Doctor Who review episode 4. in Rambling sane thoughts of the terminally me

Ok. So, Doctor Who. This episode has received rave reviews and I’d love to say I agreed with them. So I will. Thanks Steven for making an episode this season which didn’t suck. Took you four episodes in but you got there.

I shouldn’t be mean, I’m a massive Moffat fan and this is the episode of the season I was waiting for him to write. It had the correct horror overtones from “Don’t Blink” and quite a lot of “Ow, right in the feels” moments.

So, let’s see what it’s all about and then I’ll answer the question you were all asking: Was there actually a monster in this episode? Oh, don’t forget…

Let’s start at the beginning of the episode.

The Doctor is stood in the TARDIS talking to himself. He’s got a theory that there’s a creature who is perfect at hiding. He wonders what such a creature would spend it’s time doing and then notices the word “Listening” has been written on his blackboard.

Now just to pause for the moment. As I say, I love this episode, just want to set up my credentials here but this continues to lend credence to my “The Doctor has Space Alzeimers” theory. That species already exists. It’s called the FRICKING SILENCE.

Really. It’s only a minor bug bear but it throws the logic of the episode out. Perfect hiding creature. He even uses the whole “out the corner of your eye/ under your bed” lines in this episode. Same as he did when describing how long the Silence had been on Earth. Maybe it’s deliberate.

Anyhow.

Meanwhile Clara is finally meeting up with Danny for their date. Apparently they’ve both been taking dating lessons from me. They completely manage to misunderstand each other and Danny takes offence at Clara’s joke about him being a soldier/ killer whilst she takes offence at him judging her. They’re both stupid.

The date fails and Clara goes home and finds the Doctor waiting for her. They’re off on another adventure as the Doctor explains his theory to Clara. He plugs her into the TARDIS telepathic circuits via the new glop interface and away they go to find the moment when Clara first dreamed there was something under her bed.

Ok, rants number 2 and 3. Firstly, does anyone remember the amount of effort Rose had to go to in order to communicate with the TARDIS directly? And what about the last time the Doctor plugged Clara into the Telepathic circuits. When did he suddenly get the glop interface? I have no problem with it, I just want to know where it came from? Did the TARDIS just get bored of being ignored all the time so it made itself a telepathic terminal? What does this mean for other people wanting to pilot that TARDIS now?

In addition and, once again, it’s a small thing but if you were a species who’d evolved to be the perfect hider why the hell would it be hiding under your bed. It could be standing right in front of you and you’d never see it. Or you would see it and then you’d forget the instant you looked away. Y’know, cause it’d be memory proof. Like the Frickin’ SILENCE!

The episode is even called listen. Sound vs SILENCE.
Ok, rant over.

So Clara is concentrating on her dream of monsters under the bed when Danny calls her and distracts her. The combination of these two thoughts means the TARDIS actually materialises the evening that Danny first had the dream.

It’s another Doctor companion who meets their future boyfriend back when he was a kid! Poor old Mickey the idiot.

The Doctor and Clara discover that at this point in history Danny (Or Rupert as he was called when he was a kid) is in a boys home and is afraid of something under the bed. They go check and there’s nothing there but upon emerging they discover there’s a creature hidden beneath the blanket of the bed. It may be a monster or just a child but the Doctor basically tell them to ignore it because it might get angry if they nick it’s blanket. Or something.

I think the idea here is meant to be that if you’re the perfect hiding creature you might get a little miffed if someone spots you but the damn thing jumped on the bed and hid under the kids blanket, knowing full well there was someone else in the room.

Incidentally the writing in this scene is wonderful. I love the Doctor referencing fear as a super power and it’s kind of the first time you see 12 trying on empathy for size. Turns out he’s good at it but only for short periods of time.

The “monster” leaves and the Doctor wipes Ruperts memory, leaving him only with a dream of being “Dan the soldier man”. Thus creating his entire time line for him. Armed with a new found feeling of empathy for Danny, probably because she’s experienced first hand what happens when the Doctor dicks around with your time line, Clara asks to be taken back to the restaurant and her date with Danny, presumably so she can get it right this time round.

The course of true love ne’er did run smooth however as Clara lets slip during the date that she knows Dannys true name is Rupert. Something he never told her. He works out she’s lying to him and gets annoyed and accuses her of mocking him.

