I originally wrote the following – a review of the 2014 Doctor Who episode “Listen” – some months ago for the Doctor Who fan-run magazine Enlightenment. However it was never published, as after 30+ years (second only to the official ‘Doctor Who Magazine’ itself), the publication is now on indefinite hiatus. I’ve been very proud to be associated with Enlightenment over the past few years, contributing various episode reviews and opinion pieces, and hope to see it back again soon.
In the meantime, rather than have this piece sitting unread on a shelf in cyberspace, I decided to post it here.
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DOCTOR WHO: Listen
Starring: Peter Capaldi, Jenna-Louise Coleman, Samuel Anderson
Written By: Steven Moffat
Directed by: Douglas Mackinnon
Broadcast Date: 13 September, 2014
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“Listen.”
From his perch atop the TARDIS, high above the Earth, the Doctor issues a command. And listen, we do. Like a professor giving a lecture, he delivers a burst of exposition to explain the premise of the episode - his theory of “perfect hiding”. He doesn't quite break the fourth wall, but it's close enough that we are instantly drawn in, focussed on what he says, eager to find out more.
Add the visuals of him observing life & death on an African plain, or facing down a fish underwater - and it becomes one of the most interesting WHO openings in recent history. And once Clara is retrieved, the Doctor continues:
"I think everybody, at some point in their lives, has the exact same nightmare: you wake up - or you think you do - and there's someone in the dark, someone close. Or you think there might be. So you sit up, and you turn on the light; and the room looks different at night. It ticks, it creaks, it breathes; and you tell yourself there's nobody there, nobody watching, nobody listening...nobody there at all. And you very nearly believe it. You really, really try. And then... (on-screen, a hand reaches out from under the bed & grabs an ankle)."
I don’t know about you, but that’s when it had me. Child or adult, we all have things that terrify us, secretly or maybe not so much; even at my age I can't comfortably go to sleep with the closet door open. As the Doctor says, there's not a man, woman or child on the planet - or beyond - who can't relate to some version of that dream. Only a few minutes into the episode, and I’ve already been grabbed (quite literally!) by the need to find out what it means. And yes, I’m also feeling the fear; that “prickling at the back of your neck”. After all, even though it’s fiction, ‘just a TV show’ - the possibility of maybe...just maybe...getting some kind of explanation for a fear deep-rooted in humanity as long as we’ve been around - well, it’s certainly intriguing. If nothing else, a brilliant way to draw in the audience from the start. Kudos also have to go to Peter Capaldi for making it work - his delivery of Steven Moffat’s words was flawless, and exactly in keeping with what we had learned so far about this Doctor.
Forget for a moment any complaints about Steven Moffat bloating DOCTOR WHO with over-convoluted, unresolved stories. Listen is a return to what he does best: a (more-or-less) stand-alone story that highlights some form of fear – fear of the unknown, or perhaps of common things not behaving as they ‘should’. Fear of shadows, what lurks in the dark, fear of that ‘thing’ under the bed…or in my closet. What’s great about this episode is that it isn't necessarily an alien threat, or technology gone wrong, or some maniacal person trying to take over the world; this ‘enemy’ is simple fear, arguably more dangerous throughout the history of humanity than all the other things put together.
Moffat has called it ‘Perfect Hiding’. And it kind of makes sense. Not only is it a fascinating theory, but the idea of a creature - an undetectable SOMETHING - with us all the time is absolutely terrifying, if you come right down to it. Assuming for a moment that it's actually possible (because...well...because nothing’s impossible, at least in the DOCTOR WHO world, and besides, there’s no proof it’s not), maybe it explains why your keys are never where you know you left them? Or how about ‘invisible friends’? The Doctor says the creature might only be seen by the very old and very young; so maybe some children detect this presence and turn their fright into something positive that they can accept. Perhaps that's all the presence really wants...perhaps it's not threatening after all, just lonely.
On the other hand, the Doctor also says that maybe the reason we talk out loud with nobody there, is because subconsciously we know someone IS there. Well, I talk to myself on occasion...so the idea that I'm actually talking to someone - or some thing - is somehow equally appealing (“See Mum, I’m not crazy!”), and frightening (“Yep okay, then there is something in my closet and I’m sleeping in the living room tonight. With the TV on.”)
Anyway…
Not only did Listen draw on the best of Moffat, there were also elements that had heavy reminders of non-Moffat episodes. For example, two from Russell T Davies: Midnight (in my opinion still one of the best of the new series), and Utopia. I felt a definite parallel to Midnight, with the noises and knocking from outside Orson’s spaceship when there's supposedly nothing there, and of course the unease that episode engendered. And then, that place; the "end of the road", "the end of everything" as the Doctor called it. Was it purposely the same place the Tenth Doctor, Martha & Jack went to in Utopia? Both times the TARDIS wasn't supposed to go that far...
