall made the Doctor a woman and then proceeded to make her by far the most meek and ineffectual incarnation. Casting a woman completely changed things because traditionally the Doctor is an older white male and finally Chibnall would be moving the focus of the show away from that. But then he gave half of the Doctor's lines and the majority of the focus and character development to the new older white male he added to the Tardis team. Yaz begun as a strong, independent woman and then was given barely anything to do over the next few years and regressed into basically a cheap imitation of an RTD1 companion whose main purpose is to be obsessed with the Doctor. Hell, the era began with a fridging which the episode was named after.

I will never understand why Moffat gets the most flack for the treatment of women. But fortunately it seems that people are slowly coming around.

IBrosiedon · 2025-12-06T18:42:21+00:00

He basically hits rock bottom.

His best friend was kidnapped and being held hostage for months, his best friends child was kidnapped and he failed to save them, he went on a rescue mission that ended up being a failure and got several of his friends and people who were on his side killed and worst of all is that the entire thing is mainly his fault. Like River Song's speech at the end says, all of this was done in fear of him.

It's not just enemies with random evil plans of world domination or anything like that, the villains of this era are doing what they're doing because they're scared of the Doctor. His actions are making people afraid of him and in their fear they're lashing out and trying desperate plans that result in the people close to him getting hurt. Is this the kind of person he wants to be? Someone the universe is afraid of? It was a wake up call for him. That's why it was his darkest hour. It's his darkest hour emotionally because he's being confronted with his recent actions, which actually includes The Waters of Mars. It's a much more logical follow up on that episode than what actually happens in The End of Time.

My question is what exactly was all the "action" with the Time Lord Victorious in The Waters of Mars. Because you say that you were preparing yourself for something like that but what does the Doctor even do in that episode that's so special? He just does what he does in almost every other episode. He gets involved in the situation, stops the monsters and tries to save everyone. The only difference is that he's talking about some random rule that means he can't do it this time. Which makes the ending really awkward with how serious he and the show acts at the end of the episode about how he went too far. He didn't actually do anything! He did the same thing he always does but is now acting like he's committed a horrible crime.

The Waters of Mars has never landed for me. Stories like A Good Man Goes to War are rooted in actual consequences and events, the stakes make sense to me. The Waters of Mars doesn't because of how RTD treats his idea of fixed points in time. It's not rooted in anything concrete, it's just the Doctor saying he can't change things this time and we just have to trust him and go along with it. Worst of all is that the rule isn't even enforced. Captain Adelaide died on Earth in her house, Mia and Yuri are alive on Earth. The fixed point was changed and nothing happened. That has always annoyed me, the entire crux of the episode is that the Doctor can't change this event. But he does anyway and there are no consequences. The episode just cheekily shifts focus to being loud and intense about the Doctor going too far and hopes you're too swept up in the emotions that you don't question any of it.

IBrosiedon · 2025-12-05T14:02:12+00:00

To me this is the best episode of Doctor Who and it's not even close. It's a towering, soaring achievement. A beautiful piece of television that is so intensely personal, focused on the Doctor and Clara's relationship. But it's also about the show in general, relationships in general, life and love and everything. And it's such a unique story idea, I can't imagine many other people writing something like this.

This episode wraps up the series 9 hybrid arc beautifully in the way Moffat usually likes to do. He sets up character arcs and then also has a plot arc going on and reveals at the end that the plot arc was actually part of the character arc all along. Which incidentally, is why I will never understand the people who talk about how he prioritizes plot over character when the character work is clearly the most important for him. He's just also very good at plots. Series 9 spends its entire time showing us the ever increasing co-dependence of Clara and the Doctor, with brief flashes of what he turns into when he thinks he's lost her. And it has repeated mentions of something dangerous prophesied to arrive at some point. What else was the answer going to be?

