Doctor Who - Listen

...Do you want to know a secret?
Do you promise not to tell?

"Question: why do we talk out loud when we know we're alone? 

"Conjecture: because we know we're not."

The Doctor is having a theory day. He has become convinced that there is something in the shadows; something stalking every living creature and listening when they speak aloud and alone.

Snatching Clara from the jaws of the date from hell, he expounds his theory and sets out to track her own experience of a dream that everyone has in his attempt to uncover the truth of a camouflage more perfect even than the Silence. From a children's home to the most distant future, and back to the beginning of everything, they chase down the monster under the bed.

The Good

• The atmosphere is perfect; the creep factor is what last year's ghosts-and-future-time-travellers effort Hide was aiming for, but much more potent for the absence of special effects.
• The thing on Rupert's bed is creepy as all get out, and yet might just be a small child. A small child with a pathological commitment to his art as a joker that hints at a promising future in serial murder, but a small child nonetheless.
• Linking the Doctor's past to The Day of the Doctor was a nice touch. I know that there's a thing about them getting into Gallifrey's past, but I'm assuming that's because they were following Clara's timeline, which as we all know weaves like a mad thing through the Doctor's.
• I was initially disappointed that the reveal made something cosmic into something so slight, but in retrospect I realised that, actually, the final scenes in the barn are both intimate and epic. They are an impossible thing that shapes universes, and perhaps provides the capstone on Clara's influence in the Doctor's lives.

The Bad

• There are many, many echoes of Hide here.

The Ugly

• Oh, help us the date! It was cringe-making, and failed to seem natural; from a writer whose big break came from the naturalistic awkward teen romance in Press Gang, this is disappointing.

Theorising

• What was outside the door at the end of the universe if what's underneath the bed is Clara? Well, allowing that what was in Rupert's room was just a lad, my suspicion is that that is the 'promised land'. Echoes of Utopia, although if Missy is the Master, then we can write that up as a tribute act, I guess.

Top Quotes

• The Doctor: You said you had a date. I thought I'd better hide in the bedroom in case you brought him home.
• Clara: It looks like your handwriting.
  The Doctor: Well I couldn't have written it and forgotten, could I?
  Clara: Have you met you?
• The Doctor: Scared is a superpower! Your superpower! There is danger in this room. And guess what? It’s you. Do you feel it? Do you think he feels it? Do you think he’s scared? Nah. Loser!
• Clara: If you’re very wise and very strong fear doesn’t have to make you cruel or cowardly. Fear can make you kind. It doesn’t matter if there’s nothing under the bed or in the dark so long as you know it’s okay to be afraid of it.
• Clara: Fear makes companions of us all.*

The Twelfth Doctor
Apparently the Twelfth Doctor's understanding of human courtship and appearance is only slightly better than Strax's, but in his case this is because the new regenerative cycle has left him in many ways childlike.

The Verdict
Definitely the strongest episode of the series so far, Listen has atmosphere in bags and some good character work for Clara and Twelve. It's a little let down by the cringy date scenes, but other than that is pretty darn perfect. I would knock off points for the reuse of so many ideas from Hide, but the fact that this one does them universally better covers that multitude of sins quite nicely.

8/10

* I wish I could claim to have spotted for myself that this is a callback to An Unearthly Child, but I didn't.