Doctor Who — Twelfth Doctor

Transmission: 28.11.2015.

Writer: Steven Moffat.

Director: Rachel Talalay.

Guest Starring: Jami Reid-Quarrell.

The Doctor is trapped and alone.

Stuck in a seemingly-endless castle, nightmarish remnants of his past surrounding him and a photo of his dead companion staring down at him, this is a challenge the like of which he's never faced before. Teleported from the Trap Street, he finds himself pursued by the deadly Veil.

And if he survives, his reward will be the one place he's longed for.

"I confess," he says. "I am afraid."

This is the penultimate episode of Doctor Who Series 9, and sees the mysteries of the previous 10 episodes unfold. What is the Hybrid that's been talked about since the Doctor faced Davros on Skaro? The Doctor knows... Is Clara really gone? And what are the contents of the Time Lord's Confession Dial?

This is the very first 'one-hander' in Doctor Who history: that is, aside from the sole monster, only Peter Capaldi's Twelfth Doctor features. "It's the first time we've ever done an episode like it," Brian Minchin, executive producer, says. "And it's the most virtuoso, fantastic piece of writing from Steven [Moffat, showrunner]."

"It occurred to me that I had just written a huge monologue for him at the end of [The Zygon Inversion]. Ten minutes. I was typing forever in that," Moffat explained to Radio Times. "And I just thought, 'maybe we don't need anyone else – we don't need to cut to anyone nodding – it's just him?'"

Capaldi adds that it's "undiluted Doctor Who" that reminded him of The Mind Robber, the 1968's Second Doctor classic. Indeed, it'll be as experimental as that story, as well as recent outings like Midnight, Listen, and Sleep No More.

This concluding two-parter is the directorial return of Rachel Talalay who helmed last year's finale, Dark Water/ Death in Heaven, and she enthused to Doctor Who Magazine: "I was relived and delighted when the invitation came in, to come back. I had no idea how different it was going to be this time in terms of scripts. They couldn't be more different o last year, or to each other – a two-parter where each part is so completely different."

It's also the return of Jami Reid-Quarrell, the only other actor apart from Capaldi in Heaven Sent: we last saw Jami as Colony Sarff in the Series 9 opener, The Magician's Apprentice/ The Witch's Familiar.

So will the Doctor survive this never-ending maze? What is the Veil? How will Series 9 be wrapped up?

Heaven Sent airs tonight on BBCOne at 8:05pm, with a duration of 55 minutes.

End of the line. Here we are again, saying goodbye.

It seems only yesterday that we were bidding Amy and Rory a fond farewell, and even though Clara's been travelling in the TARDIS for a long time, it's still just as tough. Is she properly gone? We'll find out over the next couple of episodes, but for now, this is it.

We'll get it out of the way: it was immensely sad. A little odd, too.

Face the Raven is the first Doctor Who by Sarah Dollard (Being Human; The Game) and what a way to debut! Not only does she bring back two supporting characters, she also gets rid of a main companion and throws in as many aliens as possible. And all brought together thanks to the neat concept of trap streets.

They're real. Well, not entirely, but Clara's tale of cartographers including a fake street so they'd know if their work had been copied by others is entirely true – it's one of those interesting nuggets of information Doctor Who frequently unearths. With a whole world available to us online, maps on our phones and courtesy of Google, the idea of hidden streets is fascinating.

It's realised as a typical magical location, cobbles and olde worlde houses, shadows and the alien. Having an unknown landscape potentially around each corner once again harks back to those early First Doctor days when the otherworldly could be found anywhere.

A stark contrast to the futuristic visuals of last week's Sleep No More, the trap street gives director, Justin Molotnikov something new to explore. It's not as impressive as his work in the La Verrier Space Station but that's to be expected; Sleep No More reveled in its directorial brilliance, its whole premise hinging on how well it was framed.

Nevertheless, Molotnikov impresses. The trap street is bookended by bright explorations of the modern world, with echoes of The Day of the Doctor (with Clara hanging from the TARDIS, just as the Eleventh Doctor did in the 50^th anniversary special), and her first 'proper' adventure, The Bells of St. John in its vibrancy.