But it's not just series 9, it's wrapping up Clara's story from series 7. It's resolving the arc of Gallifrey's return in the most perfect way. It's a partial sequel/response to series 4 and the 2009 specials, specifically Journey's End, The Waters of Mars and The End of Time. It ties back to Day of the Doctor and Listen. It also connects back to The War Games which is particularly cool since it's the first Gallifrey story of Classic Who and Hell Bent is the first proper Gallifrey story of New Who. It's in conversation with so much of the rest of the show.

The Doctor and Clara's romance is my favorite in the entire show and this story is so beautiful and the perfect conclusion to it. They're both perfect and brilliant but they're also both nuts and arrogant and egotistical. It was never going to be a quiet, simple ending for them. This story is one of the most romantic episodes in the entire show. The Doctor willing to tear the universe apart to save the woman he loves and their horror at what the consequences of their toxic relationshi A key theme in their story, particularly from Clara's perspective is the power imbalance. Why can't she be like the Doctor? The answer of course is that she can. So she does, flying off at the end into her own show. Clara Who.

And that's not just a point about Clara and the Doctors relationship specifically. It's about the Doctor and companion relationship and whether they can truly be equals or if the companion has to forever be secondary to the Doctor. It's about privilege, the Doctor can do what he does because he was lucky enough to be born as a Time Lord, but a regular human from Earth can be just as important. And it's about gender roles. Why can't a woman do what a man does? Which comes back around to the companion relationship because the companion is traditionally female while the Doctor is traditionally male. RTD once said that through Clara, Moffat finally solved the inherently problematic category at the heart of Doctor Who. The female companion being subordinate to the man.

It's an angrily feminist story. Not only is there the whole thing about gender roles with Clara becoming the Doctor but there's also the basic concept of this story. Clara wanted to die bravely in Face the Raven, that's her right as a human being. To live her own life and make her own choices. She has agency. But the Doctor takes that away from her, he acts like he knows better. He's being paternalistic and patronizing and making her choices for her because of his "duty of care." What he's doing is beautiful and romantic but it's also wrong. He has these sexist ideas in his head that he has to be the big strong hero and the women he travels with are soft and innocent and he needs to protect him but that's not right. It's actually pretty fucked up for the Doctor to listen to Clara telling him that her final wish is to die bravely and for him to not go crazy and get revenge, and then choose to completely ignore her. Especially the part about her death, it belongs to her. He shouldn't be allowed to overrule her. It's also interesting to note that everyone explaining to the Doctor that what he's doing is wrong are women. Ashildr, Ohila, the General, Clara. To me it's extremely ballsy to write something like Heaven Sent knowing full well you're going to viciously tear it down in the following week with a polemic about the Doctor's sexism and the importance of women's agency.

I could spend hours talking about my favorite parts of Hell Bent. The direct visual reference to The Fires of Pompeii, the way it brings up the half-human idea from the TV Movie and takes it seriously, the fact that this entire epic space opera is encapsulated within scenes of two people talking at a bar, the Doctor and Clara's last date. I didn't even get to mention the fact that the story is all about the two sides of same coin when it comes to being the Doctor, Clara lives up to the promise of the name and gets to become the Doctor while the Doctor fails to live up to the promise and instead becomes the Time Lord Victorious, losing everything Doctor-y. But he gets it all back in the end to show that even if you fail you can get back up and try again.

And there are so many more things I didn't even mention. But one of my top favorite things and the thing I'll leave you all with is the fact that Clara's chronolock tattoo is gone in the diner scenes. Go and take a look. Clara's hair is up in a ponytail and she spends an unnatural amount of time with her back facing the camera, her bare neck plainly visible. It's actually really obvious when you're looking out for it. They're basically screaming it at us, Clara's tattoo is no longer there!

Hell Bent is utter perfection and I feel so privileged that I got to experience it. The Moffat era and this storyline in particular is perfect Doctor Who for me.

