Doctor Who: Listen

 Well that was creepy.

So the last episode of who that aimed for the horror angle, kind of fell apart as soon as the Doctor figured it out. This episode avoids the same mistake, by keeping the mystery going up until the end.

This allows time to develop the Clara/Danny love plot, without the episode getting boring. On that point, the Clara/Danny date Moffat makes the date realistic with Coleman and Anderson delivering the awkwardness of a first date pretty well. It seems a bit contrived that Clara seems to take any opportunity to get angry with Danny, who then takes any opportunity to get angry with her. They go from trying desperately to impress each other to acting like a long-term couple having a spat.

Aside from that plot, we have the Doctor seeking out the perfect hiders; creatures that would be so good at hiding that no one would ever know they existed. At first, I thought that Moffat might have been trying to one up his own creations The Weeping Angels, with another villain who moves and kills you without you or anyone ever seeing.

I can see the revelation at the end, that it was all his imagination and that he would rather go all the way to the end of the universe and nearly get blown out of an airlock that “admit he’s scared of the dark.”

Incidentally, there’s a bit of classic Moffat misdirection in that the teaser promised “a boy who doesn’t want to join the army.” As a young version of Danny Pink features, we’re natuarally supposed to think he was forced into the army and that’s one of the causes of the possible PTSD from which he suffers.

However, it’s actually a young version of the First Doctor, who is about to be forced  to join the army (by his parents?) who don’t believe he’s got what it takes to make it through The Academy and thus become a Time Lord. It’s a good piece of misdirection for the episode, but the Clara-haters will be very pissed off that Moffat’s essentially pasted her in as the person who assures the young Doctor that he does have what it takes.

I really don’t have much more to say; it’s a good episode, creepy and gives some more backstory to the Doctor.