Whether it's intentional or not, an alien mask used in The Rings of Akhaten and Nightmare in Silver also turns out to be the true face of Kabel (Simon Manyonda). Maybe there's also a bit of the town called Christmas (The Time of the Doctor) in the trap street too: regardless, with aliens cropping up left, right, and centre, viewers are reminded of the recent past with startling regularity. Judoon, Sontarans, Ood, and Cybermen turn up: Clara might not have met all of those aliens on-screen but it does round off her adventures well.

Her send-off doesn't feel entirely perfect, however. For someone so intrinsic to the Doctor – scattering herself through his time stream, talking him out of destroying Gallifrey, helping him come to terms with his new incarnation – her death is shockingly pointless.

Why does she die? Because she messes up.

She's fashioned herself in the Doctor's shadow and has been heroic through and through. Her love of life aboard the TARDIS has consumed her absolutely, but not in the same way Donna, for example, was captivated by it. Donna wanted to stay to see the universe. Clara, it seems, wanted to stay so she could save the universe.

Her final act, then, is to save as many as she can from the Doctor's revenge. She sacrificed herself for a friend she'd seemingly only met once before. Ultimately, her death comes as a result of two supporting characters, Rigsy (Joivan Wade) and Ashildr (Maisie Williams) – or Me or Mayor Me, if we must.

You can't dislike Rigsy for it, though. He was great in Flatline, and he was great here as well. Sadly, he's not given an awful lot to do: Rigsy's merely a means to an end, caught up in something out of his control.

It's Ashildr who will take much of the blame from fans, I'm sure. Williams was superb in The Girl Who Died, but she was an entirely different person in The Woman Who Lived – and not a nice one. She might've carried out her plan for altruistic reasons, to save the street, but she remains far from likeable. What's more, her final scene in The Woman Who Lived, in retrospect, seems a missed opportunity. Maybe she'll return and there'll be a narrative reason for her essentially threatening the Doctor, but for now, it falls flat.

Her promise to the Doctor that humans in general (but Clara specifically) "blow away like smoke", though, is beautifully literal.

The Quantum Shade is one of the most successful aspects of the tale. The Raven is a great presence, a truly effective piece of symbolism, as is the chronolock, hanging around the necks of Clara, Ashildr, and Rigsy. The notion isn't properly explored; that's actually a good thing, adding to this almost mythical idea of a creature intent on delivering death, no matter what.

Honestly? I never suspected Clara would be killed. Not properly, and not so violently. It was a painful death. Many notable deaths of previous companions have been off-screen – yes, even Amy and Rory's living-to-death demise – but this was presented with horrific honesty.

There was nothing timey-wimey about this. Her splinters weren't involved. She didn't save the Doctor. She just died.

It's an extraordinarily brave move. We saw the Quantum Shade take her, and we saw her fall to the ground. So did the Doctor. There's something anti-climatic about it, but certainly not in a bad way. If anything, that made it even more touching.

The intimate conversation, and the words that were never said, exposed the leads' admirably. Clara was strong until the end. She was selfless and accepting. The Doctor fell apart so subtly. His rage caved in as he asked her to stay by his side. "Don't run," he says, pained. "Stay with me."

Next week, it's the Doctor's time to run. But for now...

Goodbye, our Impossible Girl. We'll always remember you.

"You must not watch this."

That's a deceptively clever opening line. Because whenever someone says that, the thing they're trying to warn you off suddenly becomes immediately compelling, certainly to the point where you have to watch it. In fact, Sleep No More relies heavily on you keeping your eyes wide open and paying close attention.

Yep, that's just what everyone wants.

It's a major bug-bear of mine that people complain they don't understand what's going on, but don't actually pay attention. They're too distracted by social media or the phone going off. Doctor Who, however, is something that you really need to keep an eye on; dedicated fans especially won't turn away from the screen. Gagan Rassmussen (Reece Shearsmith) – and thus writer, Mark Gatiss – is betting on this.

Sleep No More is a whole different layer of 'meta,' not content with blurting out "Doctor Who?" at given opportunities or wishing all of us at home a very merry Christmas. Because the whole point of this episode is... the episode. That, in itself, is the monster, and on repeat viewings, we're still not party to what's 'real' and what's not.

That's a fascinating conceit, giving a solid reason for the experimental nature of the story's presentation. Why is it a found footage serial? Because that's the whole point.