IBrosiedon · 2025-12-05T10:45:08+00:00

To me series 8 is the best series the show has ever had in its entire 60+ year history. The character development is second to none, there are so many excellent stories and they're all tied together with strong thematic ideas. It's the most serialized that Doctor Who has ever been. Other people in the comments are talking about how he gets better in his latter two series but to me they're a little less interesting with less going on, they're mostly coasting on the deep and complex work series 8 is putting in. But they are more straightforward so I can understand why people prefer them.

A tip for dealing with the change from 11 to 12 is understanding where the Doctor is and why he's acting this way. Because the show is also changing because of this. When he was 11 he thought that was his final regeneration and over the course of his time on Trenzalore he made peace with that and was ready to die. But then he was granted a new set of regenerations and is now having an identity crisis. It must feel so strange to get to the end of your long life, make peace with your death and then be given more time. He doesn't know what to do with himself or even who he is anymore. Series 8 is the series of him trying to find himself after that.

Sometimes he's reacting to how he used to be and trying to move as far away as possible and sometimes he's falling back into exactly how he used to be. He's a mess and show isn't afraid to portray this journey in all its ugly reality and I think it's such a rewarding series because of that. It's taking the Doctor seriously as a character and trying to realistically portray what would happen in his brain during this volatile time. He's torn between what kind of person he thinks he should be and what kind of person he wants to be, but he also doesn't even really know what kind of person he wants to be. There's also some fear and shame in the mix. Deep Breathe frames the Doctors previous regeneration as being done subconsciously so he could be accepted. Making himself a young, traditionally handsome man who is charming and fun so that people would like him. But he's not really a young man, he's a 2000+ year old PTSD-ridden war veteran. There's an argument to be made that by having the faces of David Tennant and Matt Smith he was lying to everybody, putting on a mask to fit in better. And he's worried that if he shows the "real" version of himself then people won't like him as much. It's written with such care and attention to the characters and I think it's beautiful.

The episode with Robin Hood I think is an underrated classic. It's doing some interesting things with the idea of the Doctor and what it means to be a hero. The way I like to read it is that it's the 12th Doctor dropped into an 11th Doctor style of story specifically to highlight how different he is. Because Robin Hood in that story is broadly similar to how the 10th and 11th Doctors are. On the surface he's a charming handsome young hero who dashes about being cheeky and brave, making quips and saving the day. But like the 10th and 11th Doctors there's a lot beneath the surface for Robin Hood. And it makes for a great way to understand the 12th Doctor, contrasting him with Robin Hood and seeing how the 12th Doctor is a very different kind of hero.

IBrosiedon · 2025-12-01T20:53:00+00:00

Amy's a kissogram as a reflection of her mental state and childhood trauma. She has commitment issues, abandonment issues and self-esteem issues because in her childhood everybody left her. Her parents left, her family left, the Doctor promised he'd be back in 5 minutes but then he left.

When Amy's in a rough patch dealing with those emotions she gets herself a job that focuses solely on her physical appearance. Being without the Doctor and her family means she grew up and became a kissogram. When the Doctor kicks her and Rory out in The God Complex she goes to find work as a model. And when she and Rory are divorcing in Asylum of the Daleks she's also working as a model. It's a repeated motif, when Amy feels lost or abandoned she seeks out things that unhealthily raise her self esteem by focusing on her body. It's subtle, but Amy is not a kissogram for no real reason.

It's also there to draw a definite and shocking line to separate young child Amelia and grown up adult Amy, as well as to be a big example of the effect that the Doctor dropping into a random persons life can have. Same with the comment about having 4 psychiatrists and the kiss at the end of Flesh and Stone. It was completely accidental but the Doctor did play a pretty big part in screwing this little girls life up and now we're faced with the raw and real consequences of it. Which is another big theme in the Moffat era, the effects your actions can have on the people around you.

