Latest Dr. Who episode - "That's a Hell of a Bird"

[Roger]

Just watched this and wow...this one made up for all the stinkers this season. It seemed like there were more than a few that fell a bit flat. Seriously though, Who fans, I must have watched the last 10-15 minutes 2 or 3 different times.

 

Slow clap for you, Mr. Steven Moffat, wherever you're at.

[Roger]

So...I was hoping to have a short discussion on this episode but didn't want to spoil anything for those who hadn't seen it, but it's been a while so...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The episode starts with the Doctor trapped in a mysterious castle being stalked by some sort of wraith....he comes to find out that over the course of the episode that he has been trapped in there a very long time, sort of like an even more horrific version of Groundhog Day (except Bill Murray didn't have his memory wiped each time...it's not clear whether the Doctor remembers each iteration although at one point he says he does, I'm not sure if he's actually remembering or if he gets better at figuring out his clues, or maybe after so many cycles he actually does retain something somehow)

 

The reason he is trapped in this castle/puzzle box is the Timelords back on Gallifrey want to know all about the Hybrid, some legendary creature that the Doctor knows all about and the only way he can pass through the castle or unlock new areas is to make some confession about the Hybrid. Finally he gets to the end and realizes the way out is blocked by a 20 foot thick diamond wall, the only way to get past is to give up the info on the Hybrid. Except, he doesn't. He just starts punching the wall. And the creature comes up and kills him, only not quite, and he has only enough energy to crawl back to the start and leave himself a clue and burn his old body to generate a new one.

 

And he does this for something like 2-4 billion years. Each time, punching the wall...until he finally punches through.

 

What I didn't quite get, is if every room resets, shouldn't the room with the diamond wall also reset? In which case, he'd never escape? If so, why is there another set of clothes for him to find? Shouldn't they disappear? Even more worrisome, if we assume he is in the castle for maybe a total of 3 days, 1.5 days to figure things out and another 1.5 to crawl back and start over again, then for each year he is in the castle he leaves behind 120-odd skulls (roughly). Every 1000 years that's 120,000 skulls, every 10,000 years that's 1.2 million skulls, 100k 10.2 million, 1 million years 100 million skulls, 1 billion years is 100,000 million skulls (unless we are talking the British billion which is 1 million million years and not just 1 thousand million years, and then hoo-boy you are talking about a heck of a lot of Doctor skulls --- at which point there wouldn't be any water left for him to fall into at the beginning, heck there probably isn't room after the first 100,000 years unless they start turning to sand at some point).

 

I guess I'm being too picky and perhaps there is a reason the final room can't reset, and maybe the other things that are left out don't reset either (or else there'd be no way to tell the story...perhaps that's just part of his torture, that those items can't/don't reset). It's still a great episode, I can't imagine the kind of grit it would take to realize you've been doing that for millions of years and keep doing it.

 

The montage at the end has got some particularly excellent editing, the way everything is cut together makes it seem like you're watching thousands of iterations of this cycle even though it's only about 3 minutes of screen time. I've watched the episode at least 3 times now. I'll have to buy a DVD of season 9 so I can have a copy of this episode.