Thanks to a lack of proper titles and soundtrack, you really feel like this was salvaged and immediately aired. The makeshift title was a welcome one-off change, smartly executed, while the absence of Murray Gold's typically-wonderful tracks puts you on the backfoot. Gold's greatly experienced with adding layers of tension to tales, but here, you still get that effect because it feels more true to life.

It's not entirely without music, of course, and Mr. Sandman is a useful plot point throughout. Actually, it's a great representative of the Morpheus creature: you'll be singing this infectious song long after the credits roll. There's also something eerie about the rendition – that only an earworm like that, first recorded in 1954, could still crop up in the 38^th Century and so completely at odds with the environment. The La Verrier Space Station is now a dark, grim place to be and those cheery pop singers juxtapose with that and the supposedly cosy Morpheus Machine. It blurs the definition of dreams and nightmares.

Ah yes, an earworm. An argument could be made that there's a link between this episode and Under the Lake/ Before the Flood, just a few episodes ago. I loved the two-parter, but this arguably handles the notion more deftly. Instead of carving the alien symbols on the minds of the Doctor (Peter Capaldi), Clara Oswald (Jenna Coleman), and co., the electrical connections are forced onto the viewer.

Although there are many 'firsts' for Doctor Who in this episode, it nonetheless alludes to various other stories and definitely has a similar tone to adventures like The Impossible Planet/ The Satan Pit, 42, and even Image of the Fendahl. Sleep No More references Frontios (and I love Frontios!) and Doctor Who and the Silurians, once again bringing up Homo Reptilia's naming problem.

I can't help but feel that its close cousins are The Edge of Destruction and Midnight. Both encapsulate the experimental nature of the show, sometimes by necessity and sometimes as the main purpose of the plot. The two stories are poles apart, but the restrictions make them divisive and massively interesting.

That's Doctor Who down to a tee. It's why the show is celebrating its 52^nd birthday very soon.

(Similarly, audio adventures like Whispers of Terror and Dead Air also utilise their own format well, both incredibly effectively. If you've not heard them, you need to.)

The Edge of Destruction, Midnight, Sleep No More: these are stories that enrich the series and showcase how malleable the format is; they will never become the norm but they still needed telling. They're important.

All three feel rather restricted – in a positive way. Last series, I got annoyed by Deep Breath and, to a slightly lesser extent, Into the Dalek because they felt like they needed to be widescreen movie-esque pieces but instead their visuals were oddly stunted. In Sleep No More, that's the whole point.

If you're well-versed in Who, you'd have likely picked up the impossible camera angles, particularly those from Clara's POV. Viewer immediately presume the rescue crew have headcams, and it's only when Nagata (Elaine Tan) says they don't have those, that the implications start to sink in.

Director, Justin Molotnikov should be applauded for such a stunningly-realised episode. His work is a real pleasure to behold; every shot has really been agonised over. The bold, striking visuals are reminiscent of Silence in the Library/ The Forest of the Dead, The Bells of St. John, Cold War, and even stories as far back as the first episode of The Sensorites.

Steven Moffat, showrunner, has previously said that every new writer and director needs to mould Doctor Who, to make it their own, and Molotnikov does this expertly. Sleep No More is a masterclass in first-person storytelling.

And yet it's not wholly satisfying. While the rescue crew generally feel real, the nature of 474 (Bethany Black) leaves a lot unexplored. Maybe we'll come back to the Grunts in future – there's definitely something interesting about the concept – but for now, she seems somewhat undercooked. It might've tied into the wider Whoniverse a little better if she were Flesh, for instance...

Another point of confusion is its conclusion. Sometimes, the Doctor loses. Fine. Good, even! We can't have a perfect hero. But the structure does leave something to be desired. Can you imagine the Doctor really just disappearing in the TARDIS and letting the wider issues resolve themselves?

Like so many experimental episodes, I do wonder what the casual viewer would make of it. The show shouldn't shy away from being edgy and decidedly different in favour of a typical Monster of the Week drama simply to satisfy the masses. Still, the narrative would seem awfully segmented if you're not one to rewatch the story in light of Rassmussen's final admission.

These problems make the story extremely divisive: one group will no doubt call it a terrible, dull, and ultimately unenjoyable story, while the others would call it fantastic art. In case you're wondering, I'm part of the latter group.