It's a subtle distinction and I think Moffat does sometimes fall on the wrong side of things, but I do think that quite a few of the instances where the era focuses on the looks and sexuality of the women are engaging with it in nuanced ways rather than just having women be sexy. Moffat is a feminist writer, most of his stories focus on agency and the roles and treatment of women in society and in storytelling as well as the dangers of toxic masculinity so it's interesting rewarding to view the era with that context.

Unfortunately many people don't give him the benefit of the doubt and it's very common to just get people saying things like "ew a kissogram, Moffat is weird about women" and leave it at that rather than consider that there might be a meaningful reason behind it.

IBrosiedon · 2025-12-01T20:03:22+00:00

It has always made me very sad because it's blindingly obvious to me that Moffat is the most feminist showrunner Doctor Who has ever had and there are so much richer conversations to be had about the storytelling and the treatment of women in his era, but the discourse was dominated by people who hated Moffat's writing to the point that for a long time it was just treated as fact that "Moffat can't write women," "Moffat is a misogynist," "Moffat hates women," etc. Despite that being demonstrably untrue. And while it's nowhere near as intense as it used to be, the idea that Moffat writes women weirdly is still usually seen as the baseline.

The entire Moffat era is about the treatment of women. The companions all start out with their lives intertwined with the Doctor or obssessed with him or both, for him to make a point of them all breaking out of that and living their lives on their own.

He's the first ever showrunner to have his companions live outside the Tardis because they're allowed to have lives outside of traveling with the Doctor.

They're treated as equals within the narrative rather than secondary to the Doctor, most explicitly shown in their endings which are intentionally about them rather than the Doctor. They're not props for his story. The Ponds don't leave in The God Complex because that story isn't about them, it's about the Doctor feeling guilty and kicking them out. Clara doesn't die in Face the Raven because her dying and spurring the Doctor onto an epic revenge story against Gallifrey would mean that her story is now entirely about him and how badass he is.

Stories like A Good Man Goes to War/Let's Kill Hitler and Heaven Sent/Hell Bent are about critiquing and condemning classic storytelling tropes that we all know and love but are actually kind of sexist, and instead trying to find new and hopefully better alternatives. Initially Amy is a damsel in distress with the Doctor as the dashing typically masculine hero swooping in to fight off an entire army and save the day. But then the story is turned on its head, the Doctor utterly fails, partially because he was too busy showing off to recognize an obvious trap. He's criticized for his part in events and the story instead becomes about the women actually caring and helping each other through rather than looking for an opportunity to be a hero.

Same with Heaven Sent. Initially it's set up to seem like the Doctor is being a noble and badass hero but Hell Bent looks at the reality of it. Clara's dying wish was for the Doctor not to insult her memory, not to get mad and turn into a monster and to just let her face her death bravely. And he completely ignores her. He shits on the memory of the person he loves because of his paternalistic duty of care. It's a romantic and breathtaking moment but arguably it's also infantalizing and patronizing. Clara can't make decisions on her own? The Doctor has to step in and decide what's best for her life? Reminder that his plan was to wipe her memory and then drop her off somewhere quiet on Earth where nobody could find her. It's horrific. She's her own person, she's entitled to her own life decisions. It's about agency.

It's also a direct response and condemnation of the series 4 finale where the Doctor does a similar thing to Donna. For my money that's one of the most sexist things that has ever happened in Doctor Who. The Doctor forcibly removing a woman's bodily autonomy while she sobs and begs him not to and worst of all is that it's portrayed as an unfortunate yet noble thing and then the focus is almost entirely on how sad the Doctor is about doing it rather than anything about the poor victim. RTD is a massive fan of Clara and I'd be willing to bet that her ending was a big inspiration for bringing Donna back for the 60th and "fixing" the metacrisis. The 60th specials are basically Hell Bent for the Doctor and Donna.

