Doctor Who 8x04: Listen

After the Daleks made their first appearance on Doctor Who, the show evolved into one about fighting monsters. Listen is one of the first stories to have no external monster or villain whatsoever and it's a very refreshing concept for the show. Midnight came close, with its tale of human paranoia, but still relied on an intangible threat from a monster that repeated your every word. This time around, the true "monster" is inside the Doctor. His childhood fears have made him want to investigate the idea of a creature that hides from view and he drags Clara away from a date with Danny Pink to fulfil this objective. Steven Moffat takes his old box of tricks, from skipping through different time periods, to creatures under a bed, and finds a new slant on them.

The story delves deeply into the Doctor's anxieties to the point where it culminated with Clara meeting the young Doctor in the barn. This scene was considered controversial by many fans. But I have to admit, it was nowhere near as controversial as I thought it would be. There is some ambiguity about who the figures are. Are they the Doctor's parents, or simply carers? Are "the boys" his brothers, or just fellow housemates?

The Doctor is not the only character who gets a lot of development in this episode. The other is newcomer, Danny Pink. We get to see him in his childhood, going by the name of Rupert. He is clearly defensive about his former life as a soldier, and we still don't really know what he has done. We also get a glimpse of a descendant of his, called Orson. Could Orson be Danny and Clara's offspring? Knowing Steven Moffat, it could be more complicated than that.

Clara gets less development than her male counterparts this time around. However, she is the one who influences them. She unwittingly creates the Doctor and Danny. Will Danny ever find out about this? And if so, what would he think of her?

Douglas Mackinnon should be congratulated for his direction. There are some beautiful shots of the Doctor standing on the balcony with the Tardis console below in the background.

The sound people should also be congratulated for creating some ambiguity as the sound. The screeching of the spaceships and the knocking on the doors.

I doubt that this episode did well with casual audiences and you wouldn't want the show to do it every week, but the fact that Doctor Who can do something like this every once in a while makes it worth it.  For the first time since The Doctor's Wife, I felt really hooked by an episode.

10/10

Next Week: Doctor Who does a Crime Caper.