This was also the second time DW made me dread mirrors. Paul Cornell’s Family of Blood has had me thinking I see something out of the corner of my eye for several years, and now Listen has managed to make the apprehension worse - by having the Doctor recite an almost identical line from a creepy little nursery rhyme "What's that, in the mirror, out of the corner of your eye...”Thanks Steven. Thanks a lot.
With regard to the rest of the storyline, Listen was the proper start of the Clara/Danny season arc. Seeing the beginning of their relationship was interesting. While rewatching the episode to write this review, I was reminded of my initial feelings about Danny and what made me curious and want to see more of him (I would regret that later in the series). And at this point, I was starting to like Clara again, I hadn’t been overly thrilled during her time with Matt Smith, except for The Snowmen & Asylum of the Daleks - neither of which were this Clara. But, I’d enjoyed her previous few episodes with Peter Capaldi, and was keeping an open mind. I empathised with her attempts to connect with Danny at dinner, and found it interesting that she was trying very hard to keep her ‘real’ life secret from the Doctor. Was it just because she was still learning to trust him? Did she feel guilty, or even think he’d be jealous? I had a theory that Danny was not all as he seemed, and although now we know what his secret was, back then I thought perhaps he was an alien soldier villain - planted (perhaps unknowingly) on Earth to get to the Doctor through Clara - in a storyline somehow related to this Doctor’s obvious dislike for soldiers. The way he was trying so hard to win Clara over one minute, then being extremely unlikeable and accusatory the next, was, I thought, suspicious and cruel.
However, Danny’s past and future selves - the child Rupert and his descendant Orson, were both well-executed, likeable characters. As was Clara in how she interacted with them both, and with the Doctor throughout the episode. Yes, I said it. I liked Clara.
The scenes with Rupert were very well thought out - especially when he and Clara were hiding under the bed and the 'presence' was suddenly ON the bed. Brilliant turnaround of an age-old fear, and quite simply - terrifying.
The same was true when Clara, Rupert and the Doctor are standing in front of the window, refusing to turn around to look at the ‘thing’ now looming behind them...and then the bedspread slips off. I honestly have trouble watching that. We can’t quite see it, they can’t quite see it - but there IS something there; something not...quite...human. (And as if I wasn’t already creeped out enough at this point, Moffat just had to add more to my mirror-phobia with lines like "Don't look at the reflection," and "...the thing that must never be seen".)
At first I was surprised the Doctor seemed just as disconcerted as Clara and Rupert - he didn’t stand his ground or turn around and face the creature; pull the bedspread off and see what was there. And yet later on in Orson’s ship, that’s exactly what he wanted to do. I think the answer came at the end, when Clara finds herself in the barn, soothing the Doctor as a boy. At that moment - and with the flashbacks to the War Doctor and events from Day of the Doctor - we realise that in trying to help him, she is/was the one actually who implanted the fear - the dream - in the Doctor’s psyche. It was her hand that gripped his ankle, her voice that told him “fear is a super-power” - almost the same words he’d tell Rupert, all those many years later. I was not initially sure why the TARDIS would take them back to the Doctor’s past, when it was Clara ‘plugged in’ to the interface...but I suppose it was her past or her future too, in a paradoxical way.
Of course, this all feeds back into last season’s arc (which I abhorred) of Clara being the ‘Impossible Girl’; present in some way in every part of every Doctor’s life. So I shouldn’t have liked that scene...but I did. It worked for this episode. As long as Moffat isn’t trying to say that the dream somehow became pervasive throughout the universe because of the Doctor - making Clara ultimately the one responsible for that fear in every one of us - I’m good with it.
However I do have an issue with Clara leaving the gunless soldier toy with the boy-Doctor. If the Doctor had it as a child a thousand years ago, it’s a bit coincidental that it ended up at the orphanage where Rupert lived. I know...timey-wimey…
It was also a pity that The Doctor never got a chance to say what - if anything - he saw, even cryptically. Clara shut him down. Perhaps that’s just the scared child in me, still wanting that explanation but unwilling to admit there isn’t one.
Later in the season, in In the Forest of the Night, the Doctor says "the forest is in all the stories that kept you awake at night; the forest is mankind's nightmare". Upon hearing this, I was instantly brought back to Listen and my first thought was “...make up your mind what the ever-pervasive nightmare is, please!”
I know different writers were involved, but that’s precisely the sort of thing the showrunner should have caught, in my opinion. An entire episode was dedicated to the single nightmare that supposedly unites everyone, and yet a few episodes later - something else is the culprit.
Of course, that’s not a criticism of Listen, at all. I felt this episode was one of the bright spots in a rather unremarkable season. In fact, I’d put this up against almost any of the episodes in the new era - compelling story, good character development (especially for our still-new Doctor) and excellent performances all around. It was an absolute pleasure to watch...even if it again has me seeing things and hearing noises that really aren’t there.
Probably.
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