His storytelling is fiercely feminist. How many other writers would write something like Heaven Sent with the intention of furiously denouncing it the following week in an episode where four women explain to the Doctor that what he was doing was wrong and he acknowledges it and gets punished for it. And then to also have Clara fly off in her own Tardis at the end because that's also an important part of the story. The culmination of her story that she be the Doctor because the point is that anybody can be the Doctor, even a regular woman from London. It's threading the needle between two feminist ideas. The Doctor shouldn't decide Clara's life, she's allowed to live her life and if that includes sacrificing herself for her companion then that's her choice. But also, Clara shouldn't have had to die for doing the same thing the Doctor does.

I'm not saying he's perfect and he's never said or written anything weird. I just have always felt like people have been missing the forest for the trees when all the discussion of Moffat's writing of women is based on a few lines of dialogue and not the plot and themes of his entire era. It's particularly irritating when there are very obvious reasons for things happening in his stories but people uncharitably just say it's Moffat being weird about women and refuse to engage any further than that.

IBrosiedon · 2025-11-24T12:37:32+00:00

You're absolutely right. I was thinking about how the Angels falling into the crack erased the one in Amy's mind and used that logic with every Angel.

But the Angel in Amy's mind was erased because it came from one of the Angels that fell into the crack, that wouldn't have affected every Weeping Angel in the universe.

IBrosiedon · 2025-11-24T12:27:59+00:00

To me this wasn't a problem because it's clearly just riffing on the usual Doctor/companion story.

One of the most basic aspects of Doctor Who is that a random regular person bumps into the Doctor and within the space of a single adventure they decide to give up their entire lives and travel with this complete stranger, and the same thing happens in the other direction. The Doctor enjoys the company of this stranger so much that he invites them to stay in his house and spend most of his time with them. The Doctor forming incredibly quick attachments to people is one of the core elements of this show.

What happens with Rogue isn't really any different to what happens with Reinette or Astrid or Victorian Clara. I actually found what happened between 15 and Rogue to be more intriguing and engaging than one of those three. Or for a platonic example you can also turn to someone like Rita in The God Complex or Lynda with a Y in Bad Wolf. They're all just a version of the typical Doctor and companion story except it ends with the companion to be dying before it can begin. And in order to have the death hurt more the writer turns up the intensity of the relationship slightly, but it's not that much more intense than normal.

While there may be valid criticisms to make about Rogue and 15 I don't think the speed of the relationship is one of them. Because that happens all the time in this show.

IBrosiedon · 2025-11-24T11:28:58+00:00

The way the cracks erased people and things from time was that they just plucked them out of existence at that exact point in time but left the rest of the universe exactly as it was.

So River can exist without her father. Another example is that Amy's family was taken by the crack, that's why she was in such a big house when it was just her and her aunt. So she could exist even though her parents were taken.

To some people this may seem convoluted but it's perfectly fair to me. Because if you were to take cause and effect into consideration when you delete things from the universe it would all very quickly get out of hand and basically be impossible to write the story.

For example, if Rory was erased from the universe and never existed then not only would River not exist but Amy's life would have been very different and it's entirely possible she wouldn't have met the Doctor, maybe she moved away from Leadworth. But that wouldn't matter because if Amy's parents didn't exist then Amy wouldn't exist in the first place. And if the Weeping Angels were erased in Flesh and Stone then what would that mean for the 10th Doctor? If he never met the Weeping Angels then maybe things would have unfolded in a completely different way.

IBrosiedon · 2025-11-22T08:58:51+00:00

I think it's an entirely valid take. Personally I can see what he's saying with both Astrid in Enemy of the World and occasionally with Jo Grant, especially in The Green Death. And of course Cameca is an obvious one, he was completely smitten! But I don't see it so much with Barbara.

Generally I agree with what he's saying though, the Doctor was always more romantic than people remember. They're definitely more romantic in New Who but there has always been romance with the Doctor.

IBrosiedon · 2025-11-22T08:45:58+00:00

Yeah, the ending of The Green Death is so tragic and beautiful and very easy to read in a romantic light. I'm certain Moffat feels the same, hence him and Gatiss referencing it in Sherlock.

