Are we ever really alone? What’s hiding under the bed? Rabid with curiosity, the Doctor pulls Clara into an investigation that goes back and forth in time to get to the bottom of an age-old human fear.
Steven Moffat’s latest offering serves as a greatest-hits tour of the writer’s most (in)famous tropes, as well as a meditative character study that gets right to the core of the Doctor’s motivations.
Bursting at the seams with interesting ideas, ‘Listen’ is a fascinating episode which overreaches itself, failing to bring coherence or purpose to everything it wants to say.
At its core is the symbiotic relationship between the Doctor – a predator hunting for answers – and Clara – the human soul that reins him in.
It’s a far better narrative crux than Clara’s date with Danny Pink (Samuel Anderson), which recurs throughout the episode, demonstrating little more than rote dialogue and a dearth of chemistry.
The first act explores childhood fears of monsters under the bed through the eyes of a young Danny (Remi Gooding). When a mysterious figure appears under his sheets, a sequence of effective, if familiar, suspense (think Weeping Angels) follows.
The meat of the scene lies in the interplay between Clara and the Doctor’s differing approaches to the problem – Clara’s gentle reassurance and the Doctor’s scientific accuracy – complementing each other to teach Danny the value of fear.
It’s a nice touch that the supposed ‘monster’ is superfluous to the scene. It’s really about young Danny embracing and accepting his primal fear to find strength – which turns out to be the episode’s thematic through-line.
More adult fears of loneliness emerge when they discover Danny’s descendant Orson trapped alone at the end of the universe. Orson has locked the door on his fears, but his desperation tempts him to let them in.
The Doctor’s own desperate need for answers leads him to open the door, hoping to come face-to-face with the monsters he seeks. As Clara warned him, it brings no good, as the oxygen is ripped from the room and he barely gets out alive.
The final segment is both the most intimate, and the most ambitious, when the TARDIS lands in a mysterious barn and Clara discovers a very young Doctor crying in fear of the dark – his hungry inquisitiveness all stems back to his own childhood.
As Clara comforts the child and tells him to embrace his fear and turn it into kindness and bravery, everything Moffat has ever wanted to say about Doctor Who coalesces around this touching scene.
The Doctor goes chasing the monsters to prove that his terror is real – that there is something to fear. Sometimes there isn’t. It’s ok to be afraid of imaginary monsters because fear is strength.
It’s a shame ‘Listen’ is so often shapeless, because at its core is a rich and satisfying look at how fear often makes us (and the Doctor) the best we can be.
