I watched both the leaked episode and the actual episode and understood it neither times. It wasn't scary (didn't Moffat say it was a scary episode?).

It seemed like another "filler" episode, as if they had spare filming time. Is that Danny Pink from the past or the future? And what was the whole thing about the grandmother stuff?

Perhaps you should watch it again with subtitles? I find it makes all the difference. Also, if you watch on iplayer, you can pause it and replay bits you're not sure of.

There are plenty of reports that it was very scary

Just not for you and me.

(I appreciate the direction, though. Very eerie. Well done, Mackinnon )

I think I'll do that. At some parts it was quite hard to keep up with the roll of the episode.

Funny that. For me it was one of the most significant episodes in the history of the show. Not just New Who. I suppose different people get different things from each episode.

The Doctor begins, through paranoia, to formulate a theory that no-one is ever alone and decides to test that theory. In the end we never find out whether he was right or not, but we are presented with two possibilities:
1. He is and there is indeed a strange entity lurking in the shadows and hiding from every life form.
2. He isn't and this was all a result of a minor paranoid breakdown which may have been caused by Clara interacting with the Doctor's younger self.

In addition to this, we had a bit of development of Danny's character and Danny and Clara's relationship.

I suggest a re-watch.

Are you joking? I actually thought that was incredibly scary as there will be kids all over the world unable to sleep for WEEKS!

LOL.

Are you actually sure you watched it? Everything was explained within the episode with the ambiguity remaining around whether there really was anything menacing them under the sheet/outside the space base or whether it was another child or just atmospherics/machinery clanking.

I think I expected too much from the episode. When I saw that it was supposed to be a scary episode, I thought they meant, scary episode. Blink, Silence in the Library. The episode was about fear, which was already done in the latter, SITL. Moffat running out of ideas? Trying too hard to make the show scary? Me about to get shouted at by Moffat fanboys?

We'll never know.

I agree, it was definitely a great turn for Doctor Who. I just didn't understand some parts. I'll watch carefully next time.

I've never been scared of an episode of Doctor Who before.

Until now.

YAY. I think the production team's work is done

Danny is from the present. He's a former soldier and school teacher at Clara's school. She goes on a date with him.
She travels back in time with the Doctor (to Danny's past rather than her own, due to her mind wandering) and meets young Rupert (Danny's real name). They have a mini adventure and leave Rupert with the idea of his soldier (Dan the soldier man) to comfort him, potentially creating the man Clara later knows.

Whilst Clara is back in the present, trying to repair her relationship with Danny, the Doctor uses Clara's connection with the TARDIS to travel forwards and trace the mystery. He finds Orson Pink, a descendant of Danny's, who is from 100 or so years in the future but is stranded at the end of time. Orson has the toy soldier as a family heirloom and through a knowing look at Clara, it's implied he either knows her as one of his ancestors, or knows that she knows Danny.

All I took from the episode was that Clara was responsible for the Doctors childhood nightmare.

I didn't get tje Danny bits. So we see him as a kid. Then see his great great grandson who still had the soldier Clara gave him which he then gives to Clara seemingly acknowledging that he knows she is his grandmother. Obviously he will have seen pictures or her with Danny. But I'm not sure how it was relevant. She gives it to the young Doctor and then we see him as the war Doctor

I think I must be too stupid to grasp this new series 8 greatness because for me, it was yet again boring.. Not frightening or suspenseful or eerie. Just blah.

Will rewatch later in hopes I see the point that I've missed.

That makes sense!

This means that Orson is Danny's grandson, and that he mentioned his grandmother, which would be Clara. Hinting that there will be a romance between Danny & Clara.

Not trying to sound like Mark Kermode here, but Listen wasn't a horror story just as Tinker Tailer wasn't a film about spies. This was a story about time travel, destiny, pre-destiny, and finally about FEAR - all thats good and bad about it. In exploring fear and its effect on all of us, it shows intense scary scenes, but the point wasn't to be just a simple horror story. It was so much more cleverer than that.



