Breaking The Wall | Heaven Sent | Doctor Who

Taken from Doctor Who Series Nine, Episode Eleven - Heaven Sent.

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[staniel]

“There’s this emperor, and he asks the shepherd’s boy how many seconds in eternity. And the shepherd’s boy says, ‘There’s this mountain of pure diamond. It takes an hour to climb it and an hour to go around it, and every hundred years a little bird comes and sharpens its beak on the diamond mountain. And when the entire mountain is chiseled away, the first second of eternity will have passed.’ You may think that’s a hell of a long time. Personally, I think that’s a hell of a bird.”

[rodolfobevione]

"How many seconds in eternity? And the shepherd boy says

[xedalpha]

Capaldi was so good he held an episode all by himself. He was so good the entire rest of the cast was OPTIONAL when he was around. The man is pure, distilled gravitas.

[jgrado]

This is what makes Peter Capaldi’s Twelve stand out above the rest: an entire episode imprisoned in isolation functioning as one extra long soliloquy culminating in the Doctor literally punching his way to freedom.

[s]

A moment of silence for the second last doctor. He was one punch away :(

[georgerogers]

So... does anybody else find it amazing that they managed to make an episode where they kill our favorite character millions of times, and still fill the episode with hope and a kind of subdued optimism?

[jessecooper]

If I didn't know better, I'd say this show's been going for 60 years.

You must think that's a hell of a long time

Personaly, I think that's a hell of a show!

[samuelfawell]

I remember the first time I saw this, and the moment of “oh no it’s a loop”, and the raw power of Peters Speech, of dying over, over, over again just to reach the end and get his friend back.

It really was a raw exposure of WHO the Doctor is, the one who will face the danger, face the abyss, will face the monsters and not back down, will not flee or break, will face a pile of diamond blocking the way out, not with depression or fear but a determined anger of a refusal to break.

That is who the doctor is, not someone who just.. sits down and waits to die, not someone who lets grief over come them, but the person who is told “you can’t do this” and replies with “watch me”

[SheldonAdama]

Rory Williams: I guarded my girlfriend for 2000 years!
Twelfth Doctor: Hold my beer.

[StupidJedi]

He went through all that just to tell us to subscribe?!?

[Timeworks]

Everything about this episode is perfect: writing, directing, acting, music - EVERYTHING. This is forever my favourite work of film/television out of anything else... and ofc, my favourite Doctor.

[TheCountZopolai]

OK, so, I worked this out while trying to get some sleep a day or two ago.

A mountain is usually a roughly conical shape, with a circular base.

A comfortable hiking pace is around 4kmh, assuming reasonable fitness and terrain.

So if it takes 1h to go around it, the circumference must be roughly 4km.

Lets assume that the summit of the mountain is roughly in the centre of that conical shape. This makes it around c.630 meters away in a horizontal line (Radius= Circumference/2π)

Normally this would take c.10 minutes to walk; but, of course, it takes an hour to climb it.

Hikers often recon an extra minute for roughly every 10m you climb, so given that there are around 50 extra minutes to account for, the mountain must be roughly 500m tall from its base.

Long story short, the volume of the mountain would be around 200, 000 m3.

Assuming- say- that the bird removes 1mm3 every hundred years, it would have to return roughly 200 trillion times.

The mountain would therefore be chisled away in roughly 20 quadrillion years (i.e. 20, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000 years) which is in the order of 1.5 million times the age of the universe.

[jamespoole]

It would be a bit awkward if the doctor finished his speech before he got to the end of the wall

[BladeV]

What I love about this - beyond the genius of the concept & plotting - is that you can hear Capaldi get more emotional each time the loop resets. It peaks around the 2 million years mark, as if he's realising the futility of his task and perhaps thinking of quitting. Then he slowly gets more cocky & self-assured as he goes further and can see the dent he's making in the wall. That's a) incredible attention to detail and b) incredibly perceptive from Capaldi to pick up on it in the script.

[theillusionist]

That yell of pure determination at 2:54 has resonated in my brain for seven years. What a character, what a scene, what a performance. 12/10.

[androidaxolotl]

If I didn't know better, I'd say I'd watched this scene 50 times already.

[TheGaroStudios]

*The Greatest scene* mankind has ever seen with *The one of the greatest musics* Murray Gold has ever produced...

[nutellablop]

I love how despite his eternity of hell, he takes the time to carve out a perfectly rectangular hallway instead of a more efficient circular shape to crawl through. Were there iterations that simply punched upwards just to get the aesthetics right?

[stevensposito]

Nearly four years later and I can safely say this was what solidified Capaldi as MY Doctor. He braved the same deadly outcome for billions of years. Upon finally meeting the success of his persistence he ended the quote by saying “Personally, I think that’s one hell of a bird”. He stayed true to his commitment of seeing Clara again, if even for just a brief time. He endured hell for his companion. This man who was dubbed as “dark and gritty” in the beginning of his series became one of the most earnest, heartwarming, and strongest interpretations of the Doctor I had ever seen. Props to Peter Capaldi in every regard. 👏

[RivenRaven]

I have chronic illness and am a single mom living in poverty. I also have clinical depression. And I stay here and fight for my daughter. She is my reason for being A. Hell. Of. A. Bird.