Doctor Who - "Listen"

"Listen" is an incredible episode of Doctor Who, easily the best episode of the season so far and probably the best episode in several seasons. It reads very much like a summary of everything Steven Moffat has done on the show so far, an episode that gets to the basis of fear and where it comes from and attempts to analyze it under a microscope in an attempt to gain a better understanding of not only the Doctor, but ourselves. On a surface level, you could say the episode succeeds because it utilizes many of Moffat's strongest abilities - digging into the effects of time travel and deeply analytically horror stories (the two components that made "Blink" an episode for the history books), but what makes "Listen" so incredible is the way it wraps so many of the series' defining statements into its story and manages to make them prevalent without making them overly obvious. It's the definition of a landmark episode, and no episode has felt quite that way since "The Doctors' Wife", which aired over three years ago, (Although I would probably accept an argument for putting "Day of the Doctor" up to that level, as well). 

There's so many components to "Listen", which is a story that admittedly flirts with the idea of being a bit too complex for its own good, something that has sunk many of Moffat's stories in recent years. What starts off as a seemingly commonplace monster story, where the Doctor attempts to analyze the monsters that we're all afraid are hiding under our beds by taking Clara to the childhood bedroom of Danny Pink and coming face-to-face with a monster itself, quickly becomes something much more than that - something that challenges the very idea of a monster story. In many ways, this episode calls back to "Midnight", another episode that started off as a seemingly typical monster story until it completely flipped the switch by having everyone in the episode view the Doctor as the monster. "Listen" argues that the very idea of a monster story is somewhat fabricated, a manifestation of our desire to be afraid of something. It purposely never reveals to us what was hiding under Danny Rupert Pink's bed, because that's not what "Listen" is about. "Listen" isn't about the thing you fear - it's about the fear itself, the idea of being afraid of something, and the idea that being afraid is a key part of what it takes to carry on. If we're afraid of something, there's a reason, and that should drive us to analyze just what we're afraid of and why. The Doctor lied in his bed as a child completely petrified of everything, and now he deals with that by trying to uncover everything he can about the universe.

Of course, that fear occasionally manifests itself into something a bit more troubling, and "Listen" suggests that's what's truly driving the anger and the slight insanity of the 12th Doctor. More than any of the previous three episodes, "Listen" felt like Peter Capaldi's defining moment as the Doctor. It's now incredibly clear just who this man is right now - he's an insane man, which, sure, we've always known, but under 12 we're seeing it more than ever, and "Listen" clues us into why he's that way. Recent incarnations of the Doctor have hid their insanity. The scared, crying little boy has always been there, sure, but they've been uncovered by fezzes and bowties and "Allon-sy!" and leather jackets and suits and anger and giddiness and what have you. But that's what's different about 12: all of that is starting to be progressively uncovered. The 12th Doctor, underneath his stone-cold snark, is the closest we've seen the Doctor to being that scared little boy weeping in bed in a long, long time. And my guess is that he's about to learn - as is Clara, and as is Danny Pink - that it's okay to be that person sometimes. "What's wrong with fear? Fear is a superpower!", the Doctor calls out. He doesn't quite believe it, or else he wouldn't be trying so hard to defeat it. But this incarnation of the Doctor seems to believe it more than most, and that's what makes him such an anomaly.