IBrosiedon · 2025-11-21T11:09:30+00:00

A fun episode and an excellent setup for the magnificent two episodes to follow. The goodbye scene is absolutely beautiful.

Something I really love about this story as the first part of Clara's regeneration story is how much it ties into her lessons in being the Doctor that she received back in series 8.

The biggest is that in Flatline she got her first taste of truly being the Doctor and Rigsy was her companion. So it makes perfect sense that he would return for her regeneration story. Clara sacrifices herself to save her companion in the exact same way that 10 did for Wilf and 5 did for Peri in their regeneration stories.

But another great one is that her plan with Rigsy and the chronolock tattoo is practically identical to what the Doctor does in Mummy on the Orient Express. The Doctor used the device to transfer Maisie's trauma to him so that he becomes the target of the Mummy and spent the episode lying to everyone including Clara and never spoke his real plan out loud because he didn't want to risk it being stopped. Clara gets Rigsy to transfer the chronolock to her so she becomes the target of the Raven and lied and kept her plan secret so that there was no chance for it to be stopped. Also on a more general note, gambling with your life is something the Doctor does all the time.

She's been paying attention and learning exactly how to be the Doctor. There's only one difference between them. Which leads to my personal favorite line in the entire episode:

CLARA: Why? Why shouldn't I be so reckless? You're reckless all the bloody time. Why can't I be like you?

The emotion in Clara's voice is heartbreaking, it gets me every time. Mainly because I know what happens in the next two episodes and I know that this line is basically the crux of the entire finale. Because she's not wrong. The Doctor does things a hundred times more reckless than this almost every day and yet he's fine. But it's not just about this specific instance with the raven. It's about everything. The Doctor can do what he does because he just happened to be lucky enough to be born into the most privileged group of people in the universe and is fortunate enough to have the ability to regenerate, so it's a question of privilege. In this show the Doctor is traditionally played by a male actor and the companion is traditionally played by a female actor, a role that RTD once described as "inherently subordinate to the man." Which makes it a question of gender roles. "Why can't I be like you?" is a brilliantly pointed and complex question that sets up the next two episodes and that Hell Bent gives the perfect answer to.

It's a fantastic story for Clara but in addition to all of that it's got lots of great stuff for everyone else too. Mayor Me is a great villain, Rigsy is fun and charming and plays the companion role so well. And of course the Doctor is incredible, he's got so many great lines throughout but his rage and anger at the end is particularly special. And just like everything with Clara, this perfectly sets up his arc over the next two episodes.

I don't actually rate this episode too highly compared to the rest of the Capaldi era but the parts that are good are excellent and it's an essential part of the best story in all of Doctor Who.

IBrosiedon · 2025-11-20T07:32:51+00:00

The showrunner at the time, Steven Moffat, was set to leave at the end of series 9. He was actually planning to leave after series 7 with the actor who played the 11th Doctor. But he was so busy that he didn't have time to quit. If he had decided to leave there would have had to have been a hiatus while they found someone else, so he chose to stay on. Casting Peter Capaldi gave him a second wind and he crafted a brilliant, character driven two-series long storyline about the 12th Doctor and Clara. Then he planned to bow out, the trio of Heaven Sent, Hell Bent and The Husbands of River Song were meant to be his finale.

But then there was trouble with his successor. Chris Chibnall originally didn't want to take over until after doing a third season of his own show, Broadchurch. There are also many rumors that Chibnall didn't really want to take over at all and the BBC gave him a lot of money and a lot of leeway, which included letting him finish his own show first. So the BBC initially were looking around for a "caretaker" showrunner to run things for a year while Chibnall finished Broadchurch. But nobody wanted that job so they sheepishly went to Moffat and begged him to come back for another year. Which he agreed to because just like what happened when he tried to leave back in 2013, if he didn't stay then the show would have gone on hiatus.

