20 Doctor Who Moments We'll NEVER Forget

3. "And The Shepherd's Boy Says..." (Heaven Sent)

Doctor Who Sarah Jane School Reunion
BBC Studios

Heaven Sent was voted the greatest Doctor Who story of all time in a recent Doctor Who Magazine poll, and it's easy to see why. An absolute masterclass in writing, direction, and performance by Steven Moffat, Rachel Talalay, and Peter Capaldi that gets to the very heart of who the Doctor is.

In the final montage, set to Murray Gold's haunting "The Shepherd's Boy", the Twelfth Doctor lives up to his promise to "never be cruel, never be cowardly, and never give up", as he spends billions of years smashing his fist into a wall of diamond.

That's who the Doctor is, the hero that will always do the hard thing and take the long way round – not because it's easy, not because it works, because it hardly ever does. But because it's right.

 
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Citizen of the Universe, Film Programmer, Writer, Podcaster, Doctor Who fan and a gentleman to boot. As passionate about Chinese social-realist epics as I am about dumb popcorn movies.