Doctor Who “Listen” review
Hello! I’m Cariad, and I just watched “Listen”, the latest episode in this eighth season of Doctor Who. Despite a cracking start with “Deep Breath”, the rest of the season has swayed between dull and offensive. Could the show get any worse? Let’s find out!
Synopsis of “Listen”
The Doctor is alone in the TARDIS, pondering aloud why people talk to themselves when they know they’re alone. He thinks about how evolution has perfected hunters and defenders, but why are there no perfect hiders? He posits that if evolution had perfected a creature for hiding, how could we possibly know it exists? He wonders that if such a creature existed, would it ever show itself? What would it want? What would it do? Then he notices written on his blackboard: “LISTEN”.
Meanwhile, Clara and Danny meet in a restaurant for their first date. They talk about the school, teaching, and one of their students. Clara says “I could kill that girl sometimes” and Danny agrees, and Clara adds “coming from you, that probably means something”. They argue over the joke, and Clara walks out of the restaurant.
Back at home, she finds the Doctor waiting for her. He takes her into the TARDIS and shares his theory that everyone is followed by a companion which has perfectly evolved for hiding. He shows Clara his research that shows almost everybody has had the same nightmare; that there’s something underneath their bed, and it grabs their leg when they get up.
He wants to go back to the time Clara first had that nightmare so he can investigate it, so her puts her in telepathic control of the TARDIS. However, her phone rings and distracts her; for a moment, she thinks about Danny in the restaurant.
The TARDIS lands outside a children’s home at night, some time back in the 1990’s. The Doctor believes Clara is inside, so he tells her to wait in the TARDIS while he investigates. However, Clara notices a boy in a window, waving at her. She thinks she recognises him as a young Danny Pink, but he says his name is Rupert — Rupert Pink. He hates the name Rupert though, and wants to change it.
Clara goes up to the boy’s room, who is sitting on the floor because he’s afraid of his bed. Clara gets on the floor and crawls under bed to prove it’s safe, and Rupert follows her. Just as Clara convinces him that there’s nothing to be scared of, the bed creaks and the mattress bows down towards them. They get out from under the bed and see someone — or something — under the covers.
The Doctor arrives, and he believes it’s a creatures evolved to hide and doesn’t want to be seen, so he tells everyone to look away. They close their eyes and promise not to look, and the creature leaves, slamming the door behind it.
To make Rupert feel safe, Clara lines up toy soldiers around his bed, and Rupert names the colonel “Dan”. He asks Clara to read him a story to help him sleep, but the Doctor uses a psychic link to knock him out.
Back in the TARDIS, Clara asks the Doctor if Rupert will remember anything that happened. The Doctor says no; he scrambled Rupert’s memory and gave him a dream about being Dan the soldier. Clara is overcome with emotion and asks the Doctor to do her a favour; to take her back to the restaurant just after she walked out on Danny.
He takes her back, and she walks back into the restaurant to apologise to Danny for insulting him and walking out. They laugh and get along for a while, but then Clara accidentally calls him “Rupert”. He wants to know why she called him by a name he hasn’t used for years, and he gets angry because he thinks she’s pulling a joke on him. While she tries to explain, a man in an astronaut suit walks up from the back of the restaurant — behind Danny’s back — and beckons to Clara to follow him. She stumbles over her words while trying to apologise to Danny, but he walks out. In frustration, Clara runs to the back of the restaurant and follows the astronaut into the TARDIS.
The astronaut takes his helmet off, and he looks like an old Danny — but the Doctor introduces him as Orson Pink, from about a hundred years into Clara’s future. The Doctor found him when Clara’s residual psychic traces guided the TARDIS to him.
