The Bells of St John, starring Matt Smith and Jenna Coleman as the Eleventh Doctor and Clara Oswald respectively, has lots of exciting, bombastic moments that I adore, chief amongst these being the sequence on the airplane where the Doctor and Clara quickly relocate via TARDIS to a plane that’s plummeting to the ground and pull it up just in time. But people already love that bit, right? We’re looking for underrated moments that are often forgotten but add so much to the episode. And that’s the last scene with Miss Kizlet.
The Great Intelligence’s plan has been thwarted (albeit, it feels, temporarily, as the Intelligence doesn’t seem particularly gutted that it’s all gone wrong), and UNIT has invaded the Shard to shut down operations completely. The Intelligence recognises UNIT as “very old friends” of the Doctor, and is still triumphant as he’s feasted on many minds. Now, he tells his puppet, Miss Kizlet, it’s time for her to reduce. The next we see of her, she’s sat on the floor, innocently looking around as if she’s a child. That’s because she is.
“Where are my mummy and daddy?” she asks the UNIT soldiers. “They said they wouldn’t be long. Are they coming back?”
Celia Imrie delivers this in such a beautiful way. It’s quiet and lonely and utterly heart-breaking. The realisation that the Great Intelligence has wrecked this poor woman’s life, literally taking her over as a child and moulding her in his own image, manipulating her every single day since so that she’s left with nothing… Oh, it’s so deeply affecting. And it’s written so wonderfully because it’s just skipped over. It’s one tiny scene in an otherwise loud episode, but you understand the implications straight away.
And it shows how harsh the Doctor is too. His actions have consequences, yet he doesn’t stick around long enough to see them. He’s not responsible for Miss Kizlet missing out on life, no, but he moves on too quickly, perhaps can’t bode on what happens to the people whose lives he affects, and maybe sees things in black and white terms sometimes.
So rush off with Clara in the TARDIS. This poor woman’s life has been flittered away, a whim to the Intelligence. The universe is big and brilliant and enticing, but at its heart, Doctor Who can show us that small intimate moments mean just as much.
