Doctor Who 08.04 “Listen” reaction post

[annathepiper]

Half a week late, but this is what you get when you’re me and trying to pull the rest of a novel together behind deadline!

Picoreview for this one: I’ve seen some very positive reaction about this one, and I’ve seen some outright disgusted reaction too. (The Doctor Who Podcast, which I listen to, had dramatically different opinions on it!) For me, it was one of the better episodes I’ve seen in a while–but shaky on the final dismount.

Don’t turn around and look at the spoilers!

Read the rest of this entry »

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

Comments

[ariaflame.livejournal.com]

It still could have been a kid playing a trick. And just because what stirred the Doctor up was what that was, doesn't mean that there hasn't been something else hiding around humans.

[annathepiper]

It could have been a kid playing a trick, sure--but when I was listening to the Doctor Who Podcast review of it, they brought up a point that I agree with, and that point is this. That a kid playing a trick is REALLY unlikely to have pulled off the whole thing while being completely silent--no giggles, no nothing. Particularly when the Doctor issued his lines about "go in peace, we won't look", etc. No sound of young feet running out of the room, no door closing, no nothing.

And I have a real hard time buying that neither Clara nor the Doctor would have realized that there was a kid under that blanket. Especially Clara, who is, after all, supposed to be a teacher. If she really thought there was a kid pulling a prank, what was keeping her from just whipping around and whipping the blanket off?

[tiggymalvern.livejournal.com]

I don't believe a kid playing a trick could have pulled off that mysterious disappearance from under the blanket for one moment either. Not the way it was set up.

The other thing that I felt fell down about the episode was the whole part in the ship at the end of time. We were supposed to be scared, to be terrified of what might be outside. But I was sitting there the whole time thinking - Hang on. If there are invisible creatures so supremely evolved to hide that they've been around humans all this time, in our houses, living with us, then they're obviously not hostile, are they? Or we might have noticed. So there was just no dramatic tension there for me at all, which kind of ruined the supposed climactic build up.

The scene with the blanket OTOH worked well, because the theoretical creature wasn't supposed to be a specific threat of attack, just scary as the unknown.

The best Capaldi episode so far, but definitely needed more thought.

[annathepiper]

As a Night Vale fan, I spent most of the episode going "So wait, the Doctor is hunting the Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home"? Which kinda made me have the same "this isn't really a monster" reaction, since in Night Vale, the Faceless Old Woman isn't really hostile. ;)

The blanket scene was certainly sublimely scary at the time--but ultimately I think that if either the Doctor OR Clara had had any reason to believe at all that there was an actual child behind them, they would not have behaved the same way at all. They were behaving very much like they thought something supernatural/inhuman was behind them. Which gets back to the whole "if there really was a kid, the kid would have started laughing at how SERIOUS the adults were being" thing for me.

And yeah, I didn't really see a trail from "scary thing under the bed doesn't want us to look at it" to "scary thing outside the spaceship wants IN and wants to kick the Doctor's ass".