Great analysis, can I refine it slightly (EDIT: or more than slightly)

The Doctor is in his TARDIS and is pondering about something which affected him when he was small - a memory that maybe just came back to him or has been there for a while now. That was - the monster which came out from under his bed when he was small when he was most afraid. About how that "monster" at first just told him "LISTEN'. The monster who inspired him to take hold of his fear and how he has used it repeatedly many times to help others and/to take control of situations. That time in his life was so important to him he revisited it at one of the most significant points of his future life as an adult in the Time War. A time which had such an influence on him it led him to adopt a mantra and to choose his name - The Doctor.

In investigating it he settles for what seems like a logical explanation - there is a race out there who specialise in hiding and finally he is going to seek them out and come face to face with them (Its kinda like Prometheus and the chase for the creator). In doing so he sets off some amazing pre-destination paradoxes. He inadvertently inspires Rupert Pink to become Danny Pink by sowing the idea of Dan the soldier, the heroic soldier to make him forget their meeting. He inspires Danny Pinks' descendant to become the pioneers of Time Travel. He inspires Orson Pink to be the hero, to brave his fears and to leave the TARDIS to save the Doctor from being pulled out into nothingness even when earlier he just didn't want to be there one more night or open that door.

Also, while investigating this mysterious hiding race, he accidentally leads Clara into doing something trippy, by landing in Dannys' early timeline instead of hers where she is the one to comfort the young Danny during an intense event in his life. The Doctor then follows this timeline still thinking its Clara's to find a future descendent stuck at the end of the universe and sees what he thinks is his chance to come face to face with that horror that scared him/inspired when he was young. He obsessively pushes Clara away back into the TARDIS to face his fear/inspiration on his own. Increasingly guilty/afraid about causing this in the first place, i.e. by sending the Doctor on the wrong timeline, and having too much fear to tell him the truth, Clara tries to set things right by flying the TARDIS the Doctor and all of them out of danger the only way she knows how. Concentrating on her timeline in the telepathic circuits and letting it fly away. Ofcourse, she is thinking about the Doctor at the time because he is unconscious and she is worried and so the TARDIS ends up in his timeline.

Ultimately, the Doctor through Clara and through the TARDIS create the events which finally lead to the Doctor as we know him existing in the first place. That same Doctor ultimately has many adventures, saves many people, and one day inadvertently meets many Pinks through time, causing young Rupert to become Danny today (and later to create a descendent called Orson as well) which ultimately leads to a sequence of events that result in Clara by his bedside as a kid.

Lets not forget who Clara was when the Doctor first met her, an enigma, an impossible girl, a control freak but just a human, with fears and so scared. Now she is strong, she cares so much for him, she handles herself admirably in tense situations, oh and by the way still has the strength to have a normal life, dating, teaching and giving the Doctor some common sense at times, etc. Through the Doctor she is a much stronger person too like Danny. Through the experiences she has shared with the Doctor, she gained wisdom that inadvertently got replayed back to the younger Doctor to inspire him to become the Timelord who inspired her to grow and become a stronger Clara who then fed her strength back to the younger Doctor and around and around ..........

Timey wimey at its best !


p.s. I don't see it taken as red that Orson is related to Clara. Only the Doctor thought he was chasing Claras' timeline, when actually he was following Dannys'. Clara & Danny may get together, not doubting that at all, just saying .......

Indeed - Orson said one of his grandparents had been involved in time-travel. He didn't say which one. If it was Danny then Clara needn't have been his grandmother. But Clara thought it was her, and that she was fated to get together with Danny. And so she did. Yet more predestination thingy.

and just one more thing - Danny was also fearful as an adult - very nervous with Clara on the date and while waiting to see her. It was because of this fear perhaps that the conversation got so tense at the beginning until Clara broke the ice.

I didn't really understand half of it, but I'll rewatch tomorrow. And tonight, once I've I got into bed, I won't be sticking my feet out of the duvet. Or opening my eyes.