The biggest shame is that Sleep No More doesn't give Clara enough to do. Seen as it's looking increasingly likely that next week's Face the Raven will see her leave the TARDIS, it really does taint this episode. Even if she stays until Series 9's end, we still don't have much longer with Ms. Oswald.

Please do excuse me. I think I've something in my eye.

Transmission: 14.11.2015.

Writer: Mark Gatiss.

Director: Justin Molotnikov.

Guest Starring: Reece Shearsmith; Elaine Tan; Neet Mohan; Bethany Black; Paul Courtenay Hyu; and Zina Badran.

"You must not watch this," warns Professor Rassmussen. That might not seem the brightest thing to say to entice viewers in – but it's actually remarkably clever. After all, if someone tells you not to do something, isn't that the very thing you're going to do?

The Doctor and Clara arrive on the Le Verrier Space Station where the Professor has created the Morpheus Machine. In five minutes, it can give you all the benefits of a good night's sleep, and then you don't have to rest again for another month. "Congratulations, Professor; you've conquered nature," the Doctor says. "You've also created an abomination."

It's used on the Indo-Japanese space station that orbits Neptune – but suddenly, everything goes silent.

This is a Doctor Who first: an episode comprised of 'found footage', ie. where the story is told through camera recordings, with characters not only addressing each other and the threat but also the audience. "This episode is assembled from footage found in the wreckage of a crashed space station," producer, Brian Minchin teased. "We're just putting it out as it was discovered."

Writer, Mark Gatiss finished the script back in March, and promises scares-a-plenty. "It's been quite a challenge to make because you have to break a lot of the usual rules in terms of what you can actually show," he says. "Anything you can do to shake the format up is very exciting and that's what we've done."

It's a very different tale to his previous two, The Crimson Horror (2013) and Robot of Sherwood (2014), both of which were humorous affairs (though the former remained admittedly dark). Gatiss has been working on the show since 2005, and his previous contributions include The Idiot's Lantern (2006), Victory of the Daleks (2010), and Cold War (2013).

Sleep No More will air on the weekend of the Doctor Who Festival, which Mark will be attending (and so will Lovarzi – so keep an eye out for us at Stall DW18!).

Guest star (and friend of Gatiss), Reece Shearsmith plays the creator of the Morpheus Machine, Rassmussen, and he says the found-footage angle of the episode was an interesting challenge: "Time was taken during filming to make sure we never broke the conceit of the episode, and so a lot of time was spent capturing the action from various characters POV's. It was quite meticulous and the action I think feels very raw and ‘captured’... It's very odd doing that because it is counter intuitive to the way you film anything else ever!"

Sleep No More airs on 14^th November on BBCOne at 8:15pm.

It's very hard not to be overly enthusiastic once a particularly exciting episode of Doctor Who airs. That adrenaline still courses through you, and you start to use all sorts of superlatives. It's the reason the Internet is often littered with people exclaiming serials to be "best Doctor Who ever!"

Let's not fight over how enjoyable The Zygon Inversion is. It's already seen by many as a 'classic.'

In fact, perhaps the only reason this serial won't be remembered as one of the best is its opening part, The Zygon Invasion which somewhat muddies the water. Quite often, it's the case that the first episode is generally considered far superior to the following parts: namely, these include An Unearthly Child, The Ark in Space, and Utopia. (Let's be clear, though: this is all so subjective because The Ark in Space is a masterpiece in its entirety, and An Unearthly Child just has a bad rep.)

Here though, I can't help but feel that if you could compress the narrative from Invasion into Inversion, this would've been the most successful two-parter of the Twelfth Doctor era.

The Zygon Inversion is very different to its preceding episode and that makes things far more interesting than if writer, Peter Harness delivered just the same. The international scope is missing, as is a main UNIT attack force, Colonel Walsh (Rebecca Front), and the rather irritating "President of the World" strand.

Instead, we get an intense personal piece that makes you genuinely care about the characters involved. And that makes this stand out as an exceptional piece of television.

We'll get it out of the way: there were two incredible performances here, and they're both from the leads. Peter Capaldi is an absolutely brilliant tortured soul, and Jenna Coleman is great, as ever, as Clara Oswald and even more captivating as Bonnie the Zygon.

