Doctor Who recap: series 34, episode four – Listen

SPOILER ALERT: This weekly blog is for those who have been watching the new series of Doctor Who. Don’t read ahead if you haven’t seen episode four – Listen• Read Dan Martin’s episode three episode blog here

‘Fear is a superpower, and fear can make you faster and stronger and cleverer … fear can make you kind.’

You have to admire Steven Moffat’s honesty. Speaking in the current issue of Doctor Who magazine, he said: “It was really down to an entirely selfish desire. I remember the first thing I said about this year’s run is: ‘I’m going to do a chamber piece, with no money, in the middle, because I haven’t done one in ages and I’d like to prove that I can actually write.’”

There speaks a man who sounds as if he actually reads what some people say about him on the internet, never mind takes it to heart. But let’s be clear, Listen is destined to sit close to Blink as one of his best ever. It is phenomenally good. But, but … it’s slightly unfair to judge things according to that yardstick, because the episodes everybody remembers tend to be the off-kilter ones that you can’t do every week.

Of course, limitation is the root of creativity – making the best of a bad budget is one of Doctor Who’s great hallmarks, and by deliberately choosing to do the cheap one, Moffat is allowed to take his favourite subject, fear – the thing in the corner of your eye and the monster under the bed – and push it to the ultimate conclusion. A story where the monster is fear itself.

But Listen is in a different space altogether, which is signalled from the start of the pre-credits as the Doctor sits cross-legged on the top of the Tardis, in space, like an angry cosmic buddha, with musings on evolution and survival, surrealist tableaus and the chalkboard working overtime. Travelling on his own, the Doctor is sort of losing it, fixating over a dream in the absence of anything else to do. And for all the Dark Doctor stuff, it’s still shocking when he loses it with Clara – we know he’s absolutely terrified.

And then to throw all those story bombs in there as well! The one and only downside of doing this job is that before we get access to the episode we have to agree not to reveal certain key plot points, so I had an email agreeing not to reveal that we visit Gallifrey or we meet the young Doctor in the barn before having actually watched it. Spoilers, sweetie. But I was knocked sideways by that mythology fangasm, and the callback to The Day of the Doctor, not knowing it was coming. “Audacious” barely covers it. Do we lose something of the mystery by seeing a young, scared Doctor having nightmares on screen – or does it enrich the mythology? Possibly a bit of both. As established around the 50th anniversary, we know for sure that not all Gallifreyans were Time Lords – some were sent to join the army. We also know that the Doctor’s parents spoke like estuary BBC bit-players.

‘You said you had a date. I thought I’d better hide in the bedroom in case you brought him home’

Apart from scares, of course, the other thing that Moffat does better than most is awkward romantic comedy. And here he gets to flex those Coupling muscles once again. Clara and Danny’s date is as much a masterclass in awkward as the rest is a masterclass in spooky. I’m invested in these two already, because we’ve all been on those dates where you say the absolute worst thing you possibly could. And after just a few scenes, I feel as if I know Danny – his defensiveness over the 23 wells he dug in the army, his prickliness over his past, his easily dented male pride and general decency. Of course, it helps that we know his entire life story, that the next few generations of his family have been defined by one slight and quick Tardis mishap – and when Clara realises that, her main reaction is an “oh-god-this-again-really?” shrug.

View image in fullscreen

Already, Clara has the most complete home life since Rose Tyler, and it feels as if this is going to be an actual proper storyline. For her part, after three weeks of the writers hammering home her bossy characteristics, we see her warmth seeping through. That nannying experience comes in useful, and she’s absolutely brilliant with young Rupert and child-Doctor. And in that final sequence, she continues to fulfil her “Impossible Girl” mission, even by accident.

Last week

Circumstances meant that Robot of Sherwood got a bit of a raw deal last week, and in the end it seemed to divide opinion almost completely down the middle. Predictably, those who want Doctor Who to be like Babylon 5 After Hours every week were incandescent. But on reflection this kind of gaudy romp was exactly how Doctor Who should do a Robin Hood story. It was lovely and refreshing to just see a bit of colour, and we hadn’t a good old charismatic villain this year until Ben Miller’s Sheriff of Nottingham. The Doctor’s examination of the Merry Men was laugh-out-loud funny, and his exasperation with them actually made him more relatable, especially Alan-a-Dale, whom I wanted to slap from the get-go.

Did you spot the Miniscope reference to 1973’s Carnival Of Monsters?

Fear factor

Parenting tip: a straightforward way of assuaging your child’s fears of the monster under the bed might be to get them a divan. Meanwhile, I’m not sure that I ever had that nightmare about a hand grabbing my ankle in the night, but it would have been a long time ago. How many of you have had it? Dreams-being-real is a rich seam for Doctor Who to plough – and it would be fun to see more of it.

But as above, here was a masterclass in fright, a litany of psychological setpieces – the most effective to my mind being the thing under young Rupert’s bedspread, never completely explained – building up to the pay-off of Clara and Danny’s kiss. A tacit acknowledgement that opening your feelings up and being exposed in that way is probably the most frightening thing of all.

Mysteries and questions

It led to a bit of unpleasantness afterwards, but last week @HarryBorcus made a compelling reading of an atheist subtext this year, which could of course be co-incidental. Aside from the biggie that we’re heading for a “heaven” that will have a sci-fi explanation behind it, there was last week’s struggle over whether a bearded hero had been real or not, a lot of crucifix imagery in the dungeon and on the robots’ faces, and the six-pointed Star of David-alike when the shields crossed the beams. And molten gold, which also featured in the Bible (Exodus 32:4).

Time-space debris

Clara links psychically with the Tardis. But as we know, the Tardis doesn’t like her very much. Is that why she hurts her fingers pulling them out of the gloop?

The Doctor also spends his downtime reading Where’s Wally? books.

We should assume the chatty Coal Hill pupil we saw in episodes one and two is the Whitney they talk about in the restaurant.

“The deep and lovely dark. We’d never see the stars without it.”

Another costume amendment. That’s a very nice new jumper, Doctor.

And simply because we may never again get a Doctor Who episode that shares its title with a Beyoncé classic – here’s Beyoncé.

Next week!

It’s Doctor Who does Hustle, as Keeley Hawes plays an unscrupulous banker in Time Heist.