Plus the Doctor ' taking orders' from Clara was a joke, between them because she'd met him and comforted him when he was a child. She was speaking to him as if he was still a child. Nothing to do with her supposedly being in charge.

So what was the monster under the young boy's bed.
I don't understand why that was just forgotten about.

The monster under he sheet was confusing. Even after the episode's resolve, the way that scene was presented didn't make complete sense, even in these realms. I don't understand why we saw the sheet slip and caught a glimpse of that face if there was nothing actually there… the whole scene was played out too much like there was physically something there. Still, it was a creepy scene and I feel that, maybe, it maybe missed a quick fix in a redraft somewhere once the ending and resolve had been decided on…

Good episode though. PC was a lot stronger as the Doctor - he does feel very settled now and there were a few more moments in this episode where the Doctor was more endearing and… likeable than he has been in previous weeks. His scenes with young Danny/Rupert were very nice.

Clara's getting stronger every week and she's a real asset to the show now. I hope PC continues to bed in well over the next couple of episodes as I'd like to see them both on a more equal footing, but it's all good character work and Clara's much improved on last season. Always liked and enjoyed her, but she really is much improved this year and getting better.

Really not sold on Danny yet. He seems like a likeable enough sort and it's nice to see the characters being shades in and given some texture before he is pushed more closer to centre-stage. I do think the minor spats and bust-ups between him and Clara as they get together could become a bit tiresome though. Their little spat and tiffs are a tiny bit clunky and while it's nice to see them make up so easily, I hope it's not a pattern that continues on in to any proper relationship they have. Having Danny's descendants and childhood explored was a nice touch - gives the character some time to grow without him actually being there in the action at this point, and gave what story there was more weight rather than it focus on a one-off guest role. Only thing I'd say is, although I'm fully aware it's the same actor and he's limited to a few things like … appearance and vocal cords, Orson wasn't exactly too imaginative a role. I don't think there was a whole lot there to him and the performance wasn't that different from Danny…. I get they're relatives, but this was a very sparsely populated and insular episode, would have been nice to have seen a tinsy bit more range in the roles.

Interesting to see Clara and Danny's potential future and legacy introduced so early. I wonder if it's all misdirection and we're way off the mark though…

The revisit to the barn was a nice touch, and it was a very nice framing device for the episode, with Clara under the bed putting the whole idea into the Doctor's head in the first instance. But then, that kind of confused matters with the 'is it real?' blanket ghoul. Perhaps it would have been easier if they'd just established it as some kind of entity that can dance about through time and space once it selects a target, which could have ferried it across all these eras to interact and put the shits up our leads at various stages of their life. But then again, we'd be pushing too close toward establishing a new monster that would no doubt be used more than its steam really justifies. Was ultimately refreshing to have an ominous thread we could barely get a glimpse of, real or not, rather than something the Doc might wave a screwdriver at or try and reason with. Also, the action figure of blanket monster would have been either shit or spectacular.

Who can say? The logical explanation is that it was just another kid under a blanket.

The bit which sold it for me was the look between them over the toy soldier. She said it was a family heirloom and it could easily be implied that he was only letting her handle it because she too was family...

[quote=customcoaster;74791270]The monster under he sheet was confusing. Even after the episode's resolve, the way that scene was presented didn't make complete sense, even in these realms. I don't understand why we saw the sheet slip and caught a glimpse of that face if there was nothing actually there… the whole scene was played out too much like there was physically something there. Still, it was a creepy scene and I feel that, maybe, it maybe missed a quick fix in a redraft somewhere once the ending and resolve had been decided on…

....../QUOTE]

The "monster" (played by Kiran Shah I believe) was most likely a kid playing a prank who was quite scared once he got found out, we were meant to think it was some kind of alien. The thing the Doctor was chasing was an expert in hiding, it wouldn't just appear on the bed, the doctor knew that. So he gave the kid the opportunity to think it had fooled them and to leave with his head high and not in embarrassment.

Just my opinion ....