Doctor Who - In Defense Of Hell Bent: Why It Doesn’t Ruin Face The Raven And Heaven Sent
Depression
“No matter what I do, you still won’t be there.”
This stage starts when the Doctor finds the Azbantium wall and realises he’s been through this entire process before. He feels he is doomed to be trapped in the confessional dial, and in this grieving process, forever, with no way out but to break free, step by agonising step. He finally admits to himself that she is gone, breaking down and questioning if he has to carry on. He is only able to pull himself out of this by telling himself this is not what Clara would have wanted. He visualises this process as conversation with Clara, but in reality, he is saving himself here. He steels himself, vowing to get to the other side, and slowly, he comes closer to acceptance.
Testing
“I had to work out a way to save you...”
Emerging from the confession dial and landing on Gallifrey, The Doctor comes into Hell Bent having overcome the feelings of despair that plagued him in Heaven Sent, but the experience has changed and hardened him. It is at this stage of the grieving process that people tend to cling to a more tangible, long term solution to the issue of their loss, but are still not fully at peace with what has happened.
The Doctor thinks he has found a permanent solution by extracting Clara from her time stream just before her death in Face The Raven, and proceeds to break the rules of time to escape with her, forcing The General to regenerate in the process. We have seen the Doctor kill people before, but never someone who is in the right, and never quite so directly. The lengths that he goes to are shocking to the viewer, and seem incredibly out of character - but this is the point. This is a man with a singular purpose, going to extreme lengths to pull himself out of a cycle he feels trapped by. He isn’t meant to behave rationally at this point. The Doctor dispatches his fellow Time Lord coldly and without remorse, and everything from his dialogue to his body language tells us that the character we are watching is not the Doctor.