Doctor Who Series 8 episode 4 review - Listen

Time to look at the latest episode of Doctor Who, will it rise above the sh*t of Robot of Sherwood? Not gonna lie, it does, but it would be disturbing for it not to.

Listen

Stephen Moffat, the show’s producer and the writer/co-writer of all the decent episodes of this series, has an act for taking the weird and mysterious and making a good story about them. This episode suffers from a few problems, particularly with the route it decided to go it, but it’s thought provoking and interesting, offers some unique character moments, and makes for one of the best episodes this season has to offer thus far.

Synopsis: Erm, Clara has a date with Danny Pink, and there creatures, or it’s possibly all in… yeah there’s no point giving a synopsis for this

In typical Moffatt style, this episode is confusing as hell. But that’s not unintentional. You’re left with unanswered questions; you may need to watch the episode a few times to understand everything. I’m fine with that. I love the works of Grant Morrison, whose writings often have a similar quality to them

The difference is they kind of contradict themselves here. There’s a scene in the orphanage where they show a monster under a blanket (and we see enough to know that it isn’t someone else from the orphanage) but the message of the episode is more psychological, it would’ve worked better if we hadn’t seen him take off the blanket at all.

I’m not saying that they can’t suggest that it’s real, but that scene pretty much confirmed it, so when the message that the Doctor is paranoid because he’s scared of the dark, it seemed sort of contradictory to the rest of the episode

We get a bit more of an insight into Clara’s relationship with Danny Pink, and something it might develop into (reckon she’s a grandmother, or possibly a version of her is, considering how many versions of her are about) his nervousness about his life as a soldier re-enforces what we’d guessed previously about his history. As is Clara’s enragement of being judged (first demonstrated with her conversation with Vastra in deep breath)

And it works, mostly… This episode is supposed to be surreal, but it tries a little too hard to explain it, if they’d just kept it distant enough so it might be entirely psychological (like leaving open the possibility of there being another kid in the room) but unexplained enough that it could be something real this would’ve worked better, as it is, it’s a tad confused.

Rating 8.5/10 

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