9.13.2014

Television: Doctor Who, "Listen"

Only a few minutes into this episode it became patently clear that either (a) we were going to have a re-tread of a Silence-like entity, or (b) this hypothesis the Doctor was working from was really all in his head. And so what we were really left with was another episode that pretended to be cleverer than it actually was.

Which isn't to say it was bad. It wasn't, not entirely. The stuff between Clara and Pink was pretty good. In fact, I found myself thinking that of all the people on the screen, Samuel Anderson has decent potential for a big screen career. I can definitely picture him there.

And the Doctor had some good lines, particularly about Clara's mirror and her eyes.

"Listen" was also designed, I suspect, to give hints about Pink's past, Clara's future, and the Doctor's upbringing, if not about the possible end of the Universe. Because it definitely hinted at there being something out there, unseen, the Doctor's childhood influences notwithstanding.

The Doctor also once again displayed a certain lack of empathy in manipulating the situation even at the expense of others' comforts. I'm starting to think Moffatt is poaching Sherlock for this version of the Doctor: more interested in ideas than feelings, except when the feelings are part of the experiment.

Still, never having had a nightmare about someone under my bed grabbing my leg, or even just a nightmare about someone under my bed at all, I found it hard to relate. I have many vivid dreams and remember most of them. But I think I'm more likely to be the thing others dream of having under their beds . . . That's just more my style.

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