## [D] 'Heaven Sent' is Rationalist Fiction * Author: u/TheUtilitaria * * URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/5h9c3u/d_heaven_sent_is_rationalist_fiction/ * Score: 49 * Created: 2016-12-08T20:33:34 ### Post: The best episode of Doctor Who for at least the last couple of seasons was Heaven Sent - go and watch it, if you haven't already, because it's an excellent example of rationalist fiction. Not just rational, but rationalist, in the sense of espousing enlightenment/transhumanist values. If you want to explain to a friend what the genre is all about, but don't want to show them Harry Potter fanfiction or something else low-status, ask them to read the novel Blindsight, but failing that get them to watch this episode. Now, obviously, Doctor Who in general isn't rationalist at all (in fact, its often the direct opposite), but this particular episode definitely was. Let's take a look at the sidebar rules, and ask how many Heaven Sent satisfies. -The central mystery of the episode was solvable in advance, and the whole episode was very literally a puzzle. -The story was very heavy with foreshadowing (another trope of rationalist fiction). -The Doctor, retreats to a sort of mind-palace to explain his thinking during the episode at key points. Blackboards with questions surround him, and he uses the important skills of noticing his own confusion, making sure he's asking the right questions and looking for alternative explanations. -We see that the Doctor has a mental model of Clara, a companion who's highly intelligent in her own right but also more morally pure, who he consults as a voice of counsel and restraint. After she dies, he is 'Hell Bent' on saving her and starts to act more and more recklessly on his quest to bring her back. Who does that remind you of? -He constantly hypothesises, mostly incorrectly, but rationally, about what is actually going on. We actually understand how he draws every conclusion he draws. Every action he takes is explained as part of a larger plan. >"DOCTOR: The wind resistance of the stool, the atmospheric density, (the petals falling) the strength of the local gravity. (the fall of the jeweller's glass.) Am I spoiling the magic? I work at this stuff, you know? Should hit the water in about-" -He wonders constantly if he should 'just lose', and then refuses to do so. Because 'Rationalists should win', right? -Even the rules of the prison (which reminded me of HPMOR's Azkaban) are self-consistent and revealed slowly throughout the episode, and put there for a purpose. The entire prison is a supposedly perfect interrogation system, designed to force the doctor to reveal his secret knowledge. But what really, finally convinced me this was rationalist fiction was the transhumanist theme of the episode. The Doctor breaks out of the prison, suffering excruciating agony and death around a trillion times, so that he can con his way into the Time Lord citadel and use their near-godlike abilities to bring Clara back from the dead. The way he does this uses already-established aspects of the universe (The time lords cannot interfere with history but can travel to any point in time and space, so the obvious way to save people given those constraints is to grab them out of their established history, keep their bodies in unchanging stasis, do whatever has to be done and then return them physically unchanged, keeping the historical record intact. If Doctor Who in general was rationalist, I might actually have predicted the time lords would have invented a stasised temporal teleporter). So, the Doctor realises he can't reveal the fact that he doesn't know anything important, because then he'll never gain access to the citadel, so he has to escape. And he can't lose. Because 'Friends don't let friends stay dead'. Even his own description of what he's doing reminded me of certain passages in HPMOR. >CLARA >(Turning to the Doctor) >Four and a half billion years... >THE DOCTOR >If she says so. >CLARA >Why would you even do that? I was >dead already! I was dead and gone, >Doctor, and you were in hell. Why >would you do that to yourself?? >On the Doctor. He just looks faintly perplexed - a frown of >almost childish puzzlement. Like he doesn’t understand why >anyone would ask that question. >THE DOCTOR >I had a duty of care. >On Clara’s face: that’s the moment that slays. Almost >exhausts her. Just stares at him - > as he goes back to work on the mural. Compare: >"In the English language as it is customarily used, Mr. Potter, the word 'friend' is not associated with a desperate effort to raise the dead. Are you under the impression that she is your true love, or some such?" >"Oh, not you too," Harry said wearily. "Not you of all people, Professor. Fine, we're best