Hey youtubers it’s Charlie and this week’s episode of Doctor Who totally blew my mind,
not the whole episode.
It’s definitely going to go down as one of the more fun scary episodes but there was
just one scene that melted my face off.
So just like normal I’m going to do my top 5 moments, list all the classic references
I could find and do my review.
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So important stuff, careful for spoilers from the episode if you haven’t seen it yet.
I’ll wait just a sec...okay, here we go.
Top 5 moments.
Number 5 - Clara and Danny’s Date
It was a nice reversal on that first time they met, only this time we were seeing it
unfold from Clara’s perspective.
And we got to see her apartment.
Does anyone else get the sense that Moffat is trying to see how many funny places he
can park the TARDIS in series 8.
Capaldi totally one-upped himself with the bedroom.
The kitchen was funny, but the bedroom was better.
Especially with him looking into Clara’s vanity mirror.
That’s a whole other conversation.
What was he thinking about while waiting for Clara to come back.
I got a vibe from the first episode when he was talking about the Robot forgetting who
he was.
There were so many things in that Dinner Date, Samuel Anderson turning on a dime, the way
he reacted to the war killings.
I wonder where that’s going.
And the wells.
So I’ve been telling everyone to look at the planets in the opening sequence and there’s
the one that looks like either Gallifrey or Post-War Trenzalore but just in terms of quantity,
there are about 27, which was the number of planets Davros and the Daleks hid in the medusa
cascade.
And Danny Pink dug 23 wells.
I don’t think there’s any connection but I did think about that for a moment.
And when they paid the date off later, Clara commented on the “Laws of Time”.
I got the subtle dig at the classic doctor’s being scolded by the Time Lords but I wonder.
What are the actual Laws of Time?
If you can remember a time they’ve ever been directly referenced just write which
episode in the comments.
Number 4 - Dan the Soldier Man
This was so trippy.
Trying not to overthink it too much, but this is where my mind went.
Young Rupert is obsessed with the story he’s created for his army figure, dan the soldier
man.
Then, because of the courage Clara gives him and the Doctor’s Fantasy Dream, he’s inceptioned
into joining the real life army one day so that he can learn to be a hero.
And to reaffirm that, he changes his name to that of his childhood hero.
Dan the soldier man.
Later the war takes it’s toll and we meet him at coal hill school.
But let’s think about what was said about the story of Dan the Soldier man.
He was destined to lead an army, but he didn’t want to join said army.
Missy is collecting souls or soldiers…
Real quick to finish this sentence I have to talk about a quick finale spoiler so just
turn the volume down until this tag goes away...okay...here we go..
What if Missy will create the army of cybermen and try to force Danny to become the leader.
And he’ll be the focal point of the doctor stopping them.
Just a new theory after listening to dan the soldier man’s story.
Okay, spoiler part over.
Number 3 - Spaceman Danny Pink
Colonel Orson Pink from 100 years in the future.
So many things here, I guess our children will be pioneering time travel?
100 years isn’t that far away.
His whole story was just a self contained thing.
I don’t think there was anything Sinister about Orson but I do wonder if we’ll see
him again.
It would be a fun twist on the Clara Impossible Girl storyline to see multiple Danny Pink’s
coming and going.
I totally believe that his time capsule malfunctioned and sent him to the end of everything.
The Robin Crusoe metaphor was perfect.
And it implied that The Doctor will eventually die a final death.
At least unless he finds a way to exist in the void outside of normal spacetime.
That’s the crazy thing about trying to apply logic to Doctor Who, there is always some
timey wimey workaround that will allow the Doctor to walk away with a few scratches and
a new face.
I don’t think we actually caught an exact figure on the date of that final moment in
the universe.
And for those wondering, Moffat wasn’t saying the Universe was ending or time was ending.
Just that the universe had reached a point in it’s expansion when all matter started
to drift apart.
If you never watched, Neil Degrasse Tyson’s Cosmos talks a lot about what is happening
to the universe as time goes on.
It’s expansion is accellerating, so eventually all the galaxies and planets will just drift
apart until there’s no more gravity to hold everything together.
That’s billions of years away though.
Doctor Who Science Lession over, moving on.
Number 2 - The Shared Nightmare and new monster
I loved the idea of a universally shared experience tied to a new type of monster.
Yes, I do think the hiding creatures were a new thing we haven’t seen before.
If they had been the silence they would have been way taller.
And no, I don’t think moffat will ever show us what they look like.
He probably doesn’t even know what they look like.
The bedsheet is just meant to represent what each of us pictures when we think of something
creeping under the bed.
I got the sense that they were trying to make a joke on the Doctor being the creature under
the bed.
Like things go missing, strange noises, unexplained things happen and it’s all because the doctor
is jumping around in time and space.
It was a little creepy till they showed him drinking the man’s coffee.
Then I just understood it to be a joke.
I always forget how good the doctor is at pinching stuff.
If he can pinch the Moment from the most secured location on Gallifrey, he can pinch a cup
of coffee.
Thematically, the idea of the Doctor as a thief will continue in next week’s episode
called “Time Heist”.
and my Number 1 moment - A Stop over on Gallifrey
I lost it a little when this happened, I thought it was going to be some creepy barn Clara
was forced to sleep in.
