Saturday, September 20, 2014

What did the end of "Listen" mean?

For part one of my “Listen” analysis click here. This post contains spoilers for the Doctor Who episode “Listen” written by Steven Moffat.
Doctor Who Logo Wikimedia
The first time I saw “Listen”, I didn’t know what to think. After seeing it three times now, I’m still not quite sure how it all worked out. I have read dozens of blogs and reviews about the episode, and each has their own ideas about the meaning of the episode.

This episode’s biggest question was something I have never had to ask myself at the end of any other Doctor Who episode. Was there actually a monster?  I still am not completely sure of the answer, but I’m leaning towards, no. But I’m first going to talk about what still makes me think maybe there was.

The main evidence that makes me think there is a monster, was the thing under the blanket on little Rupert Pink’s bed. For each event attributed to the ‘monster’ there was also given a mundane and rational explanation by the characters. In all of the other examples of the ‘monster’ it’s very possible that the rational explanation the Doctor and Clara gave was actually what the noise or weird event was.

However, the possibilities for the thing under Rupert’s blanket were explained as either the monster, or another child playing a prank. The thing under the blanket moved and behaved unlike any child I have ever seen. It was an extreme form of weird, stalkery, and creepy behavior even with adults in the room. A child wouldn’t have acted as the thing under the blanket did. But, that is the only scene with the ‘monster’ that I actually believe to be something unnatural.

As soon as Clara grabbed the young Doctor’s ankle in the barn, I began believing that Moffat made the episode to not actually have a monster. This was reinforced when Clara went back to the TARDIS and told the Doctor there was never anything there in the dark, and to forget about this quest. However, this brings up more questions about the dream that supposedly everyone has.

Peter Capaldi's Twelfth Doctor. Source.
If Clara was the cause of the Doctor’s nightmare of something being under his bed, why did everyone else in the episode and throughout history have the same nightmare? Obviously Clara wasn’t under everyone’s beds. Some hypothesize that the Doctor somehow spread this fear throughout his travels, as he did to Clara. Other people think that there actually was a monster, and that Clara grabbing the Doctor’s foot just served to make him aware of what was unseeable and unknowable. 

Excluding the blanket scene, I think the point was that you can fear something so much, that even if it’s not there you continually search for it. The Doctor foreshadowed this when he was in Rupert’s bedroom. As the Doctor was flipping through the pages of a book, he kept saying he couldn’t find Wally (or Waldo in America). Rupert told him that it wasn’t a Where’s Wally book and that Wally wasn’t in it. The Doctor tossed the book behind him and said, “Well that’s years of my life I’ll never get back”.


I think this was a precursor of the ending. Through this scene I think Moffat tried to show that you can believe something is there and try to find it, but that doesn’t mean it’s real. I think the Doctor feared these invisible monsters living in the dark so much that he looked for them obsessively, making everyone one else believe too, but in the end there wasn’t anything to find. 

What planet did Clara visit in "Listen"?

This post contains spoilers for the Doctor Who episode “Listen” (8.04) written by Steven Moffat.

Doctor Who Logo Wikimedia
I think “Listen” was the best episode of this season so far. It has caused more discussion and opposing views online than any episode since the 50th anniversary. The questions the episode proposed, as well as the ending is still flipping around in my head a week later, no answers in sight.

In this post, I’m going to talk about a the possibilities and assumptions of the last planet Clara went during the episode. As I said, this episode raised many questions, so I am going to write separate posts exploring the two main questions I had from “Listen”.

The first question I had with the episode was the barn scene and its implications in the event of the 50th Anniversary episode, “Day of the Doctor”.  While not said directly, Moffat strongly implied that Clara met the child Doctor on Gallifrey. This causes many continuity errors. First, when the doctor hid Gallifrey in the 50th, as well as in seasons prior, it was said that Gallifrey was time locked to keep the Daleks and Timelords from escaping and continuing their war. This time lock made it impossible for the Doctor to return home.  If that is the case, either Moffat changed the rules again, or the planet on which Clara found the young Doctor crying was not Gallifrey.

While we all know Moffat’s reputation for manipulating the rules, I tend to lean towards it being a different planet for a couple of reason. First the sky. While the sky wasn’t visible when Clara was in the barn, the episode contained a flashback (flash-forward since they’re in the past?) to John Hurt’s War Doctor walking to the same barn in the 50th. While the sky was more colorful than Earths, it contained a lot of blue. As the Tenth Doctor (David Tennant) said in “Gridlock” (3.03), the sky of Gallifrey was bright orange and red. This makes me think the young Doctor was somewhere else.

Planet of Gallifrey screenshot. BBC. Wikipedia
The second reason I think it was a different planet, was because the War Doctor went to the barn to detonate the Moment. The ‘moment’ would destroy all of Gallifrey, including the Timelords and Daleks on the planet, ending the Time War. To destroy a planet, I think you would not want to be on that planet. Being on Gallifrey with the ‘moment’ becomes even more of an issue when the Doctor hides Gallifrey instead of detonating. He couldn’t have hidden Gallifrey from himself if he was on it.


I hope that Moffat will clear this up later. While he had many inconsistencies in the previous seasons, I hope to find out what planet it was, whether Gallifrey or maybe a Timelord colony. In the next post, I’m going to talk about the different possible interpretations of the episode. This is a unique episode in that everyone seems to have a different idea about what the ending really meant. 

For part two of my Listen analysis, click here

Friday, September 19, 2014

New Girl Premiere

I began watching New Girl the second episode of season one. I loved the first two seasons. However, I was not impressed with last season at all. While all through the first two seasons, I was hoping for Jess and Nick to get together, the third season, which focused on the two dating, was a huge let down.

To me, the season seemed to be the characters screaming at one another with the occasional laughing moment tossed in. Needless to say, that is not what I want from a comedy show.

