Talk:Heaven Sent (Doctor Who)

Cast list

Wouldn't you say it's a little odd that one day they release a thing saying Peter Capaldi is the only actor in this episode, and the next they say some other actor's in it.Theoosmond (talk) 19:05, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

Never forget, rule #1: The Moff lies. :P KoopaCooper (talk) 01:31, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Continuity

I'm aware with this solo episode there's a lack of continuity to reference to, and without the solid articles online no-one would ever be able to put anything up for long, but please keep in mind the following:

• The Doctor being the hybrid may be a reference back to Doctor Who (film) where it was mentioned that the Doctor is half-human (we all hate this, but maybe wait until next week to decide if this is important)
• The Confession Dial, first seen and referenced to in The Magician's Apprentice (Doctor Who) plays a significant part in this episode.
• The Doctor, himself, confesses to leaving Gallifrey out of fear (there's a Big Finish story alluding to this too, with the Burner character)
• Gallifrey, finally, returns after being absent since the show's revival (excluding specials)

I'm sure there's more, but if any of these make good for a continuity segment on the main page, that would be good.86.181.252.87 (talk) 14:20, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Third-party sources are required to back up the notability of these. Alex|The|Whovian 14:53, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Thus the 'without the solid articles online' part of my query. Anyway, some continuity has been added, one of which I mentioned above, so all is said and done.86.181.252.87 (talk) 21:55, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Plot

I'd like someone to consider the possibility the Doctor is actually talking about Lady Me (Ashildr) and not himself at the end of the episode, given she appears in the Next Time trailer...?

Yes, I made this change to retain the ambiguity of this statement, some berk decided to revert it.MultipleTom (talk) 17:15, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Okay, as one that undid one revert, this is a good point and one I didn't consider, the thing is that just saying, in quotes "me", looks grammatically wrong. Let's include more of the quote to provide the context and then that's fine. --MASEM (t) 17:17, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

If you look at the closed captions, it says "is me" not captialized, meaning not proper noun, but pronoun. So from the captions I believe that the Doctor is referring to himself and not Ashildr. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.87.163.194 (talk • contribs)

We should not be going off closed-captioning, as that often is not written by anyone with access to the script. And even then, its vague enough that we should absolutely not make an assumption either way. --MASEM (t) 22:12, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

This is completely unsourced originally research and had the content not been changed, it would have been treated as such and reverted. Alex|The|Whovian 23:23, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

If the addition was to include the possibility that "me" was to Ashildr, then yes, I'd agree it would be original research. However, the recommendation was to keep to the vagueness of the episode, so using the direct quote without comment is completely in line. --MASEM (t) 23:39, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Now that the next episode has aired, do we agree that the "me" in this episode did in fact refer to the character who calls herself Me? And if so, is there any conceivable way we can somehow render the word "me" differently? Part of me wants to preserve ambiguity (which I know is wrong because we don't care about spoilers), but it strikes me that leaving it as it currently is now is actively misleading. Do we just re-word the whole sentence so that it's no longer all direct quotes and maybe have it go something like ... the Doctor says the hybrid is, "Me."? ZarhanFastfire (talk) 06:49, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

No, we don't, given that it's still unclear whether he was talking about the character or himself, given the unsolved argument of the Hybrid in Hell Bent. Alex|The|Whovian 08:44, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

The script for Heaven Sent was released. "They hyrbid is MItalic texte". http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/doctorwho/entries/30f438bc-7a6b-40ed-9fbb-cca0a5f66476 Badgerdog2 (talk) 21:16, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

OK, what Badger is trying to say is that the script says Me, not "me". Here is the actual script link: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/tv/isite-static/doctorwho/scripts/DW9-EP-11-Heaven-Sent.pdf Does anyone object to changing the text here to reflect Moffat's script? ZarhanFastfire (talk) 07:04, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Still not necessarily concerning the characters; this could be as it is for emphasis. Alex|The|Whovian 07:54, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

