34.04: Listen

Lenny

Lenny

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Trailer:


Blurb:

When ghosts of past and future crowd into their lives, the Doctor and Clara are thrown into an adventure that takes them to the very end of the universe.

What happens when the Doctor is alone? And what scares the grand old man of Time and Space? Listen!
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We've had the obligatory introduction, old enemy, and comedy episodes, and up next is the scary episode! I'm looking forward to it.

Incredibly, it looks like the Beeb have carved out a regular time slot. As with the past couple of weeks, this episode airs on BBC1 at: 19:30
 
Is there something else going on tonight that I've missed? :rolleyes: :p

I hope everyone else watched it tonight, because boy, was this a good episode! Fantastic from the opening monologue to the end, with a couple of really standout scenes, and an eerie, sinister atmosphere throughout. This episode was Moffat at his best, timey wimey and all - quite possibly even better than any Doctor Who episode he's written before.
 
My five-year-old woke up half an hour ago, complaining of "a dream about a hand.*" So, the episode had some effect :D



*he's okay now. I told him to dream about puppies
 
What a cracker!!
I had chills, I felt feels, and I'm certain I'll have to sleep with the lamp on tonight.

I'm so, so glad Moffat's stopped taking whatever drug he's been on for the past 3 series and has seen the light!
At last, an episode which lives up to Blink! (With a slight homage "close your eyes if you want it to go away")

I've always been a bit iffy about Clara for some reason, but this episode really made me warm to her. Must admit I was doing the "eye thing" along with her for most of the episode.
Can't wait to see how this budding timey-wimey romance with Danny/Rupert/Orson unfolds.
I'm still a little muddled with the ins and outs of timelines, think I'll need to give it another watch tomorrow to get my head round it all.

A solid 5 stars from me though! Top notch writing, executed well and some excellent acting. Capaldi is exceeding my expectations!!
 
alchemist said:
My five-year-old woke up half an hour ago, complaining of "a dream about a hand.*" So, the episode had some effect :D



*he's okay now. I told him to dream about puppies
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Yeah, we had to delay bedtime and allow extra minecrafting for it to settle down here.

I thought this was better. I enjoyed Clara. I'm hating Capaldi. In fact my teen suggested that if a regeneration would change the doctor again, she'd like one next week. I cannot, cannot warm to him, not when he's so inhibited and cold. Sympathy doesn't do it (and they laid that on thick) if the character doesn't merit it.
 
Moffat takes a horror cliche (the hand coming out from under the bed) and, and I don't know what but I think I liked it. This is one of the scariest episodes of the new series right up there with "Midnight" and "Blink". The ending was quite beautiful and it was nice seeing
John Hurt
pop up briefly.
 
"I couldn't have written it and forgotten, could I?" "Have you met you?"

Thought the orphanage was the same one from the episode with Amy and the Silence, but I looked it up and it wasn't. (That one may have been in America, anyway?) But maybe filmed at the same place? Or I'm just crazy.

I like the explanation of scared as a superpower.

"Once upon a time. The end. Dad skills."

And then that line, "this is the silence at the end of time." Hmm.

"I always thought there was something in the pipes." "Me too." Is that a Scottish joke? :p

Love the timey-wimey-ness of this one, with all the loops like a Mobius strip. Best of all was that the barn where the Doctor as a child learned about the power of fear turned out to be the same barn where he went as the War Doctor for the most fearful thing he'd ever have to do.

On the other hand, I am just a bit let down by the fact that there wasn't really anything after all. "Scared of the dark" is a monster in itself, I suppose.
 
I remained very detached through this, not sucked in at all. And from that perspective, the episode wasn't actually about anything - just a series of montages for tension.

I continue to enjoy Capaldi, but Moffat again relegates his main character to a supporting role for a female companion.

And pushing Clara back into affecting the Doctor's timeline - and landing on Gallifrey?? - not only underlined this, but also seemed a return to messing about with the Doctor's continuity for its own sake.

Still, at least no firing a golden arrow at a space ship in this!
 
I rather enjoyed the episode and continue to enjoy Capaldi as the Uncertain Doctor, such a welcome change from the I-can-do-anything Doctor of recent years**.
TheDustyZebra said:
On the other hand, I am just a bit let down by the fact that there wasn't really anything after all. "Scared of the dark" is a monster in itself, I suppose.
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Was there nothing? The shape on the bed could be explained away as another child playing a trick (though he or she seemed unperturbed by two adult strangers being in Rupert's room). Yes, perhaps the doctor wrote "Listen" on the blackboard. But who opened the airlock?

The Doctor unlocked it, but was he wielding his sonic screwdriver to do the rest? (Was the TARDIS doing it, or the Colonel's timeship?) People seem to be assuming that the monitor in the TARDIS misbehaving was to hide the fact that the Doctor remained alone. But would an entity that had remained unseen for aeons let itself be captured by CCTV? No. I suppose one could say that Clara gave the 'there's nothing there' explanation a boost when she grabbed the young Doctor's ankle, but stepping back from it being a story, why wouldn't Clara grab the boys ankle? She'd been primed to do just that by what had gone before. What better way to talk to the young Doctor without revealing who she was, without revealing that she wasn't a 'figment of his imagination' than doing what she did?

So I'm inclined to believe that we're with the Silence again. And my main reason for thinking this is that the word Listen was written on the blackboard, not the word Watching.


