Listen Review
Clint Hassell gives his verdict on the fourth episode of Series 8.
From the beginning, “Listen” utilizes unconventional storytelling methods to capture the audience’s attention. The Doctor’s fourth wall-breaking lecture about “perfect hiding” is incredibly thought-provoking (though scientifically inaccurate), and presents something so non-standard, that the viewer has no choice but to pay attention. “Listen” isn’t just the title of the episode, it’s a command – the show has something important to say.
The episode continues to defy expectations, with its first act told in non-linear fashion, much like the previous “Into the Dalek.” While Doctor Who is a series about time travel, the narrative is usually fairly straight-forward, with flashbacks reserved for showing causal relationships between events. Here, the shifting time frames focus less on plot – Clara and Danny have their first date – and more on illuminating Clara’s emotional state.
The melancholic music underscoring Clara and Danny’s dinner is wistful, pensive, and a little restrained, and pairs perfectly with the scene. Great scores run unnoticed, subtly shading the emotional aspects of a scene. Murray Gold often uses familiar leitmotifs to denote action – a specific character’s arrival, for instance – but here, Gold’s score denotes connotation, and it’s beautiful.
More impressively, as Clara arrives at the end of the universe, the soundtrack is completely silent for two full minutes, reinforcing the lonely stillness Orson must’ve felt. Later, as the Doctor and Clara wait for night to fall, the scene again falls silent, the “score” being composed solely of the clanging of the “ship’s cooling hull” and the hiss of “atmospheric pressures equalizing,” unearthly sounds easily reimagined as terrifying monsters, just out of sight.
The scenes in Orson’s time ship use a visual trick – also utilized in the episode’s first act, in Rupert’s bedroom – where extensive lens flares and pervasive, red-and-blue lighting create a chiaroscuro effect that heightens the surreal aspects of the imagined dangers.
By imbuing everyday objects with sinister animus, Steven Moffat’s best scripts terrify a universal audience. “Listen” is no exception. Everyone’s mind has filled a darkness with personified terrors, ignored a silence by talking to one’s self, or dismissed a misplaced item as having been mysteriously moved by unseen hands. To see that Twelve also does this reaffirms his humanity, an important development for this new, stony Doctor. Moffat has used the same trick of an unseen monster in “Silence in the Library”/“Forest of the Dead,” with the Vashta Nerada, though here, the actual “monster” is more misconception and memory than malice. The episode is careful to provide reasons, both malevolent and mundane, for every unexplained occurrence, which keeps the audience guessing at what lies in the dark, even if the Doctor and Clara “just saved that kid from another kid in a bedspread.”
Moffat also excels at writing a “meet cute,” a scene where a future couple meets in an adorable manner that often involves a humorous personality clash or a comical misunderstanding. Moffat twists this trope with a premise exclusive to Doctor Who, as Clara and Danny’s first date is interrupted by their time-traveling great-grandson. The dinner conversation between the couple features dialogue that is more adroit than realistic, but falls short of “sitcom.”
“Listen” is the first time that Clara is depicted as a fully-realized character, and not as a plot point (Series 7), narrative device (“Deep Breath” and “Into the Dalek”), or moon-eyed stock companion (“Robot of Sherwood”). Carrying on from her characterization in Series 7, she’s maternal – even more so than the Doctor, which is growth for a show that always portrays the Doctor as being comprehensively knowledgeable and prepared. Clara’s maternal instincts could’ve paired well with the childish Eleventh Doctor, but play even better off of the coarse Twelve. She’s endearing as she crawls under the bed with Rupert.
At the revelation that the Doctor inspired Rupert’s journey into “Dan, the Soldier Man,” Clara seems rightfully horrified, realizing the effect that military service will have on Danny’s adult life. Doctor Who is unique in its ability to play with the ramifications of time travel. Unfortunately, Moffat rarely deals with the emotional fallout – for example, Amy and Rory seemed hardly fazed that their entire histories, family life, and daughter’s existence are erased, rewritten, and irreparably harmed, by knowing the Doctor. To see Clara struggle with the emotional weight of knowing Danny’s past is thrilling.
Further, by disclosing Danny’s past as Rupert, rather than in standard flashback, Moffat humanizes Danny to the audience and to Clara, who responds by returning to their date and endeavoring to be more understanding. Though she feels guilt in being an unwitting participant in his adult anguish, her actions are relatable and mature. It’s refreshing to see Moffat write at this level. For once, he demonstrates acumen for adult characters and their emotional complexity. Would Doctor Who benefit, if Moffat’s scripts focused less on fanciful narrative twists and more on realistic character development?