Without a doubt, the Twelfth Doctor's speech about war will go down as definitive. It ranks amongst the Fourth Doctor's "indomitable" monologue and the Eleventh Doctor's stand at Stonehenge (in The Pandorica Opens) and Akhaten (The Rings of Akhaten). Actually, the Eleventh Doctor had loads of stunning speeches, including pieces in The Eleventh Hour, Vincent and the Doctor, The God Complex, and The Time of the Doctor. Bizarrely, though, we weren't given an iconic Peter Capaldi speech in Series 8 – the closest we came was in Flatline – so frankly, it's about time!

He shows a tempered anger and anguish as he explains that, "When you fire that first shot, no matter how right you feel, you have no idea who's going to die. You don't know whose children are going to scream and burn; how many hearts will be broken; how many lives shattered! How much blood will spill until everybody does what they're always going to have to do from the very beginning: sit down and talk."

And finally, we get an allusion to The Day of the Doctor that feels genuinely right. The Doctor was once going to press another button and wipe out all of his own kind. The thing that stopped him then was Clara – and this Zygon now wears her face. In a beautiful inversion of that scene from the 50^th anniversary, he has to beg her to change her mind.

Except, if you know Doctor Who at all, you'd have realised very early on that the boxes were always going to be empty. The Doctor would never hand any race the capability to wipe out everything and everyone.

Remarkably, that doesn’t matter: it remains a startlingly intense scene, one with real peril.

Peter Capaldi has spoken in the past about how he initially found acting opposite the Daleks difficult because they don't offer a conventional eyeline. It was, then, a genius move to have him play off Jenna Coleman, who has never been anything less than fantastic.

It's immensely pleasing to see an 'evil' version of Clara. She's unsettling, stunning, and affecting. Jenna really gave this her all – which makes it even sadder to think she'll be leaving imminently.

It's not fair, however, just to highlight these two actors. Let's not forget Jemma Redgrave as Kate Stewart, who has become such an important part in Doctor Who so easily, it's astonishing. For her, too, the scene in the Black Archive is memorable, one of her best so far. In one episode, she goes from quoting her father – "five rounds rapid" – to apologising to the Doctor.

Sure, she'll return to her gun-toting ways, thanks to a handy memory-wipe, but this was a touching nuance to a character that could've just been a mere soldier. It's reminiscent of The Power of Three where she was witty and intelligent. Since that, she's been diminished, but at least there's a glimmer of hope again.

Ingrid Oliver also puts in a solid performance and Osgood's return feels justified now; last week, it simply felt shoe-horned in, but the very idea of the Osgood Box (well, boxes) is smart and feels true to both her and the Doctor.

Osgood will return once more, I'm sure, but fingers crossed it won't be a further opportunity for a Zygon story. I'd like to see her as an active member of UNIT, not just a cosplaying fan of the Doctor.

There's not a huge amount of narrative in The Zygon Inversion, but that's certainly not to say it was an insubstantial story. The dialogue is where this tale excels, and no, not solely in that scene in the Black Archive. That one does tend to swell in your memory to shadow other excellent plot strands, namely the claustrophobic dream sequence with Clara (a la Last Christmas), and that sole Zygon, Etoine (Nicholas Asbury) forcibly being revealed living among his human neighbours.

There's a wonderful juxtaposition there: body horror as the true alien emerges but real sadness in his rhetorical "I never wanted to fight anyone; I just wanted to live here. Why can't I just live?" Still, Bonnie's plan seems half-baked at best: without what the Osgood Box supposedly can do, does she really intend to personally visit 20 million of her own kind in order to force them out into the open?

It's all perfectly lit and the direction by Daniel Nettheim is ideal for this confined story with a huge scale. Nettheim is more than capable of presenting atmospheric scares alongside international environs: he's got a great sense of what Doctor Who actually is and how it can look. Here's hoping he's invited back for Series 10.

Niggles persist – the biggest being that it's the Doctor's former companion, Harry Sullivan (a personal favourite) who created the Z67 gas. It's simply not something you can ever envisage Harry doing.

Nonetheless, it is hard not to be overly enthusiastic about The Zygon Inversion because it has so much going for it. Great performances, great dialogue, great direction: these all combine to make truly great Doctor Who.