** - Given that we have to suspend disbelief because of the time travel (not the time travel itself, but the thought that now the doctor has control of when and where he goes -- not true for much of the time I watched the show as a child -- he can rescue himself and his companions whenever he wants to as that wouldn't affect the timeline at all), it was a bit much having to suspend one's disbelief at the time it took the Doctor to get round to waving his magic wand (or fiddling with some controls), as it became increasingly obvious that he often knew what to do from the start (because nothing around him inspired him to come to an answer).
 
Ursa major said:
I rather enjoyed the episode and continue to enjoy Capaldi as the Uncertain Doctor,
Click to expand...

I like him, too. I think he's got a more subtle sense of humor than the last two -- really more like Nine, in a way, with more angst and doubt but also a confidence with more depth than the surface bravado we've been used to lately. I can't speak to similarities with the older Doctors, as I haven't seen more than a snippet of any of them.


Was there nothing? The shape on the bed could be explained away as another child playing a trick (though he or she seemed unperturbed by two adult strangers being in Rupert's room). Yes, perhaps the doctor wrote "Listen" on the blackboard. But who opened the airlock?

The Doctor unlocked it, but was he wielding his sonic screwdriver to do the rest? (Was the TARDIS doing it, or the Colonel's timeship?) People seem to be assuming that the monitor in the TARDIS misbehaving was to hide the fact that the Doctor remained alone. But would an entity that had remained unseen for aeons let itself be captured by CCTV? No. I suppose one could say that Clara gave the 'there's nothing there' explanation a boost when she grabbed the young Doctor's ankle, but stepping back from it being a story, why wouldn't Clara grab the boys ankle? She'd been primed to do just that by what had gone before. What better way to talk to the young Doctor without revealing who she was, without revealing that she wasn't a 'figment of his imagination' than doing what she did?

So I'm inclined to believe that we're with the Silence again. And my main reason for thinking this is that the word Listen was written on the blackboard, not the word Watching.
Click to expand...

I agree. From "I couldn't have written it and forgotten, could I?" to the familiar-ish orphanage and the hints about silence, and of course it was very much their bailiwick all along. But I meant it was nothing in that we never saw anything, didn't do anything about the bad guys, and it was just left pretty much where it started as far as the "monster" was concerned. Which could be scarier, on balance, than actually showing us something.
 
It is good that there are stories that are a little bit off the wall like this, but I didn't enjoy it much. The identity of the 'hiders' being left unanswered - everything could be explained away as something else; they don't exist except in the imagination. If that was the case, then why did we here the Cloister Bell ring? It should only ring during the most serious of emergencies, in which the TARDIS or its inhabitants were in mortal danger. If it was only just 'the dark' then there was no danger.

Gallifrey - hasn't the Doctor been trying and failing to find Gallifrey since the 'Time War'? Someone thought the blackboard planetary diagrams in an earlier episode proved this was still the case. If all it took was turn off some TARDIS safety restrictions then surely he would have tried that already. This was just a retcon again about him not liking soldiers and not wanting to be a soldier. Which fits with John Hurt Doctor but not with all those that went before him, where he clearly had no problem with soldiers. I'm not clear on what a 'Time War' is exactly but I expected that the war was fought throughout all time and so the destruction of Gallifrey was in all times at once, but somehow it was instead hidden somewhere and he can find it if he only tries harder than he has been. With most of the other loose ends tied up, I expect we are going to see the Doctor find the lost planet of Gallifrey sometime soon.
 
I would also like to add to my earlier post, for no apparent reason, that "listen" is an anagram of "silent".*


*even though I still think of them as the "Silence", I believe it's been posited by the people who wrote the thing that they are actually the "Silents".
 
When Clara was linked to the TARDIS to travel through her time line how did she end up in the Doctor's time line? I seem to remember it turned out in the movie with number 8 that the Doctor was part human as I think his mother was from earth, could Clara be a ancestor of the Doctor, or have I remembered incorrectly and am making vague connections? Would Moffat use a plot line from the film in his story? Am I thinking about this too much? Do I need a life? Answers by pm please. :)
 
I believe the Dr was half-human in the film, but I think that's pretty much been dropped since.

My thoughts on this ep were that it started really well - proper creepifying, scary, nightmare-inducing stuff - but then it just descended into soap opera-ish pap. I don't care about Clara's dating disasters with Danny. I don't care if they get it together and end up with Orson as an ancestor. I thought the 'Dr as frightened little orphan boy' bit was awful. I don't buy the man who wiped two races and his home planet out of the entirety of time as a scared little boy. It was far too much about Clara - she just isn't a strong enough character to carry an episode.

Does the Tardis make itself and people on it invisible? Because otherwise it pitched up in a busy kitchen, a man in a space suit got out and walked through the kitchen to the restaurant and back again, and no one noticed. I'm pretty sure they would. I'm pretty sure it would cause quite the commotion.
 
Well, he had to have been a little boy at some point, you know. And little boys get scared sometimes. They even cry, when they don't think anyone is looking. :)

The TARDIS has always had a "nothing to see here, folks" field about it, as far as I've seen, anyway. I don't know about the space suit man. One would think that might attract a passing glance or two.
 
TheDustyZebra said:
The TARDIS has always had a "nothing to see here, folks" field about it, as far as I've seen, anyway..
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This is going back a while (Doctor Two?), but I thought the reason it was shaped as a police box was because it had a camouflage function that got stuck. Why would it need that if no one noticed it anyway?
 
Hmm. It's true, the "don't notice me" field is rather intermittent, like the rest of its functions. It didn't deter Robin Hood from shooting an arrow at it.
 
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