C+Q - Listen (2014)
What is it with Moffat and episodes named after verbs?! First Blink, then Deep Breath, now Listen. It sounds like a bizarre road safety PSA.
Anyway, Episode 4 of Series 8 is the one I was looking forward to the most, mainly because Moffat promised a much calmer and more leisurely episode similar to The Empty Child, The Girl in the Fireplace, Blink, and Silence in the Library to contrast the huge over-the-top blockbuster action stories he's been writing recently. The result is an episode that isn't perfect (the show is still figuring out how to do the Capaldi Doctor), but it still has the weight of an instant classic. It's a fun, entertaining character study that relies so little on villains that it's actually debateable whether or not the episode has any.
As a starting point, I want to use the end of this episode to talk about some popular criticism that's been levelled at Steven Moffat recently, more specifically at Clara (personally I love both the writer and the character). I've heard many reasons about why people love or hate the ending, in which Clara inserts herself into the unseen history of the show, and all of these opinions are valid; they're opinions after all. Personally, I love Listen's ending. A big argument I've been hearing is that Clara is now too important to the show's mythos, having saved the Doctor in every one of his incarnations, inspired the un-destruction of Gallifrey, pointed him to the correct TARDIS, and now inspired him as a child to turn him into the man he is today. The thing is, which I agree completely that Clara is an important part of Doctor Who's mythology now, I see the argument that this is a bad thing as somewhat contradictory, what with previous fan consensus being that Steven Moffat mistreats female characters. While he certainly has a long way to go with how he writes women (and editing this review in a post-Missy, post-Bill Potts world I'd say he got here), one thing we can say with absolute certainty is that the Doctor is the way he is in part because of Clara's influence in his life, and that doesn't sound sexist to me.
Despite what Clara says in The Name of the Doctor, she wasn't born to save the Doctor; her echoes were. Instead, the real Clara is an ordinary person who the show goes to extra special effort in episodes like The Rings of Akhaten to show us had a completely unremarkable past. The creation of her echoes were her conscious choice to save the Doctor and every other time she's influenced his life, such as in Listen, it was either done by mistake, or as an attempt to help out, like in The Day of the Doctor. Also, in the same episode that she changes the Doctor's life as a child, we see her going on a date with Danny Pink, demonstrating that her life is not somehow bound entirely to the Doctor's. In her own words from Into the Dalek, "You're not my boss, you're one of my hobbies." She has impacted the Doctor more than the Doctor has impacted her. If Clara had never met the Doctor, her life would not have changed at all; she'd still have lost her mother at the age of 16, she'd still have ended up looking after the Maitland kids, she'd still have become an English teacher, and she'd still have met Danny Pink. The Doctor on the other hand would be completely different had he never met Clara and would in all likelihood have been killed long before his first regeneration by the Great Intelligence. There are many arguments to be made about how Steven Moffat and the media in general can improve on writing women (I'm a man after all, so what valuable insight do I have on the subject?), but personally I love Clara and how important she is. I'm open to disagreement but I wouldn't call her handling as sexist at all.
Well, we're a few hundred words in and all I've done is ramble about 2014 fandom discourse. I guess I just wanted to get it off my chest because the arguments have been getting pretty heated. Moving on to talk more specifically about this episode, Listen is unlike most Moffat stories in recent memory. Instead of big complex set pieces, this story focuses on just four characters in just a handful of locations. Actually, while we're talking about popular fandom discourse, the reason Clara manages to get to Gallifrey in the past before it was sealed away is because the "safe-guards" were turned off. The explanation should really have been a bit more obvious, but there was actually a line in there that only registered with me on a repeat viewing. Speaking of explanations, the whole premise of this episode is that we don't know if there really is a monster or if all the noises and strange occurrences could have been explained completely rationally. Because of this, I would've liked a possible reason why the door to Orson's ship was opening if not because it was being opened by someone. Also, for how the Doctor could've written the word 'listen' on the blackboard and completely forgotten about it. Or was the TARDIS just fucking with him?
You know what? Fuck it. Let's just make the whole review about 2014 fandom discourse. There have been complaints about the timey-wimey way in which Clara met Danny/Rupert as a child, with many saying it's similar to other instances of Moffat characters meeting each other out of order. I agree that it is similar but I disagree that it being similar is a bad thing. The whole 'meeting character out of order' trope is a trope I love. Also, I think Listen is one of the best times it's been used to date. Here it has real emotional consequences instead of merely plot consequences. Clara finds out why Danny became a soldier and after understanding more about him, asks to be taken back in time to her date so she can attempt to set things right, apologising for the way she flippantly mentioned a subject that was very sensitive to Danny. In a wibbly-wobbly way, this entire episode uses Clara as a framing device to the extent that it simply wouldn't have worked with any other character. Listen displays once again Clara's ability to look after children and to be the mother that she wished she'd had growing up. Her experiences as both a babysitter and a teacher are used to full effect as she takes care of Danny and the Doctor as kids. I love it when companions have a specific skill set that's unique to them, like Martha Jones and her knowledge of medicine. It's the most simple and basic way to demonstrate the differences between characters and, like Clara with her connection to her mother, can be used to inform their personalities, hopes, and ambitions.
I swear I won't stop banging this drum until I see a bad episode; Series 8 is excellent so far and an amazing return to form for Doctor Who. We're four episodes in and already we've had a lot more development and focus on Clara that we had in the entirety of Series 7 Part 2. Steven Moffat's most recent scripts are reminding me more and more of the genius who wrote The Empty Child, The Eleventh Hour, The Pandorica Opens, and A Scandal in Belgravia for Sherlock. Here's hoping his two-part finale continues this increase in quality and that the plot strands and themes of Series 8 are resolved in a way that doesn't frustrate everyone.
Next: Time Heist