Doctor Who 8x04 Listen

[kerravonsen]

Well, that was better than I expected. I was expecting it to be an all-out scare-fest, and nothing other than that. Instead...

Instead we got unexpected timey-wimey character stuff!
Echoes. Reflections. Oh I like it.

* The toy soldier without-a-gun (oh boy, no toy soldier has ever travelled so far...)
* "Fear is a super-power." Such a good speech, that. Because it is both poetic and true. Adrenaline does help us dealing with crises; it does boost energy, cut down pain, increase focus. Mind you, the cost of that is that increased focus is a narrowed focus; creativity and lateral thinking are crippled when one is on an adrenaline high. (Sorry, once you get me talking about adrenaline, I'll start ranting about how our society is addicted to it, stress, caffeine, yadda yadda yadda) It's still true that adrenaline is a good tool.
* The hand grabbing from under the bed!!!

Nice fake out with "he's crying because he doesn't want to join the army", so we thought it was Mr. Pink -- and then "he'll never become a Time Lord" (wham!) (could have knocked me down with a feather)

Fascinating how the "fear" theme really does tie in with other things we know about the Doctor.

* Not just the flashback to the War Doctor, though that was good.
* The mention by Ten that he looked into the Untempered Schism and ran away in fear, and he's "been running ever since".
* The mention by Romana to Four that he only passed his exams with 51% on his third attempt.

Which makes one wonder that perhaps part of the reason why the Doctor likes sticking around with humans is that compared to them, he is a genius, while on his own planet, he's a dullard.

While one would think it would not be possible to travel back to the Doctor's childhood, because Gallifrey is out of reach (not to mention I think the Time Lords would have prevented time travel into Gallifrey's past even before the War), I think the TARDIS managed it because the Doctor had turned off the fail-safes in order to travel to the end of the universe.

Though how this fits -- or doesn't fit -- with "the end of the universe" that the TARDIS travelled to in "Utopia" is puzzling, because if it had been later than Utopia, it ought to have been dark, and if it had been earlier than Utopia, it wasn't the very end of the universe. (scratches head) Okay, it was maybe the very last planet and the very last sun....

Mind you, it kind of seems odd that Gallifrey would have an army. I mean this would have been well before the War, so what would an army have done? Mind you, they did have guards, so maybe they did have an army, we just didn't see them in the Capitol in Old Who. (handwave, handwave)

It's kind of amazing... Clara has yet again been The Impossible Girl, interfering in the Doctor's own timeline.
I seem to be able to connect more with Clara-as-teacher than Clara-as-blank-slate... sorry. When she's being teacherly, she manages to combine (a) talking with kids on their own level (b) being assertive without being strident (no longer a student-teacher!) (c) keeping her head in a crisis (especially when there's someone else to look after) (d) actually teaching the occasional life-lesson. All without being patronizing, or being a Mary-Sue. "She's my caretaker -- she cares so I don't have to."

It's kind of reassuring that Clara and Danny are being really awkward and irritated and foot-in-mouth, because that makes them more human.

Capaldi... I am liking him as the Doctor. Oddly enough, when I saw him sitting on the roof of the TARDIS at the start, I had a flashback to Nine. Lean and darkly dressed, I suppose. And snarky. I like snarky.

I suppose I ought to talk about the scary creepy thing-with-the-perfect-hiding... but... well I'm just glad that it wasn't scary enough to give me nightmares. I'd been putting off watching this one for that reason.
And there may or may not have been a monster there in Rupert Pink's room. It was creepy enough.

For the record, I have never dreamed about monsters under the bed. Then again, most of my life there have been drawers under the bed; no room for monsters.

Comments

[kalypso]

Re the end of the universe, it has been rebooted, so maybe there are many possible endings.

But there was a really spectacular bit of continuity pointed out by elisi, in a lovely essay about how seriously the Doctor takes children's nightmares: when Clara says that "Fear makes companions of us all", she's quoting a line spoken by the First Doctor to Barbara in the second episode of Doctor Who, with the Tribe of Gum, back in 1963. Or rather, with our new perspective, the First Doctor was quoting a strange woman who once came to comfort him when he had a childhood nightmare. Though I am now convinced that a cavewoman called Os with bad teeth and matted hair was lurking behind the Doctor and Barbara to rescue him from an unseen danger.

[kerravonsen]

Though I am now convinced that a cavewoman called Os with bad teeth and matted hair was lurking behind the Doctor and Barbara to rescue him from an unseen danger.

(grin)

[sgac]

I too have never had nightmares about things under the bed. When I was a child I slept in a high bed with a space underneath big enough to play. So I knew perfectly well what was under the bed, and it was a pony school.

[vilakins]

I've never had nightmares either, but I used to worry about what was under the bed - or for that matter anywhere in the dark bedroom. Like Vila, I wanted to see what I was afraid of.

Yes, the hand from under the bed was Clara, but I want to know what was on Rupert's bed. That wasn't human, I'm sure.

[jaxomsride.livejournal.com]

For the record neither have I! It was the ghost in the wardrobe that used to scare me.

This episode was well done with a revisit of the space suit that Ten wore!

Clara and Danny's date made me want to look away more than the scary creepy stuff, it was too embarrassingly awkward for me.

I did like the scary creepy bit in Danny boy's bedroom. It was well done.

[kerravonsen]

Clara and Danny's date made me want to look away more than the scary creepy stuff, it was too embarrassingly awkward for me.

Oddly enough, it didn't trigger my embarrassment squick, possibly because it was only the two of them, rather than a public spectacle. (I mean, even though it was in public, it wasn't in public public.)