friends, but that's all, okay? That's enough. Friends don't let friends stay dead." >"Ordinary folk do not do as much, for those they call friends." The voice sounded more distant now, abstracted. "Not even for those they say they love. Their companions die, and they do not go in search of power to resurrect them." ### Comments: > **u/wtfbbc** [+20] (19 minutes later) > > It's not often that Doctor Who is rational. *Heaven Sent* was. The comparisons to HPMOR are very astute and I can't believe I didn't notice them before; if anything, they make me like *Hell Bent* a bit more. Thanks for sharing, OP! > **u/Roxolan** [+9] *Head of antimemetiWalmart senior assistant manager* (2 hours later) > > Is it watchable even if you haven't been following the last couple of season at all? Or does it rely too much on season plot buildup? >> **u/TheUtilitaria** [+11] (2 hours later) >> >> Not really, all you need to know is that Clara is dead. But it'll have more impact if you've been following their relationship through the rest of the season. It's a bit uneven but generally good. >>> **u/trekie140** [+6] (7 hours later) >>> >>> I liked Heaven Sent, but Hell Bent was ruined for me by the fact that I *just hate Clara*. The only episode I ever liked her in was Flatlined, so Hell Bent felt less like a proper send off and more like Moffat refusing to let go of his Mary Sue without giving her as much of a Mary Sue ending as possible. I know the Doctor is supposed to be irrationally obsessed with her, but I never liked that because I never liked Clara. >>>> **u/ZeroNihilist** [+8] (9 hours later) >>>> >>>> I liked Clara initially and steadily less so as the story warped around her, but still not actual hatred. Even in Hell Bent I wasn't truly annoyed until the ending, which turned the Mary Sue dial up to 11. >>>> >>>> [Doctor Who Spoilers: ](#s "When Clara died it was the best possible end to her character arc. When the Doctor tried to save her it was excellent. When he succeeded in bringing her back for a little while it provided closure. But then not only did she not die for real, she wiped the Doctor's memory of her and found a Tardis and another immortal companion. And she is herself effectively immortal, since even though she has to die she can live an arbitrarily long time before it happens. It was a total cop-out.") >>>> >>>> [More Spoilers: ](#s "Also, why did the Doctor not use this power on anyone else? He's lost loved ones before. If it was just to say goodbye I could understand, but if the system can be cheated like it was then he can just revive everyone. The implication is that he held onto this loss for trillions of years yet forgot all the others.") >>>> >>>> The only way to redeem the ending in my opinion is to have dire consequences in the next season. >>>>> **u/trekie140** [+2] (22 hours later) >>>>> >>>>> I agree completely, though honestly I'd rather the show move on to something more interesting than continue dwelling on things I didn't enjoy. It'd be better if they turned something bad into something good, but I'm just so tired of the bad that I will take anything as long as it's good. >>>> **u/nerdguy1138** [+1] *GNU Terry Pratchett* (12 days later) >>>> >>>> I had a lot more fun with the show in general, once I realized it absolutely does not ever take itself seriously. >> **u/trekie140** [+7] (7 hours later) >> >> My personal, extreme anti-Clara feelings are that Heaven Sent is good because it doesn't have Clara, while Hell Bent is one huge undeserved love letter to a character and relationship that I never found compelling but kept getting forced down my throat. To me, that kind of made the story pointless even if it was good rationalist fiction. >> >> The only Capaldi episodes I think are *really* worth watching are **Flatlined**, the only episode where I like Clara, and **The Husbands of River Song** for bringing back the fun and creativity I'd missed from Doctor Who while also developing a character and relationship I wanted to see more of. > **u/OutOfNiceUsernames** [+5] *fear of last pages* (a day later) > > Ah, now I remember all the annoying idiosyncrasies that defined the *bad* and stretched-out Doctor Who episodes. > > * kind of a spoiler to recommend it here, but you could also go watch [███████](#s "Triangle (2009)") for a similarly designed stable time loop plot. > * if all the other rooms are resetting, shouldn’t the diamond3000 room be resetting as well? > * if the diamond3000 room *wasn’t* being reset, shouldn’t there have been massive amounts — and even that would be an extreme understatement — of dried blood inside it from all the punch-hard hand injuries? > * if you’re going to chisel your way through a hard surface, may as well target *regular* walls instead of the CGI-ed diamond3000 one. > * since the underwater scenery changes from loop to loop, and the Doctor interacts with this scenery in each default loop iteration, then it shouldn’t’ve really been a stable loop/chain: the skulls would’ve either overflown the water surface (Doctor dies after jumping out the window and the self-sustaining time chain breaks) or changed Doctor’s behaviour largely enough to start changing the default iterations’ flow. Same with determining how much time has passed by the position of the stars: “Two billion years, and this is the Hollywood zombie counting!”