The Doctor takes them all to where he found Orson — in a crashed ship on the last planet at the end of the universe. Orson is originally from only a hundred years in Clara’s future, but he was a pioneering time traveller who went too far. The Doctor tells Orson he can take him back to his own time, but he lies and says they have to stay overnight while the TARDIS recharges. Orson is scared about staying overnight, and that’s when the Doctor asks him — if the universe is dead and there’s nothing outside the ship’s door, why is it locked? Orson says the dark isn’t as empty as the Doctor would believe.
Clara helps Orson to bring his bags into the TARDIS, where he’ll sleep overnight. A box falls out of a bag, and Clara looks inside to see “Dan”, the toy soldier she gave to Rupert in the 1990s. Orson says it’s a family heirloom, and he gives it to her.
Outside the TARDIS, Clara and the Doctor wait for whatever was scaring Orson. The ship creaks and moans, and then there’s a loud knock on the locked door. The Doctor unlocks it, and it starts to open. He yells at Clara to get into the TARDIS, while he waits to see what’s outside. She asks if there’s even an atmosphere outside the ship, and the Doctor tells her there’s an artificial atmospheric shell and he’ll be fine.
Inside the TARDIS, Clara and Orson watch the Doctor on a screen. Suddenly, the TARDIS is rocked by the atmospheric shell being breached and the air escaping from the ship. The Doctor has grabbed hold inside the ship to save himself being blown out of the door, and Orson goes out in a pressure suit to rescue him.
Back inside the TARDIS, the Doctor is unconscious and the TARDIS is still being buffeted. The cloister bell rings, and Clara recognises it as a warning of danger, so she uses the psychic link to beg the TARDIS to leave.
The TARDIS takes off, and lands in a barn at night. Clara goes out alone to investigate. She hears sobbing, and follows it to see a boy lying in a bed, crying under the covers. She tries calling him Rupert and Orson, but he doesn’t respond. She hears the door to the barn creak open, so she dives under the bed to hide.
A man and a women enter the barn, talking about the boy. The man asks why he cries so much, and tells the woman that there’ll be no crying in the army. She reminds the man that the boy doesn’t want to join the army, but the man retorts by saying the boy will never make it into the Academy, and he couldn’t ever be a Time Lord. In shock, Clara realises who the boy is sobbing in the bed above her.
Clara hears the Doctor calling for her from within the TARDIS. She realises it’s visible from the bed and she doesn’t want the boy to see it; when he gets out of the bed and stands up, she reacts by reaching out from under the bed and grabbing his leg, just like in the Doctor’s nightmare.
She talks him back into bed, and talks to calm him; telling him it’s okay to be scared. She leaves “Dan” the soldier toy with him, and returns to the TARDIS.
The Good
WOW!
This episode was great! Great writing, great pacing, just enough humour and a bucket-load of creepy. I’m putting “Listen” on a par with “Silence in the Library”!
The Interesting
The Doctor has been to the end of the universe before, to the planet Malcassairo in the episode “Utopia”. Malcassairo was described as one of the last planets, but the planet in this episode is the last.
In the news broadcast about Orson Pink, he’s quoted as saying “Time travel is in my blood.” If he’s a descendant of Danny and Clara then yes, time travel is definitely in his blood!
When Clara starts whispering to the Doctor as a child, her first word is “Listen”. That’s the word which the Doctor sees written on his blackboard, and he also hears it whispered to him during the episode.
We don’t see outside of the barn in this episode, but it’s filled with hay and feels well-used. In “The Day of the Doctor” we saw that same barn standing in a scorched, barren wasteland, which demonstrates the toll Gallifrey paid in the Time War.
Is Clara correct, and there aren’t any “monsters” in this episode? She points out that the word “LISTEN” on the blackboard was written in the Doctor’s handwriting, so perhaps he was having a flashback to the moment of his panic as a boy when Clara told him to “listen” to calm him down? Was the “creature” under the bedsheets really just another kid in the home, as the Doctor suggested it could’ve been? Was the door of the timeship simply opening itself under pressure, also as he suggested it could be? Was the shared nightmare of “the hand under the bed” being psychically broadcast from the Doctor to the rest of humanity? A few times in the episode, people do say that “you can hear dreams” — so are all of these people “hearing” the Doctor’s dream? Was there actually anything paranormal in this episode, or was the Doctor really just running from his fear of the dark?
