Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9.5/10

Cast: Peter Capaldi, Jenna Coleman, Jami Reid-Quarrell.

Doctor Who is known for the bravery it shows in experimenting with the different, with challenging the viewers perspective on how certain stories should be seen or even emotionally felt and the penultimate episode of the current series is no exception to that.

Heaven Sent takes the long running programme down a route that many might never have envisaged taking place, that perhaps arguably it had no right to go and yet with stories such as The Day of The Doctor, The Name of The Doctor, The Waters of Mars and Blink all showing what can take place in the universe, the rules that can be broken, altered and subsequently changed, Heaven Sent can proudly justify its place as one of the finest stories yet and one that sets up one of the most eagerly anticipated finales in years.

With the briefest of allusions to the recently deceased Clara Oswald, and even in that momentarily concise scene the pathos and beauty was overwhelming, the show relied completely on Mr. Capaldi and the dark menace of Jami Reid-Quarrell as the silent and devastatingly horrific ghostly Veil.

Mr Capaldi’s performance in this series alone has verged on spectacular, a man born to play The Doctor he has offered a vision that to whomever should follow him might find it difficult to suggest the same type of gravitas and obvious affection to the role. Yet however good he has been in the series, in this particular episode where, with the exception of Clara’s one line, he is exemplary, a towering artist of both stature and eminence in the role, his monologue, every minute of it was filled with drama, the personification of fear, courage and mental acumen always shining through and the pay-off, the realisation of what is happening to The Doctor as he treads the boards of the strange and frightening world is one that the audience knows could have been written at any time but perhaps only David Tennant’s Doctor could have come close to Peter Capaldi’s grand and beautiful stance.

Heaven Sent, an episode title that surely deserves its moniker, a dream of an episode and one in which Peter Capaldi lays down the truth of acting performances.

Ian D. Hall