“Heaven Sent” is one of the most tragic episodes in Doctor Who history, and new fan art has summed it up with a single image. After the death of the Twelfth Doctor’s companion, Clara, he is captured in a Confession Dial that keeps him eternally moving through a repeated cycle of life and death. With his memories constantly erased, the Doctor is left to toil for billions of years as he wrestles to complete the same escape attempt over and over again.
As the wait for Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor Who season 14 continues, the Twelfth Doctor’s fateful journey has earned the attention of fan artist aljeensane on Instagram, who sketched out the episode’s tragedy. Check out their captivating “Heaven Sent” art below:
The art features Peter Capaldi’s Doctor passing by a cracked portrait of Clara, as he continues along his journey through the dial. He is not looking at the art. Instead, he simply touches it. After the initial image, a follow-up video reveals the painstaking process that went into designing and drawing this fan art.
The Tragedy Of Doctor Who’s Heaven Sent
After so many years of traveling through space and time, the Doctor rarely loses hope. After the death of Clara in season 9, episode 10, “Face the Raven”, however, he is left deep in grief as he faces the dial. With the dial constantly rewriting the Doctor’s memories and rescue never being a possibility, he instead is left to punch through a 20-foot wall that is made of a material harder than diamonds.
For the vast majority of “Heaven Sent”, the Doctor is completely alone. The only other beings with him are a mental version of Clara and a shade made of cogs that haunts his every step. Capaldi is left with nothing to play off of, save for his own performance, and it allows for long monologues that speak to the profoundness of his grief. Every version of the Doctor grapples with grief, but none are quite so lonely as “Heaven Sent” leaves the Doctor.
All 15 Main Doctor Who Actors That Played Multiple Characters
Doctor Who has featured a long list of primary characters in its 60-year run, with some of the main actors even appearing in multiple roles.
The tragedy of this episode is that the Doctor spends billions of years trapped in the same cycle of grief. Without spending too much screen time wrestling with the reality of his loss, the episode instead reiterates it, then allows his grief to turn to anger with the subsequent Doctor Who episode “Hell Bent”. The quiet atmosphere of “Heaven Sent” perfectly sets up his later explosion, while perfectly depicting his ever-evolving grief. That perfect depiction is the reason that fan art continues to honor the episode today.