First: just because the script uses "Me" vs "me" means we should not be assuming this affirms her as the Hybrid. We're just repeating the script verbatim and letting the reader and our secondary sources make any appropriate claims. That said: looking through the rest of the script, it is clear when they want to emphasis something the Doctor was to say, they used italics (see Scene 16 for example). --MASEM (t) 15:45, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Exactly. Script conventions - italics are used for emphasis. Badgerdog2 (talk) 22:48, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

And all of this is appearing as a lot of original research ("we should not be assuming", "it is clear", etc). Alex|The|Whovian 23:58, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Which is why all we can leave it at is a quote, with the casing as given in the script, with the citation to the script. --MASEM (t) 00:02, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

Exactly. Whether the Hybrid "really" is Me, or the Doctor, or the Doctor and Clara, does not matter. That's for viewers and readers to decide. Making the assumption that the capital M is "emphasis", in the absence of any evidence for such, is original research.ZarhanFastfire (talk) 23:48, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

Five years later

Apologies for not checking here before editing - changes made to the continuity section's discussion of this, which in the iteration I found it in attempted to play it safe to such an extent in ended up totally incomprehensible. While "Hell Bent" leaves ambiguity over what exactly the Hybrid is, it does give an explicit explanation for the Doctor's statement: he believes the Hybrid is Ashildr/Me. We don't have to obscure that to leave room for him meaning something else in "Heaven Sent" then changing his mind, without any on-screen indication. U-Mos (talk) 02:29, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

3 years later, the current section about the hybrid being "Me" doesn't mention any sources, this seems like a problem 2.30.72.200 (talk) 12:44, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Confusion between this article, and Short Sum of episode in Ninth Series article

Hey, this might be a good question here to answer - Why is it, that the article for the Ninth Series of the revived Doctor Who, in the short sum for this episode, states that the Doctor took 4 billion years to break through and escape his Confession Dial, when the plot summary in this article states that it was 2 billion years? One of these seems incorrect to me. GUtt01 (talk) 12:40, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

2 billion years is the last figure we hear the Doctor mention in the montage where he breaks the wall. 4.5 billion years is how long Ohila says he was in the confession dial in Hell Bent. —Flax5 14:02, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

@Flax5: Then technically, shouldn't the information in the plot, and Short Sum, be made to match the figure mentioned by Ohila?GUtt01 (talk) 16:28, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

Information that isn't actually given in an episode is generally not allowed in the plot summary. This is a slightly weird situation where the general amount of time is important to the plot Heaven Sent (but not given specifically), and unimportant to Hell Bent (but stated almost exactly), so the former makes it into the short sum but the latter doesn't. We could always add a footnote if it's confusing people. —Flax5 16:52, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps it might be easier to redo that sentence in both the article Plot Summary, and the Short Sum in the Ninth Series article, to not reflect on that detail, but rephrase it in a way where a specific figure is not essentially required to convey the length of time. Something like "after many lifetimes spent chipping at the <substance of wall>..." GUtt01 (talk) 17:03, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

We can say "billions of years" without a number in both summaries. Both 2B and 4.5B are "billions". I do think it is important from the narrative of this into next episode that the magnitude of times he spend in the dial is critical, and "many lifetimes" isn't quite enough, particularly when he's not so much living out his life each cycle of the Dial. --Masem (t) 17:40, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

AI Score…

“It received an Appreciation Index score of 80, despite receiving acclaim from critics and fans.” What does “despite” do in this sentence? To get 80% on a test is a great score, so surely this makes this a pretty well regarded, whereas I am taking it that the POV of the writer is that an 80 score doesn’t cut the mustard; there is a process and standards used to derive the AI score, so to me that’s a better metric than an unsubstantied appeal to an unknown, unspecified group of “critics and fans” (and also seems to suggest that the AI group can’t possibly have and “fans” in it). Jock123A (talk) 14:22, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

Regardless of whether or not 80 is good or bad, adding a comment like "despite" is WP:SYNTH (or, at the very least, basic WP:OR). The second half of the sentence was unsourced anyway, and the reception is covered in the following section, so I've removed it. – Rhain ☔ 14:28, 14 August 2022 (UTC)