So I suppose there's still time for the Christmas special to tie up the loose ends from 'Listen'?

We might also get a reason for all the writing on the blackboard. (Although with Moffett, there's no guarantee of this).

Huh?
What do you mean there's still time?
The Christmas special is filmed, edited, finished.
Or are you expecting SM to see your post and think, let's re-edit the whole Christmas episode, add in some explanations, which aren't really needed anyway, for an episode shown a few months ago that has nothing whatsoever to do with the Christmas one?

Either way, I think if you are waiting for the Christmas episode to explain things from Listen I suspect you'll be waiting a very long time...

I meant time as in series 8 and broadcast time, being only 3 months from Listen, as opposed to 12 months.

There's nothing to tie up surely, ambiguity was served

Listen was deliberately ambiguous, not everything needed answers and clarity. The chalkboard writing could have been The Doctor, or it could have been something or someone else...the point is that we don't find out.

It's like Midnight all over again. We never found out what was out there, what it's ultimate goal was...and that's part and package (and power) of the story. And yet some people still think we'll get an answer someday.

No loose ends need to be explained, period

The last three posts beat me to it and sum it up nicely. Nothing more to see here.

Or in reality, lazy writing. Being deliberately ambiguous is, to me, just annoying.

Whether you find it annoying or not does not make it lazy writing.

In actual fact, you are a lazy viewer, unwilling to make the imaginitive connection with the story the author was trying to provoke.

'Listen' was anything but a lazy script; it's pretty obvious an awful lot of thought went into it, but I suspect your knowledge of the creative writing process is non-existent. An episode that is all theme and no action, as this was, is the exact opposite of 'lazy', as a strong, well-realized theme is the hardest thing to achieve. Anyone can string a narrative together; it takes skill and dedication to make that narrative meaningful.

And there we go - you find it annoying and demand answers, whilst gratuitously insulting the writer. It's not lazy writing, it's lazy viewing - and a dose of that ol' entitlement word again....
Most other people enjoyed the episode and enjoyed the mystery.

There are no loose ends from Listen to wrap up.
The whole point of the story is that the unknown is more terrifying than the known. It was deliberately ambiguous. We aren't supposed to know.

Honestly, some people seem to require spoon-feeding at every stage...

You may not like it and prefer simplistic stories where everything is black and white, but it doesn't make it lazy writing.

The only thing that bothers me about Listen is, why was the Doctor sitting on the Tardis roof at the beginning? Does he do that often? Is it a good place to think/relax/meditate?

Claras telepathic connection to Danny and Orson Pink needs explaining. Hints were given that he could or should be their grandson or even great grandson from the future . So now what happens with Danny being dead ?. Two possibilites Danny is somehow brought back to the world of the living so the future with Clara still happens. Or Clara was pregnant before he died.. Rumor is christmas special is about dreams. Maybe she is dreaming in hospital after having the baby ?. Wakes up to see her family or 12 holding her child ?.

I never saw it that way. Clara got phoned by Danny, a call she was waiting for, and couldn't help but get distracted by it as she was feeling and thinking about him quite a lot at that moment - so the TARDIS took them to Rupert and not young Clara. The Doctor later re-activated the same circuits taking him to Orson. Later, the "idiot" Doctor got himself knocked out, and was bleeding from his head. He moans early-mid-flight getting Clara distracted again - so they end up in his timeline at the barn.

So - why did they meet Orson if Danny is now dead - well he is in Dannys' timeline but doesn't mean he had to be directly linked to Danny. Clara "could" be pregnant right now, or maybe he is a descendant of one of Dannys' relatives, could be anything. Time can be re-written, anythings possible - that toy soldier that Rupert should have grown up with and somehow passed to Orson through the generations is actually now in a barn on Gallifrey so should never have existed on Earth .....

As stated above, no explanations needed, lets keep it ambiguos, its more interesting and we can spend the time watching new stories. They wrote the story to entertain us, not to give us detailed boring minutae ......

Orson is the only loose end.

Everything else was non-ambiguous. The theme of the episode was the ambiguity involved in knowing whether strange things happening are the result of the natural or the supernatural, but the conclusion was anything but supernatural.

Not sure what you are on about here.

Why does the Toy Soldier being in a Barn on Gallifrey AFTER Orson gave it to Clara mean that it should "never have existed on Earth"?

Even Moffat doesn't know who wrote on the chalkboard.

More to the point - where was the lamp?

But it was explained what it was. It was an entity, a monster that hasn't taken to a formation so it can survive the x-tonic sunlight. It found the cabin and wanted to take over the people inside of it so it can take their form because as long as they were in the cabin, the sunlight couldn't get the entity.

Nothing is explained nowadays, we just take it as it is and be done with it.

This is accurate.

To get specific for a moment, I think there's a certain story-telling difference between 'ambiguity' and 'uncertainty'. I suppose it's a little like the difference between 'imply' and 'infer'.

Many stories go along the lines of "Is the villain evil or just misguided? Are the monsters out to get us, or to save us? Did the heroes do the right things by blowing up the base?" Even if you don't get an answer, the story is presenting you with the options to consider.

Listen was like that, up until the end - the question was always, "Are these things the actions of undetectable aliens, or something more rational? Is the Doctor paranoid or perceptive?" The story actively presented us with two alternatives. Of course, in Listen's case, it then collapsed them down to one certainty.

Midnight is subtly different. It presented a situation that had no answer, didn't give you any answers, with the characters having to make decisions based on no information other than preservation of their own lives. There's not much else to form debate around.

I would call a story ambiguous if the writer is implying possibilities. When the inference is in the hands of the viewer, it's more of an uncertainty.

Yes indeed, my mistake - So actually - nothing at all left to explain then about Listen

Because it created a paradox. If the toy soldier was with the Doctor, hundreds of years in the past, then it couldn't have been in the children's home for Clara to give to Rupert.

Moreover, why didn't Capaldi recognise the toy when he saw it in Rupert's bedroom if it had been part of his childhood?

It amazes me how many people forget this point.