Doctor Who Recap: Listen

No campy fight scenes between slave workers with dishware and weak, unintelligent robots in this episode. Writer Steven Moffat has gone for a more introspective look at the Doctor for the fourth episode of season eight, “Listen.” At the start of the episode, the Doctor is sitting atop his Tardis, meditating about the possibility of a hidden species that’s always in the background and always unseen, the monsters under the bed that every person has been scared of and has dreamt about at some point. He paces inside the Tardis, writes out his thoughts on a chalkboard (what we can probably safely assume has been the thing he has been obsessed with for the past few episodes) and questions himself in the tense, uneasy silence of the Tardis: “Why do we talk out loud when we know we’re alone?” He questions what a hidden species would do after years of silence and evolution, and puts down the piece of chalk, only to turn around and discover the answer written on the chalkboard: “Listen.” Meanwhile, Clara and Danny are having an awkward first date, during which time the fact that Danny was a soldier comes up again and both parties get offended and flustered and Clara leaves in a huff. The Doctor picks up the visibly distressed Clara—but don’t worry, he’s totally insensitive about it and more focused about his quest to find the monsters under the bed, in keeping with his asshole personality. Clara and the Doctor talk about the dream everyone seems to have at some point—the dream of being…