In case you missed it, Clara’s speech at the end explained that the Barn they were
in was The Same Barn the John Hurt Doctor took the Moment to in the 50th Anniversary.
I know there was some confusion during the 50th about which planet he was on with all
the Sand.
Everything I’ve read about this episode says this barn scene was on Gallifrey.
So Unless something weird was going on, John Hurt was on Gallifrey during the 50th.
I just love how they tie the idea of the Doctor’s deepest fears to him committing his greatest
atrocity.
Time isn’t really a circle, it’s more like a river that forks, but Moffat, who actually
did write this episode himself, gives us a lot of information about the doctor’s motivation.
He has, at all times since his first face, been driven by fear.
And thanks to the courage clara gave him, he’s used that fear to become The Doctor.
He wasn’t called the Doctor when he was born, he gave himself that name.
Probably as a result of what Clara told him.
I try not to get too tied up in paradoxes and timelines.
But I love the thought that Clara is so fundamentally tied to the Doctor’s life.
All of his lives really.
Like he wouldn’t be the Doctor if she had never existed.
It makes your head spin a little, because you wonder how did things go down the first
time.
Because Clara didn’t exist before the doctor, he presumably found her, then the impossible
girl storyline on trenzalore happened, cut to millions of claras all over his timeline,
cut to child doctor given the courage to join the time lord academy by clara.
Yikes.
We’ll be talking about this plot point for years.
But now it’s your turn, let me know what your favorite moment was and where do you
think this episode ranks in terms of scary doctor who episodes?
I’d say it’s not the scariest, but I’d put it in the top 20 at least.
Here’s some of the bigger classic who and other doctor references I noticed.
Please add any you saw in the comments:
First was the title of the episode, Listen.
It reminds you a lot of the one word Doctor Who episode titles and the fact it was a bit
horror made me think of Blink.
Although I still think Blink is scarier.
Then There’s Hide, that was Clara’s fourth episode during series 7b.
So a one word title fourth episode two series in a row.
We’ll have to see if the trend continues next year during series 9.
Everytime Clara and Danny Pink are together the subject of Lady Killing comes up.
That sounds like it’s going to be paid off in the finale.
The Telepathic Link on the TARDIS is now my favorite part of Capaldi’s TARDIS.
It reminded me of something out of a frankenstein story, especially with the steam punky look
of the console and the rest of the room.
The candles too.
The new TARDIS is like a low-fi looking, sinister looking frankenstein laboratory.
This was the first time Capaldi has used the Psychic Paper, glad to see that back.
I remember when Matt Smith showed off an ID badge once and it had a picture of the first
doctor.
The Toy Robot the doctor is handling here in Danny’s room looks just like the Robot
from Tom Baker’s First Episode.
Then the box of soldiers is just making me hallucinate cybermen
And then when they’re at the end of everything and the doctor is going on about silence,
it made me think of the Silence’s prophecy, Silence will fall when the First Question
is asked.
Capaldi’s Doctor has been asking questions non-stop.
The creatures weren’t the silence, but it makes me think that the silence’s prophecy
might carry forward into series 8 somehow.
Overall I thought this episode was the strongest of all the new ones so far.
I gave it a solid A plus.
It didn’t linger too long on affectation during the date scene and because Moffat has
that crazy Doctor Who mind palace and he wrote the episode by himself.
The story served as this huge bookend for the Doctor’s Existence.
Clara helped him become the doctor, so he could one day go on to save clara and help
her help himself become the doctor.
I also love the way Danny Pink is becoming a part of the team without even knowing it.
His timeline is now fundamentally linked to clara and the Doctors.
This all feels like setup for a huge Danny Pink moment in the finale.
And the idea that Fear will take you home feels so important now.
Like the Doctor’s fear, missy’s fear, clara’s fear and so on, will be the connective
tissue of series 8 in general.
I read somewhere that there’s a lot of drama going on behind the scenes on Doctor Who.
With the producers and Moffat, and for whatever reason, Moffat himself was dominating a lot
of the series 8 stories even though a bunch of different writers worked on scripts.
I don’t know if any of that is true, but I definitely feel like episodes that are directly
connected to the big missy plot will benefit from direct Moffat involvement.
So with that in mind, here are the other episodes Moffat is listed as writer on.
There’s episode 5, Time Heist.
That’s next week.
Episode 6, The Caretaker, in two weeks and the final two epsiodes 11 and 12.
That’s Dark Water and Death in Heaven respectively.
So I’d expect that those episodes will directly tie in with the Missy plot.
Just in terms of the acting, Capaldi was fantastic all by himself.
I love watching him lecture himself and Samuel Anderson did an amazing job of creating a
future Danny Pink, even though technically it was his grandson.
My next video will be my top 5 scary episodes of Doctor Who.
I’ll post that tonight.
Be sure to subscribe to get it.
And my Q&A will post on Sunday.
So leave all your questions about the stopover on gallifrey, the missy plot and anything
else you want me to include.
I’ll announce the giveaway winner when I post the Q&A.
Right now click here for the bonus video and click here for the Q&A.
I’ll update the annotations as soon as soon as I post them.
Thanks for watching, see you guys tonight.
High Fives!