Sadly, Danny is not coming across as a sympathetic character to me. I know he’s meant to have PTSD but still he just seems like he just likes to be in an argument way too much.

Clara tries to repair the situation but a man dressed up in a space suit appears and Danny leaves. Guess he’s offended by space men. Which is a shame because the space man turns out not to be the Doctor but someone who looks identical to Danny except with super afro. Turns out he’s called Orson Pink and is Clara’s great grandson.

At this point I couldn’t help but reference Red Dwarf.

“This is the first time I’ve been seduced by predeterminism theory.”

Turns out Orson is a Time Traveller too. Man kinds first Time Traveller who’s got stuck at the end of time. Every night things come and bang on his Door. The Doctor thinks these may be the hiding monsters and takes them back to Orsons ship before telling Clara to wait for him in the TARDIS so he can see what’s out there.

As it transpires, what’s out there is a whole lot of vacuum as the Doctor opens the door to the ship and nearly gets sucked out. Orson gets back in his Space suit and saves him and then they go to leave but before they get the chance there’s a banging on the TARDIS door as if something is outside. The Cloister bell (which regular geeks will know is the TARDIS’ everying is fucked up alarm) goes off and Clara uses the telepathic circuits to fly the TARDIS.

Wasn’t there a whole episode where the Doctor tries to teach Clara how to fly the TARDIS? ”Journey to the centre of the TARDIS” I think it was called. Clearly all they needed was the glop interface.

Anyhow, this time Clara is thinking about the scary monsters and the Doctor so guess whose personal time line they end up in. Yup.

Imagine being the kid who got to play the Doctors legs. Ha!

Anyhow, they end up in a barn back on Gallofrey and Clara ends up hiding under the bed as the Doctors parents (we presume) come in and basically call him a wuss. As the young Doctor tries to climb out of bed Clara instinctively grabs his leg from underneath the bed referencing the dream that caused the Doctor to develop his theory about super hidey space monsters in the first place. She tells him it’s just a dream and that’s it’s ok to be scared because it gives him super powers. She also makes reference to the Doctor returning to the barn in a time of fear and we get a shot of “The Day of the Doctor”.

Now I think this is a stretch as plot points go. The Doctor was born and raised on the Lungbarrow estate on Gallifrey which is presumably where the barn is, unless he’s a highly energetic child. If he was going to go home to set off “The Moment” in “Day of the Doctor” then the place has been badly damaged in his absence.

More likely explanation? Someone pointed out to Moffat that Gallifrey is time locked so they can’t go there to talk to the Doctor but he’s got the out that “The Moment” lets them through in “The Days of the Doctor” so he thought he’d reuse the same loop hope. Can’t blame him for that.

Anyways, obviously we can’t have the Doctor interacting with his own time line. Er…. again. So Clara tells the Doctor they’ve got to go and he can’t see what was out there, so he doesn’t know she was the monster under the bed and the time line stays nice and wibbly wobbly.

The Doctor returns Clara to her own time and goes about his way, leaving her to hook up with Danny at the end of the episode.

Yeah. I liked this episode. Even including the little niggles I’ve already written about, I think it does a good job of creating a bit of fear of what would actually still scare the Doctor. Turns out the answer is a resounding “nothing”.

Was there a monster? No. There should be for one reason but there isn’t. The episode is meant to be a clever portrayal of what the man who pokes things that doesn’t fit with a stick will poke when there’s nothing to do. It works. It works really well.

Why should the monster exist? Because the cloister bell went off. The TARDIS only does that when there’s a major threat. We know the ship is pretty much impregnable so whatever spooked it to the extent it would actually take orders from Clara would have to be pretty major. We can re-write that easily enough. The Cloister bell went off because they were right at the end of time itself and unbeknown to Clara it was running out of Artron energy to keep it going at which point they’d have been in serious trouble. There we go.

So yeah, beautifully written, expertly acted and with some choice scary moments. I’d be flipping a coin to choose which I preferred between this and “Robots of Sherwood” because they’re so tonally different. I think I’d say that Robots is the best “Classic Who” feel episode I’ve seen in a while and “Listen” is definitely the best “New Who” feel episode we’ve had in a while.

Later kiddies.

Rambleramble Youshouldkillusallonsightramble.