The Doctor confronts the age-old question: what’s underneath our beds at night? Warning: spoiler-filled review.

 Steven Moffat is well known for adapting childhood fears and using them to create an effective Doctor Who horror story. Moving statues? Cracks in walls? Shadows? He’s done them all. And while it’s true that Moffat used the idea of Something Under The Bed in The Girl in the Fireplace, the trope makes a reappearance eight years later in what is the best episode of the series so far.

Listen has the Doctor (Peter Capaldi) investigate the possibility of a creature so perfect at hiding that we don’t know it exists. Interrupting Clara’s (Jenna Coleman) date with fellow teacher Danny Pink (Samuel Anderson), he enlists her help in proving that there is something under our beds after all.

But is the Doctor right? Is there something hiding only a few centimetres below us every night? It’s an intriguing question, and one assumes that, after 45 minutes, there’ll be an answer. One is rather surprised, then, when, as the credits, roll, the answer is still ambiguous, left for interpretation. It’s a move that has predictably frustrated a significant part of the fandom who like solid facts over guesses and hypotheses, but I personally think it’s a good move – for the episode. While Listen appears to be a horror episode in the vein of 2007’s Blink, it would more aptly be described as a character study. The focus of the episode isn’t the ‘monster’, it’s the interactions between the Doctor and Clara as they seek an answer to the question. It’s this character interaction that is the highlight of the episode, with the Clara/Doctor dynamic taking an interesting turn, particularly towards the end when the Doctor loses his cool and shouts at her. It’s been quite a while since the Doctor raised his voice at a companion, and it was quite a shock seeing it happen again. It will be interesting to see if this sort of behaviour continues in later episodes.

However, this episode isn’t just about them. On their ‘mission’ to find the monster, the Doctor and Clara come across a young Danny Pink (who’s going by his original name of Rupert) and the time traveller Orson Pink. Both characters heavily imply that Clara and Danny have a very strong relationship; indeed, Orson hints at the fact that the two are his ancestors. While there’s no necessity for Rupert and Danny to be who they are, they do provide a running theme throughout the episode, which culminates nicely with the gunless soldier toy. Meeting Rupert also provides some backstory for his characters – we learn why he became a soldier, which will undoubtedly feature heavily later on, especially if he and the Doctor ever meet.

The present-day Danny also features quite heavily, with him and Clara going on the date that they organised at the end of Into the Dalek. Unfortunately, it was disastrous, and is also one of two main problems I have with the episode. While the date scene is suitably cringeworthy, and Coleman and Anderson act their socks off while their characters blurt out the wrong things, it all felt forced – drama for the sake of drama. It wouldn’t have mattered either way if their date had been perfect or not; the Doctor would still have found Clara and asked for her help, and I imagine that all of the non-date scenes would have unfolded exactly as they did in the episode. Why then, did they continually blunder and say stupid things? Yes, it is somewhat realistic, but there’s no narrative purpose or payoff either, as they kiss at the end of the episode anyway, with no hard feelings at all.

The second problem I have is with the climax of the episode, specifically when the TARDIS seemingly lands on Gallifrey, and when Clara hides under the young Doctor’s bed before comforting him and possibly inspiring his later life to some extent. Admittedly, I’m nitpicking here, but it’s worth noting that the boy Clara comforts is not explicitly stated to be the Doctor, and nor is the barn said to be on Gallifrey, though the episode certainly implies both to be the case. But after thinking about it, I’ve come to the conclusion that the episode’s implications are just plain wrong. The boy isn’t the Doctor, and the barn isn’t on Gallifrey. Clara was mistaken.

 Why? Well, there are a couple of reasons. For starters, what we see of the barn in Listen looks nothing like the version in The Day of the Doctor (there’s no upper loft), and the sky outside it is blue, not the burnt orange of Gallifrey’s atmosphere. Granted, Gallifrey has had a blue sky on at least occasion (thanks to an oversight of the production team, or simply because they didn’t have the budget to apply an orange filter to the film), but it seems extremely unlikely that the modern production team would ‘forget’ to make the sky orange, especially considering that the other shots of Gallifrey during The Day of the Doctor all had the familiar orange tint.

So, considering that the barn wasn’t on Gallifrey, then it’s reasonable to assume that the boy wasn’t the Doctor. Yes, the Doctor did go through a troubled childhood, but it’s been stated that he grew up on Gallifrey, not another planet/moon, and it’s also known that he had a family. While it’s possible that his family may have died when he was very young and was sent to a children’s home...not buying it. If he had a family, surely he would have lived with other relatives had they died? Another reason that the boy can’t be the Doctor, however, is because the male Gallifreyan in the scene mentions an ‘army’. As far as I’m aware, Gallifrey only had an army long before the Doctor was born, and during the Time War. They never had need of one in between. This would imply that the scene is set during the Time War, or in Gallifrey’s distant past when the Time Lord’s policy of non-interference hadn’t been enforced. So despite the episode’s efforts to convince you that Clara is once again a central figure in the Doctor’s life, it’s evident that she simply assumed things based on the little knowledge she had of the Doctor, Gallifrey and the Time Lords.

As unfortunate as it sounds, my issues with that scene do bring the episode down quite a bit. If the boy isn’t the Doctor, then the entire basis for the episode is gone, Clara’s speech about fear is meaningless, and the fact that she’s the ‘monster’ under the bed is rendered moot. So while the episode is certainly good, it falls short of being great mainly because of two rather important nitpicks. Despite this, Listen is still the best episode of the series so far. Its dark and creepy atmosphere is very effective, and has some great character moments.

 8.5/10