Review of Hell Bent
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

Moffat couldn’t kill a character to save his own goddamn life.

Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2015 BBC

He likes to pretend he’s ruthless. He tugs heartstrings with near misses and kills off minor or supporting characters, but when it comes down to it, he’s simply unable to commit, even when the narrative demands it.

I had to wonder whether he was trolling himself or just trying to cut off naysayers at the pass when he wrote Ashildr’s words pointing out the way that the Doctor’s actions earlier in the episode had completely undermined the emotional impact of the previous two episodes. “She died for who she was and for who she loved. She fell where she stood. It was sad. And it was beautiful. And it is over. We have no right to change who she was.” And yet that’s exactly what Moffat does.

It has become something of an in-joke in fandom that you don’t have to worry when a character seems to die, because they’ll just come back at some point (I still haven’t ruled out a Danny Pink return). I don’t think anyone was completely destroyed by Clara’s death in Face the Raven because (a) we’ve become inured to Companion death (hers, even! Versions of her have already died in Asylum of the Daleks and The Snowmen!) and (b) we were all waiting for the end of the series for exactly this reason. There’s no “just this once” to Moffat’s “everybody lives!“

Review of The Woman Who Lived
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

Nominally, The Woman Who Lived was the second half of a two-parter that began with The Girl Who Died. In practice, it’s a brand new story featuring the return of a previously seen character, like Craig in Closing Time, the Meddling Monk in The Daleks’ Master Plan, or the Master in anything after Terror of the Autons.

Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2015 BBC

There was even a completely different writer for this episode than the previous one; last week’s episode was co-written by Jamie Mathieson and Steven Moffat, while this was written by Catherine Tregenna (halle-effin-lujah, finally a woman!). It’s hardly surprising, then, that it had a completely different character and feel than its predecessor.

That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. For me, though, the trappings of the mid-seventeenth century, the highwayman known as the Knightmare, and the fine lady in cahoots with Leandro of Delta Leonis (whom I was very disappointed to learn wasn’t actually a Tharil after all) were of little interest. They were merely the setting in which the real story took place.

Said real story, as I see it, is twofold. First, there is the fact of don’t-call-me-Ashildr’s effective immortality, stuck on “the slow path,” as Reinette put it in The Girl in the Fireplace. This exploration of what it would mean to live for centuries, outliving everyone you got to know along the way—and not being able to fly off in a blue box after—is the human side of the equation, though a modified one. We are not meant to live so long, certainly not alone. The way Ashildr’s perspective has changed, and her attitude toward the lives of others with it, is testament to the psychological effects of that isolation.