By focusing much of “Listen” on Clara dealing with the emotional consequences of her meeting with Rupert, the audience is primed to fully appreciate the weight of her struggle to reconcile her similar involvement with the First Doctor, in the episode’s third act. “What if there was nothing? What if there was never anything?” she asks. “Nothing under the bed? Nothing at the door? What if the big, bad Time Lord doesn’t want to admit he’s just afraid of the dark?” The Doctor senses the ontological paradox, but cannot know what she has realized – that the thing that has scared him for all of these years, and has, in fact, spurred him to greatness, was merely his future companion. “Just take off; don’t ask questions,” she admonishes, aware that she is both cursing him with unknowing and ensuring his destiny as cosmic protector. The Doctor states, “I don’t take orders, Clara,” sounding so much like a defiant Ten, just before his fall. “Do as you are told,” she retorts, mirroring his earlier words to her. Miraculously, he acquiesces, again reaffirming her maternal nature. Who else could give the Doctor an order and have it be accepted?
An unanticipated outcome of “Listen” is the knowledge that Clara’s story arc will receive a happy ending. Except for Mickey, every modern-era companion has received a fairly tragic send-off (though Russell T Davies revisited and amended the storylines of Rose, Jack, Martha, and Donna, later). A terrible fate for Clara was telegraphed in “Asylum of the Daleks,” even before she was introduced in “The Snowmen.”
“Listen” is full of characters getting a look at their eventual fate. The Doctor becomes obsessed with seeing his imagined, “creatures that live to hide.” “What would those creatures do when everyone was gone, and there was only one man left standing in the universe?” Twelve asks, pointing to himself. As someone nigh-immortal and destined to outlive everyone he loves, the Doctor is scared to see what might await him at the end.
As fantastic as “Listen” is, where the episode cements itself as Moffat’s crowning achievement – and, truly, as series redefining – is in the third act, where, in order to keep the First Doctor from meeting his future self and causing all sorts of catastrophes (Dimensions in Time, anyone?), Clara grabs his ankle, from underneath his bed. This is, undoubtedly, the most epic moment depicted in all 51 years of Doctor Who, as it determines both the Doctor’s character and actions throughout the series’ subsequent history.
Beyond the origin of the Doctor’s “never cruel or cowardly” mantra, Clara’s speech to One reveals how the Doctor manages to be so brave in the face of unyielding danger. “Being afraid is alright, because – didn’t anybody ever tell you? – fear is a superpower. Fear can make you faster, and cleverer, and stronger,” Clara states, describing to the young Time Lord the hero he will one day become, a man “so alert, [he] can slow down time.” This comes at a heartbreaking price: the Doctor, at his core, has always been scared. There is a difference between a revelation and a retcon. Moffat’s reconception of Ten and Eleven as “wearing masks” – as if, in some way, they were less genuine than Twelve – reeks of the latter; however, this discovery feels organic and earned.
“Listen” also explains why the Doctor doesn’t carry a weapon. “This is your army,” Clara says of plastic soldiers led by “Dan, the Soldier Man,” a broken, weaponless “soldier so brave, he doesn’t need a gun” – an obvious metaphor for the Doctor. “He can keep the whole world safe,” Clara inspires, as the shot focuses on the Doctor.
The episode focuses extensively on the role of companions in the Doctor’s life and why he has always chosen to travel with one. “What if no one is ever really alone?” the Doctor asks, a question made relevant as the episode portrays the ageless Time Lord, standing at the end of time. “Listen” specifically uses the word “companion” to refer not only to the constant presence of the imagined “monsters,” but even more to the empowering sense of fear that results. This is not accidental. “Fear is like a companion. A constant companion, always there,” Clara tells One. “Fear makes companions of us all.”
Further, Clara’s actions frame the plastic soldiers as metaphors for companions – the people with whom the Doctor surrounds himself who protect him from darkness, both extrinsic and internal. Note that, previously, in “Deep Breath,” Clara described the Doctor in terms denoting “behind her,” a marked change from Donna and Rose feeling that they would forever be “beside” the Doctor. Not two episodes after “Into the Dalek,” the Doctor’s uncharacteristic prejudice towards Journey Blue seems even more out of place. In “Listen,” it is incredibly poignant that the Doctor so callously inspires a child into military action. Subconsciously, he views his companions as soldiers – and plastic, toy ones, at that – which explains why several iterations of the Doctor have been carelessly manipulative towards companions.
Finally, Clara’s words to the young First Doctor hint at the War Doctor’s motivations in “The Day of the Doctor.” “[O]ne day, you’re going to come back to this barn,” she states, “and on that day, you’re going to be very afraid, indeed.” Burdened with the decision to end the Dalek threat and the Time War by committing genocide, the War Doctor hoped to encounter the one thing that might be able to stop him – the thing that scared him most as a boy – from activating the Moment. Barring that, he at least hoped to make the epicenter of Gallifrey’s destruction the place where he first encountered these terrifying things, ensuring their demise.
Despite its title, the enduring mystery of Doctor Who isn’t the character’s name (though this episode gives a fairly large hint as to what that name might be). The main question of the show is the Doctor’s enigmatic past and the current companion’s eventual future. By outlining both the Doctor’s origins and the conclusion of Clara’s story arc, Moffat creates not just a fitting epilogue to Doctor Who’s 50th anniversary special, but perhaps the best series finale imaginable.
