View source for Grim times for the Doctor as Capaldi goes it alone

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| publication = The Telegraph
| file = 2015-11-30 Telegraph.jpg
| px = 450
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| date = 2015-11-30
| author = Tim Martin
| pages = 34
| language = English 
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| text = Living nightmare: Peter Capaldi in the penultimate episode of Doctor Who

"I just watched my best friend die in agony," snapped Peter Capaldi's Time Lord toward the start of this week's episode of Doctor Who (BBC One, Saturday). "My day can't get any worse?'

In retrospect, this ironic sound bite looks a bit like screenwriter Steven Moffat setting himself a challenge: the episode that followed the death of the Doctor's companion Clara was genuinely grim, with a vision of hell on repeat that may signal a high-water mark of nastiness in the Who universe. By the end I rather pined for the easygoing charm of its opening sequence, in which Capaldi was merely teleported to an MC Escher-style castle made from his own nightmares and pursued by a hooded figure with rotting claws that wattled him to confess his deepest secrets.

As it turned out, this was just an aperitif: stuck inside the "confession dial" that has been one of the running mysteries of this series, the Doctor was then forced to live at least two billion Groundhog years of death and resurrection, being choked to death and reborn in a building festooned with the skulls of previous incarnations while pounding his fists to tatters as he tried to escape. 

Even for Moffat, this was pretty full-on, and bits of it must have made for some fascinating parent-child discussions as the credits rolled. It was also the second episode this series to do something formally interesting with its 55-minute slot: Mark Gatiss's Sleep No More a fortnight ago was a found-footage piece, while this instalment required Peter Capaldi, bolstered only by half-glimpsed visions of Clara and the lurking presence of his pursuer, to carry the entire segment by himself. As an actor, though, Capaldi has broad shoulders, and his portrait of a Time Lord in extreinis was never less than watchable here.

Yet something about the episode didn't quite click. Moffat and co have spent such a long time building their Doctor up as a fearless intergalactic titan that he can't easily be stripped down to vulnerability, but the drama depended on his being scared almost to death from the outset. And was the castle actually designed as a two-billion-year torture chamber, or did the Doctor's escape mean he'd foiled its purpose as a confessional?

Quibbles aside, it would be a stony heart that didn't rise at the concluding glimpse of the pleasure-domes of Gallifrey shimmering on the horizon. Next week's finale should be very interesting indeed.

Doctor Who {{stars|3|3}}

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