After getting nearly four days behind in writing, once I hit 'Publish' on this entry I will be caught up. This has been a long, tiring, but awesome weekend with five performances of the show I am doing, plus a few other things. I am ready to go to sleep like right now.

So let's talk Doctor Who so I can go to bed.

Heaven Sent

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

This is, without question, Peter Capaldi's finest hour as the Doctor. There is only one spoken line of dialog in the entire episode that is not his, and that comes from an Imaginary Clara. The Doctor finds himself teleported to a mysterious castle where he is relentlessly pursued by mysterious cloaked creature that only pauses if the Doctor makes some kind of honest confession. It is a puzzle-box story, in which the Doctor must slowly piece together where he is and how to escape while he also grieves the loss of Clara. And when I say slowly I truly mean that -- by the end it turns out that the episode takes place over the course of four and a half billion years, with the Doctor living a repeated cycle of materializing, solving the puzzle, and dying horribly only to be reborn. During each cycle he ends up punching away at a diamond-like twenty-foot-thick wall, while recounting the Brothers Grimm tale of the Shepherd's Boy. 

Capaldi gives a bravura performance, particularly in the final sequence in which he understands exactly what is happening and is shown in rapid succession to be reliving the same sequence of events over and over again, until finally bursting through the wall and stepping onto the surface of...

Gallifrey!

He has been trapped inside his confession dial for billions of years, and tomorrow it is time for Rassillon to pay the price. 

This is just a hypnotic episode to watch, so beautifully scripted and shot. The puzzle is laid out neatly, and unfolds as relentlessly as the cloaked monster that pursues the Doctor throughout. It is easily Steven Moffat's best bit of writing since The Girl Who Died, and very much in the same mold. He is at his best as a writer with this kind of story structure, where the tale loops back upon itself recursively.

And that's it, I'm caught up. Fifteen minutes from now I will be sound asleep. You all have a lovely evening, my dear imaginary readers. I'll catch you again tomorrow.

STATS:

Doctor(s): Twelfth
Companion(s): Clara Oswald
Episode(s): Heaven Sent
Steps Walked: 7,687 today, 3,509,828 total
Distance Walked: 4.21 miles today, 1,835.86 miles total
Push-ups Completed: 60 today, 6,747 total
Sit-ups Completed: 0 today, 1,029 total
Weight: 247.16 lbs (five day moving average), net change -60.14 lbs