While the Series 9 episode "Heaven Sent" may have the most clout among the hardcore fanbase, many overlook that Series 8 already gave us the best (Moffat era) Doctor Who story of all time.
Series 8 was a very weird, experimental time for the show. New Doctors were ironically nothing new at this point, but we had a scary old Scottish Doctor that nobody was entirely sure about. Advertised as a BBC "Original British Drama" production and sent to a later timeslot, the show was trying to reach a more adult audience with more experimental episodes and mature themes. This culminates in "Listen", a story that scrutinises the very core of the show, its central character and its lead writer.
Steven Moffat has a certain auteur style - he likes to go a bit wild with juggling crazy ideas, larger-than-life themes and reusing the same archetypes over and over. With this script, Moffat was clearly reining himself in to make a properly cohesive story without indulging his bad habits too much. He deconstructs his own tendency to create "primal fear" monsters with abilities that attack the human psyche, instead proposing a monster so vague that it probably doesn't even exist. This doesn't stop the Doctor from pursuing it with unusual tenacity. Like a classic sci-fi adventurer obsessed with discovering the truths of the universe, the Doctor is ignorant of the truths he learns about himself, tying into his arc of working out who he is exactly. While the closest we get to a monster is a bedspread in a scared little boy's room, but the tension of the unknown makes it just as terrifying as any Weeping Angel or Silent.
The main reason this episode strikes so boldly is that it truly feels mature and adult in its themes and messages. The episode centres around Clara in a painfully ordinary situation, the kind that Moffat tends to ignore when writing companions: a romantic date. That goes very wrong. Tying into the title, the episode is all about listening and communication, as well as how fear of the dark brings us together, making it a coming-of-age story told through typical timey-wimeyness. Despite their superficial differences, the Doctor, Danny and Clara are all brought together by their universally shared experiences. We find that the Doctor isn't any bigger or braver than any of the puny humans he walks amongst. His childhood fears, which are exactly the same as Danny's, still linger.
Having often forced immature sexual innuendo into the show, Moffat instead ends the episode with a moment of quiet intimacy between two consenting adults in one of the series' most powerful closing sequences. In short, give "Listen" another chance.
"Listen" - Moffat's truly mature magnum opus
While the Series 9 episode "Heaven Sent" may have the most clout among the hardcore fanbase, many overlook that Series 8 already gave us the best (Moffat era) Doctor Who story of all time.
Series 8 was a very weird, experimental time for the show. New Doctors were ironically nothing new at this point, but we had a scary old Scottish Doctor that nobody was entirely sure about. Advertised as a BBC "Original British Drama" production and sent to a later timeslot, the show was trying to reach a more adult audience with more experimental episodes and mature themes. This culminates in "Listen", a story that scrutinises the very core of the show, its central character and its lead writer.
Steven Moffat has a certain auteur style - he likes to go a bit wild with juggling crazy ideas, larger-than-life themes and reusing the same archetypes over and over. With this script, Moffat was clearly reining himself in to make a properly cohesive story without indulging his bad habits too much. He deconstructs his own tendency to create "primal fear" monsters with abilities that attack the human psyche, instead proposing a monster so vague that it probably doesn't even exist. This doesn't stop the Doctor from pursuing it with unusual tenacity. Like a classic sci-fi adventurer obsessed with discovering the truths of the universe, the Doctor is ignorant of the truths he learns about himself, tying into his arc of working out who he is exactly. While the closest we get to a monster is a bedspread in a scared little boy's room, but the tension of the unknown makes it just as terrifying as any Weeping Angel or Silent.
The main reason this episode strikes so boldly is that it truly feels mature and adult in its themes and messages. The episode centres around Clara in a painfully ordinary situation, the kind that Moffat tends to ignore when writing companions: a romantic date. That goes very wrong. Tying into the title, the episode is all about listening and communication, as well as how fear of the dark brings us together, making it a coming-of-age story told through typical timey-wimeyness. Despite their superficial differences, the Doctor, Danny and Clara are all brought together by their universally shared experiences. We find that the Doctor isn't any bigger or braver than any of the puny humans he walks amongst. His childhood fears, which are exactly the same as Danny's, still linger.
Having often forced immature sexual innuendo into the show, Moffat instead ends the episode with a moment of quiet intimacy between two consenting adults in one of the series' most powerful closing sequences. In short, give "Listen" another chance.