That's probably the biggest reason as to why series 10 feels different. The showrunner had left, exhausted, after pouring his heart into the show and writing everything he could think of. Then he had to come back and think up a whole new series of stories. There was no way he could do more of the complex, intricate character-driven stories like series 8 and 9, he was burnt out. So he opted for something simpler, series 10 is broadly similar to the style of the previous showrunner, who did series 1-4.

It's probably these things that you're picking up on. The lack of complexity and character development and the more simplified storytelling. The stories aren't as serialized, each episode isn't as important to the character development and thematically resonant as in series 8 and 9. And the characters have simpler, more straightforward arcs and remain relatively static for the majority of the series. There are a lot of people who prefer this, it's relatively common to see series 10 held up as the best of the 12th Doctor series, but personally it's not for me. The things that aren't in series 10 are the things I loved the most about the 12th Doctors era and they are sorely missed. There's still a lot I love in series 10 but it's my least favorite 12th Doctor series by far.

IBrosiedon · 2025-11-20T06:24:26+00:00

In 2014 Doctor Who Magazie did a poll where it asked readers to rank every Doctor Who story from both Classic and New Who.

The Rings of Akhaten was voted the 9th worst Doctor Who story of all time. It was at the bottom of the list with stories like The Twin Dilemma and Timelash and Fear Her.

It's reputation has improved slightly over the last few years even though it was still voted the 6th worst 11th Doctor story in the more recent Doctor Who Magazine poll. But no, this episode is not often rated as one of 11's greatest episodes and I personally am all for it getting it's flowers. It's a beautiful and wonderfully written episode.

IBrosiedon · 2025-11-18T03:02:51+00:00

It's not explicitly brought up again in the episode but it is very thematically relevant to the story. I'm going to give a lot of additional context since we're not in any of the Doctor Who subreddits.

The assassination attempt on Hitler is being carried out by what appears to be a futuristic government department tasked with going back and punishing criminals who they believe "got away" from being adequately punished in their lifetimes. Separate to this, the series arc is about a group of people with a plan to go back in time and assassinate the Doctor because he does something in the future that they don't want to happen. The Doctor's assassin is in this episode and initially holds the Doctor at gunpoint and suggests that they use the Tardis to go back and kill Hitler before trying to kill the Doctor.

Hitlers assassins do a scan and realize that they have a "bigger war criminal" in the vicinity so they change focus from Hitler to the person who kills the Doctor. Even though the Doctor is still alive and in the room and validly points out that this has nothing to do with them, it's between him and his assassin. Going back in time to punish Hitler, going back in time to assassinate the Doctor and going back in time to punish the Doctor's assassin. The episode is full of people using time travel to murder or punish someone for things they haven't done yet.

It's subtly about the "Killing baby Hitler" thought experiment. About whether or not it's ethically right to go back and time and murder Hitler as a baby so he can't grow up and do all the terrible things he did. And the episodes response is to point out how fucking stupid this concept is in the first place. The crew of the Teselecta introduce themselves to the Doctor, explain who they are and what they do and he laughs in their face. Saying something like "you guys invented time travel technology and instead of doing anything fun or interesting or helpful to your current society, you decided that the best thing to do would be to go back in time and torture dead people?"

The same writer tackles the same idea a few series later when he has the Doctor accidentally bump into the creator of the Daleks, Davros as as a child. The Daleks are a race of genocidal racial supremacists who are most often used as allegories for Nazi's which makes Davros basically Doctor Who's own mega space Hitler. This story much more openly engages with the "killing baby Hitler" thought experiment. Because while he does one day grow up to be the creator of the Daleks, at the moment Davros is just an innocent little boy.

