Sunday, September 14, 2014

Doctor Who: Series 8, Episode 4 – “Listen” (2014)

 
Sigh… This episode gets off to such a good start and really has a lot going for it, but it seems to splinter in the middle and ends with a lot of hand-waving that doesn’t actually resolve anything.  It’s frustrating, because I’m a total Whovian, and truly, all I want to do is love this show.  I want to love the stories and the characters, the jokes and the aliens, the thrills and the heart and the wonder, I want to love it all to pieces, and it would be so easy with just a little encouragement.  But the writing gets so haphazard and sloppy that it makes it hard for me to love it.
 
I could tell before the credits that this was a Moffat episode – the nightmare fuel of the week is Moffat all the way.  In “Listen,” the Doctor brings Clara on a search for the truth between everyone’s shared bad dream, the inexplicable fear that one is being watched in an empty room and something is listening under the bed.  It’s cut from the same cloth as the Weeping Angels, the Vashta Nerada, and the Silence, and while there’s a law of diminishing returns whenever a writer keeps drawing from the same well, it’s eerily done with some genuine creepiness.
 
However, this rather straightforward horror plot gets tangled up with a timeline-jumping tour through the past and future of one Danny Pink, the handsome-but-emotionally-damaged fellow teacher with whom Clara just had a date (don’t ask how these two storylines get stapled together.)  This thread is also very Moffat, with circular timey-wimeyness all over the place.  There’s nothing the matter with it, but it distracts from the already-engaging creature-under-the-bed story, and as a result, neither plot feels complete.  Both ideas could easily have been given their own episodes, so each could’ve been fleshed out and carried to more satisfying endings.
 
The good news is that this is the best yet for Twelve’s characterization.  While his consuming need to discover this unnamed creature comes out of nowhere, I like his curiosity about it, that itching, Doctory desire to know.  He also has a beautiful, encouraging scene with a small frightened child that’s pure Doctor, and it’s high time his character had a compassionate moment like that.  His default orneriness seems to be finding a good balance.  As long he doesn’t drift into jerkiness, I like him sharp and curmudgeonly – he may give a rousing speech to the aforementioned child, but he’s not about to be bothered with bedtime stories, and his eye-rolling at Clara’s three bedroom mirrors (“Why don’t you just turn your head?”) is a riot.  Peter Capaldi is terrific here – funny, intense, probing, frightened, cranky, and insightful.  If the show’s current problems continue, I hope they’re rightfully acknowledged as writing issues and not shunted onto him in particular or an older Doctor in general.  If I can see this version of Twelve from week to week, it’ll definitely help me get through the plot holes and overall slapdashery.
 
It seems like I have more Moffat complaints every week (again, I am in fact eager to love this show – give me an inch, and I’ll gladly go the rest of the mile,) but it’s been bugging me that every one of his episodes this season have included at least one critical comment from the Doctor about Clara’s appearance:  ragging on her height, saying she’s getting old, mistakenly thinking she’s removed her makeup.  I get that Twelve isn’t attracted to Clara, and that’s fantastic, but you don’t need him to casually criticize her looks to convey that.  Not being attracted to someone isn’t the same as finding someone unattractive, and it doesn’t need to be explained or justified.  He’s not attracted to her because he’s just not.  It’s conceivable.  Ten wasn’t attracted to Martha or Donna, and you know how I know that?  He treated them platonically.  Simple as that.

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