. > **u/Soren_Tycho** [+3] *Clothing-optional Spacetime* (6 days later) > > I'm going to take it one notch further and claim that the Whoniverse (yes we really call it that) is if not quite rational, at least hard sci-fi. > > Take as the single handwave element a group that gains access to time-travel tech in a [Malleable History Model](https://qntm.org/models) spacetime, and from this the following inevitable results occur: > > * Said group instantly become capricious demigods by way of modifying their own past. > * Multiple cataclysmic wikipedia-edit-war style conflicts with another time-travel-capable group that rewrite the universe as a whole at random moments. > * Spacetime continuum as a whole under threat on a common basis due to misuse of time-travel tech. > * Causality as a whole becomes sketchy at best. > * 0% probability of major players in any conflict remaining dead once killed > * 0% probability of losing sides in any major conflict remaining defeated permanently > > etc. > **u/TheUtilitaria** [+5] (44 minutes later) > > I forgot to mention there's also a prophecy that the 'hybrid' (which eventually turns out to be the Doctor + Clara) "Will one day stand in the ruins of Gallifrey. It will unravel the Web of Time and destroy a billion billion hearts to heal its own." > > In other words, the Doctor will destroy the world in order to heal his heart, i.e. bring Clara back, something that very nearly happens in Hell Bent. You could almost say he was going to 'Tear apart the stars in heaven' or that he was 'The end of the world'? >> **u/Garudian** [+6] *Dai-Gurren Brigade* (21 hours later) >> >> Does it say he destroys a billion billion hearts? Cause if so he actually does that, it's just that all of them are his own hearts... > **u/IWantUsToMerge** [+4] (4 hours later) > > > foreshadowing (another trope of rationalist fiction). > > Really? It shouldn't be? Reality doesn't announce its attacks in advance. I'm guessing most foreshadowing in rationalist fiction is incontinence. The author knows what's going to happen, cause they've plotted it in advance, sometimes they leak more than they should, can't help themselves. >> **u/None** [+13] (4 hours later) >> >> I'd argue that it's an extension of the fact that reality works by consistent rules. Relativity might have seemed like a shocking swerve, but it was foreshadowed in the orbit of Mercury. >> **u/TheUtilitaria** [+5] (4 hours later) >> >> it helps make sure the plot is actually solvable in advance, so it's an allowable departure from reality. It also proves you were actually thinking ahead when you wrote the story >>> **u/IWantUsToMerge** [+5] (4 hours later) >>> >>> I guess I worry that foreshadowing- providing hints that have no plot reason to be there- goes too far. If it would have been impossible to solve without contrivances, then well they shouldn't be able to solve it. The reader should have no interest in taking explicit clues from god. The author should find a way to work clues in as a natural part of the world. >>>> **u/ZeroNihilist** [+2] (9 hours later) >>>> >>>> I don't think foreshadowing is the right term for it. It's more like pre-revelations. Before a fact about the past or a character is revealed, there are already hints in the story that allow it to be solved. >>>> >>>> An example would be the chapter from Unsong where a drug user gets possessed by something. It features dialogue like "What is your name?" // "KNEEL.", and gives you a hint about the later revelation that Neil Armstrong ("Kneel" Armstrong) became the right hand of God when he fell into heaven. This is especially relevant given Unsong's reliance on pun logic. >> **u/thrawnca** [+2] *Carbon-based biped* (3 days later) >> >> > Reality doesn't announce its attacks in advance >> >> Correct, and it's absolutely fine for works to be [RT]. However, if you want to achieve [RST], then it's helpful to give the audience the ability to solve the puzzle, because that's what helps people *think*. > **u/TheUtilitaria** [+2] (3 minutes later) > > [This is something I've brought up before](https://www.reddit.com/r/HPMOR/comments/3voj8a/watching_the_doctor_who_finale_reminded_me_of/) ---