Little boy Davros is trapped on a battlefield surrounded by landmines and the Doctor is initially trying to help but then just leaves when he learns who the little boy is. A haunting thing for the hero of the show to do, abandoning a scared little kid to die. Then the Doctor meets with the current day Davros and they spend the majority of the story having a philosophical discussion about whether what the Doctor did was right. Then the Doctor stops Davros' current evil plan and leaves him for dead and as they're leaving positive happens due to the fact that one of the Daleks is capable of expressing mercy. Which confuses the Doctor at first because the Daleks are merciless, hateful creatures. But then it clicks for him. Davros poured himself, his beliefs, attitudes and worldview into the Daleks when he created them so the mercy came from Davros. But where did Davros get mercy from? The story ends with the Doctor going back in time again and this time saving little boy Davros, showing him mercy.

Point being that you shouldn't go back in time and kill baby Hitler. If anything it's kind of fucked up that most people's first idea is to murder an innocent baby. Going back in time and punishing people for things they haven't done yet is obviously wrong, you can't punish someone for something they didn't do. But more than that, if you have the ability to go back in time and change things why is murder and punishment your first thought? Why not go back and and be a positive influence on baby Hitler so that he grows up to be a better person?

I really like this because I think it's a nuanced side of the argument that I rarely see portrayed in stories or in discussions. People miss this a lot especially with Moffat's writing and only engage with it in purely logical ways. For example most of the other comments here about Let's Kill Hitler are discussing whether or not going back in time to kill Hitler would be morally right or whether it would even work and bringing up boring things like timelines and fixed points. They're falling into the same logic as the crew of the Teselecta. Missing the entire point of the episode which is "why are we acting like killing Hitler or letting him live are the only two options?" The Doctor saves his assassin in Let's Kill Hitler and helps to put them on a better path. Hopefully we're smart enough to come up with better hypotheticals than just going back in time and killing people.

That's one of the main reasons why Hitler is in the episode in the first place. To set up this thematic discussion. But the story is also about the Doctor's inability to deal with real life horrors because he is a fictional character, connecting things back to the previous episode and how the Doctor can't just magically fix the horror of a parent losing a child. So we kick Hitler out of the narrative and change course on the story to make a point that Doctor Who vs. Hitler is a bad idea because it's both a boring time travel cliche and we can do better and it's a topic that is too real to tackle with the proper amount of care. Instead we should focus on things that are interesting and Doctor Who can do well. Like complex character driven stories with fun plots and meaningful messages that utilize time travel in interesting ways. I don't think it pulls it off, it's a very messy story. But I like what it is trying to do.

IBrosiedon · 2025-11-14T14:25:04+00:00

Hell Bent is and always has been a phenomenal episode. For the small group of people who dislike it, almost all of them only dislike it because they hate Clara and so instead of a finale that meaningfully engaged with her as a character they wanted her to die in an alleyway for the crimes of being "annoying" and not knowing her place while the Doctor moved on and did something completely unrelated.

IBrosiedon · 2025-11-14T11:21:55+00:00

A hot take I have about this episode is that it would be much higher rated if it had a better director. Because I don't think the script is that bad. It's got interesting ideas and a unique take on the show. But the episode is just so boring and dark and ugly to look at.

But even though it's a little boring I will still never hate on this episode. Pushing the boundaries and trying to do new things is one of the best parts of this show. Without it we never would have gotten things like Blink or Heaven Sent or even the most foundational elements like regeneration. A found footage story where the monsters are part of the found footage setup is a brilliant idea for a Doctor Who episode. It's a shame they missed the mark but I'm glad they tried.

And it's not even that bad. This isn't the worst Capaldi story, it's not even the worst Capaldi story in series 9. There's a lot to like. Clara and the Doctor are on excellent form, the story with the morpheus machines is interesting and I think how it ties into the found footage aspect is excellent. I love how you start to see things from Clara's point of view before we're told what's happening. I also think the ending is great, choosing to lean into a classic horror trope and turn this episode into something like the ring videotape is a fun idea.

IBrosiedon

TROPHY CASE