Doctor Who Recap: Listen

By Edwin Davies

September 23, 2014

Doctor Zen, Zen Doctor.

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"Did we come to the end of the Universe because of a nursery rhyme?" - Clara

That line may be the perfect summation of the appeal and driving force behind Doctor Who in general, and the Steven Moffat era in particular. The Doctor is a protector and something of a superhero, but he's also an explorer. He's someone who has access to a time machine and has the entirety of existence at his disposal, and he has to make the most of it. In "Listen", the first out-and-out great Capaldi episode (and an episode that already seems destined to be canonised alongside "Blink" and "The Girl in the Fireplace" as a modern classic), Doctor Who explores that adventurous spirit, and how far The Doctor's inquisitiveness will take him, even if all that's driving him is a nursery rhyme and a general feeling of unease.

It also doubles up as the apotheosis of Steven Moffat's interest in telling stories that draw on universal, often childlike fears. The aforementioned "Blink" works so well because it plays with the inherent creepiness of statues, and the sense of dread that most people experience when walking past one and convincing themselves, however briefly, that carved stone might have moved. "The Eleventh Hour", the first episode that aired under Moffat's stewardship, made similarly unnerving hay out of a common sensation; the idea that something is moving at the corner of your eye, only for it to disappear as soon as you look. "Listen" feels like a natural endpoint for his interest in these kind of stories, since he's moved beyond creatures that can only move if people aren't looking directly at them, to one that can't be seen at all.




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At least, that's what it seems to be about. The Doctor, in what looks like a moment of profound boredom, becomes obsessed with a dream that he and many others have had at one point in their lives, of waking up in the middle of the night and discovering that there might be something hiding under the bed. The Doctor has started to wonder if it's actually the work of some unseen entity, a creature who has evolved to be the very best at hiding, and whose clandestine presence is what causes people to talk to themselves when they're alone. Clara's dubious about The Doctor's theory, and assumes that he has just spent too much time on his own, but she agrees to let him hook her up to the TARDIS so that they can access her memories of experiencing the dream, hoping to track down its origin and investigate further. They end up finding no real creature, but the episode does reveal a lot of information about The Doctor's past and Clara's future, all the while offering some impressively atmospheric scares.

If the intention of Doctor Who this year is to use each episode to offer a spin on a pre-existing trope or story type, then "Listen" may be their most unusual choice yet. At times it feels like a tribute to The X-Files, right down to the idea of having the female half of the partnership play the skeptic (even though they have plenty of proof that there's some weird shit out there), while at other times it seems to be nodding towards the metaphysical science fiction of Solaris and Stalker. There's no concrete antagonist to focus on, just a familiar moment of terror. Even the times when it seems like they have discovered what is behind the shared dreams are riddled with ambiguity. When The Doctor, Clara and Orson Pink, humankind's first time traveler (if you discount Homer Simpson and Peabody and Sherman) - also who may or may not, but probably may, be a descendant of Clara and Danny - are sitting in a small chamber at the very end of the universe and something starts knocking on the door, it could be the monster under the bed coming to say "hi," or it could be something utterly mundane.


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