The Bad
So, Clara’s phone rang and distracted her while she was flying the TARDIS. The distraction obviously had an effect, since they ended up in the wrong place and time, so they must’ve been in the time vortex when the call came through. But if they were in the time vortex, how could the call have got through? I know the Doctor modified Rose’s phone so she could call her mum from the distant future, but did he ever do that to Clara’s phone? And when Clara overlaps her timestream by returning to the restaurant right after her past-self leaves it, does that mean her phone calls are time-shifted too? If Danny called her phone while two Claras exist in the same timestream, which one would ring? Both of them? Or the one in its “proper” timestream? Would future-Clara’s phone have rung in the past, if not now? Would it be in the call history already, before the call was made? Am I thinking about this too much? Is internal consistency too much to ask for?
If the creature in Rupert’s bedroom didn’t want to be seen, why did it go under the bed covers and make itself obvious? It wasn’t forced or trapped in the bedroom, so it had the choice to leave the room. And if it’s a creature “evolved for hiding” as the Doctor proposed, wouldn’t it have a natural ability to hide in the dark, or something like that?
But you know what? I really had to stretch to write those complaints. It was a great story!
The Ugly
What the hell does Danny see in Clara? She’s so prejudiced against him for his military career, and so selfish and insensitive for cracking jokes at his expense, making him out to be a murderer and mocking his humanitarian work, I don’t understand how he could possibly enjoy her company. In fact, I assume her school has a policy of non-discrimination — does it apply to discrimination against veteran status? By cracking all of these jokes and remarks, isn’t she in almost-constant violation of her school’s code of conduct? Hell, why should we even defer to her employer’s code of conduct? Why doesn’t her own sense of morality and decency ever kick in and treat him with respect?
What the hell does Clara see in Danny? She obviously has no respect for him, and she doesn’t treat him with any kind of love. So why does she want to be with him? Are her relationships just power-plays? Is he just a target for her to insult, and he’s somehow so infatuated that he allows her to do it? Is this Amy and Rory all over again? Urgh.
And right after Clara insults Danny, who rightly retorts and defends himself, why is she the one who gets angry and leaves? Why do we see Danny bang his head on the table, as if he blames himself? In fact, he obviously blames himself! He’s the one who calls her, trying to win her back. He’s hurt and offended, but he’s setting it aside because he… loves her? But why? It’s just utterly unbelievable.
Here’s a list of ways the Doctor could’ve found Clara:
- Call her, ask where she is, gone to pick her up.
- Gone to her home, rung the doorbell and waited outside.
Here are some slightly creepier ways he could’ve found her:
- Let himself into her home and waited in the living room.
- Let himself into her home and waited in the kitchen.
Here’s the absolute creepiest way he could’ve found her:
- Let himself into her home and waited in her bedroom.
OH MY GOD that’s super creepy! What sort of horrible message does that send out? “The Doctor is a strong, confident hero, and it’s okay to break into women’s bedrooms if you want to!”
As much as I loved this story, Doctor Who still has a problem with demonstrating respect between people, and truly loving relationships. I’m scared that kids are going to look up to these characters as heroes and just end up making themselves and other people miserable.
In Conclusion
…this was the best episode of the season so far!
It was more-or-less consistent with the rest of the show, it had great pacing, it was an exciting story, and it was super-clever to not really have any monsters in it!
I loved, loved, loved seeing the Doctor as a child, and seeing that same barn from “The Day of the Doctor”. I wish that Moffat celebrated Russell T Davies’s episodes as much as he celebrates his own, but I’ll take this. I love when Doctor Who is self-referential and builds up pieces of a character’s backstory.
Dear BBC — more like this, please!
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