My Thoughts on Doctor Who Series 8 Episode- Listen
I have been a frequent watcher of Doctor Who for a few years now and have been through three different faces of The Doctor (not including the 50th anniversary special’s War Doctor). When Matt Smith’s final episode aired, I sobbed like a baby, until at least his swift change into Peter Capaldi’s version of The Doctor.
“Kidneys! I’ve got new kidneys! I don’t like the color”.
And with that line I knew that The T.A.R.D.I.S was in capable hands. Fast forward Eight months and Capaldi’s first episode aired, with another mystery and an unanswered question. Who gave Clara The Doctor’s number back in the second half of Series 7?!! Then came episode 2, One of my favorite New Who episode.
“You would make a good Dalek”
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Episode 3 was pretty mellow. Who knew he really existed?! And who can forget the Spoon vs Sword fight? Legendary!
And finally getting to the point of this blog. ‘Listen’. The fourth episode of Series 8. I feel as though it is an overrated episode. The independent, a British newspaper, labelled the episode “possibly Steven Moffat’s most terrifying episode to date”. I would say that is untrue. Vashta Nerada seemed pretty scary in Silence in the Library and Forest of the dead. In saying that, Moffat is brilliant at making things in the dark scary. For example talking to our self, as shown in Listen. Heck, even while writing this blog, I thought out loud a lot and had to stop to check if there was a monster in the room. Some things from the episode stuck. Like the thought of a life long companion shadowing us through out our daily lives! But Listen did not quite hit the mark with me. For me, Blink was a pretty terrifying episode.
“Don’t even blink. Blink and you’re dead”
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It is by far, one of the best episode written by Steven Moffat and is one of the best New Who episodes to date. And there are only a few episodes which have the caliber to match it. Unfortunately, Listen is not one of them. A monster under the blanket is not scary. An invisible forever companion, scary but not as scary as an angel that can move a few hundred meters in the time it takes you to blink. I still look at statues and try to not blink for as long as possible because of the fear of it coming to life. Great performances by all of the actors and mystery doesn’t make a good episode. Clarity mixed with a bit of mystery does. I did not like that Moffat tried to suggest that Clara might be Orson’s grandmother. I certainly did not like it that they went to Gallifrey at the time of The Doctor’s childhood and that they made him out to be a cry baby! I like to think of The Doctor as a “Dreamer of the improbable dreams”. I would imagine him being like Sheldon Cooper growing up. Listen shatters that image of him maybe for that reason I do not like the episode. It gets complicated.