I came into the fourth season premiere, which aired Tuesday, September 16th, with very low expectations after my disappointment from last season. However, I was pleasantly surprised. Zooey Deschanel’s quirky and awkward character Jess Day was back to her usual fun loving self, four months after she and Nick broke up in season three. Most of the episode occurred during a wedding, in which all of the friends were trying to find someone to go home with, and failing in their usual spectacular fashion.

Zooey Deschanel (Jess Day), Jake Johnson (Nick Miller), Max Greenfield (Schmidt)
New Girl Panel picture by Genevieve. Flikr
The episode focused on all five of the main character’s combined friendship, which is something last season lacked on. The dialogue was nearly back to its usual witty, if sometimes awkward and juvenile self, which first made me fall in love with the characters. Plus there was the added bonus of Schmidt making a Game of Thrones reference at the beginning. The episode also guest starred Jessica Biel as the funny and overbearing competitor to Jess while they both tried to court the best man.

I think this episode was very relatable. The beginning and the end focused on the group seeing other people their age getting married, buying houses, and so on while none of them know where their lives are going. However, the episode ended on a high note with all of them together, goofing off in the apartment. Scenes like the ending of this episode is why I watched New Girl in the first place.


This season is off to a much better start than the last, but I’m still a bit skeptical. Within the next few episodes, I’ll be deciding if New Girl is a show I want to stick with or not. But I am feeling more hopeful after this funny sweet premiere. 

Friday, September 12, 2014

Into the Dalek: Is the Doctor a good man?

For my review of "Into the Dalek," click here.This post contains minor spoilers, and is intended for those who have watched the episode.
Doctor Who Logo Wikimedia
"Into the Dalek" was framed around the question of "Is the Doctor a good man?" Not that this question is anything new. Since the Doctor Who reboot in 2005, this question has been asked over and over again, but never fully answered.  Although in this episode, the question was asked much more directly than ever before. One of the first things the Doctor asks Clara when she enters the TARDIS is if she thinks he is a good man. To which she stutters around before saying she doesn’t know.

The episode ends with Clara saying that she still doesn’t know if the Doctor is a good man, but he tries to be and that’s what is important. While I somewhat agree with Clara’s answer, I would like to explore the Doctor’s morality a bit more.

The Doctor has never shied away from destruction if it was for the greater good. However, different Doctors have taken this to different lengths. In “The Parting of Ways,” Chris Eccleston’s Ninth Doctor faces the decision of killing all the Daleks, but destroying half the earth, or letting the Daleks live. The Dalek emperor asks the Doctor if he will be a coward or a killer. To this the Doctor responds, “Coward any day.” And decides to die fighting the Daleks.
By Benjamin Ellis. The Ninth Doctor, Chris Eccleston. Wikimedia
This trend continues with David Tennant’s Tenth Doctor.  The Tenth Doctor makes a name for himself as “The Man who Never Would” in the episode, “The Doctor’s Daughter.” In this episode, he shows mercy to the man who committed genocide and ‘killed’ his ‘daughter’ Jenny.

This begins to change later in the Tenth Doctor’s run. For example, in “Waters of Mars” Tennant’s Doctor creates the idea of ‘Timelord Victorious’ which encompasses the idea that since the Doctor is the last Timelord, he can do whatever he wants without consequence. This idea seemed to be used throughout Matt Smith’s time as the Eleventh Doctor.  
The Tenth Doctor, David Tennant. Wikimedia
I think “Waters of Mars” was a real shift for the overall character of the Doctor, and one of the first times his overall morality was questioned. He may have had dark moments before, but he always tried to do the right thing.  It is obvious throughout the show that the Doctor doesn’t think he is a good man. The Eleventh Doctor often said things like, “Good men don’t need rules. Today is not the day to find out why I have so many.”  He never seemed to question if he was a good man, he just decided he wasn’t.
By: Gage Skidmore. The Eleventh Doctor, Matt Smith. Wikimedia
So far, Capaldi’s Doctor seems more preoccupied about his morality. While the Doctor has had moral lapses in the past, I think that Capaldi’s Doctor truly wants to be good and correct mistakes he has made. To me, the self-awareness shows that he usually is good. He is very conscious of his bad decisions and wants to fix the mistakes he has made. Similarly to what Clara said, the important thing is that Doctor wants to be a good man.

While it’s still too early in Capaldi’s run to really know what sort of Doctor he will be, I find the fact that he is considering this question very encouraging. While I know he will have hard decisions to make in future episodes, I hope that we soon can say for certain , that yes, the Doctor is a good man. 

Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Doctor Who: Deep Breath

To read my Amazon review of "Deep Breath" (8.01) click here.

WARNING: The following contains spoilers for the Doctor Who episode, “Deep Breath”.

Doctor Who Logo Wikimedia
Instead of a straight-up review, let’s talk about past Doctor Who episodes that were similar or linked to the season 8 premiere, “Deep Breath”.  There were three episodes in particular from David Tennant’s run as the Tenth Doctor, which related to Peter Capaldi’s debut episode as the Twelfth Doctor. Those episodes were “Girl in the Fireplace” (2.04), “Blink” (3.10), and “Fires of Pompeii” (4.02).

The Doctor mentioned the similarities to “Girl in the Fireplace” during the episode. The Doctor realizes the spaceship in “Deep Breath” was the sister ship to the Madame Du Pompadour, which was featured in “Girl in the Fireplace”. Both episodes featured robots that killed humans for body parts to repair their ships. Throughout “Deep Breath,” the Doctor kept saying that he had seen this before. It wasn’t until the end of the episode when the Doctor saw the ship's name the Marie Antoinette that he pieced together the two occurrences. This bothered me because in “Girl in the Fireplace,” the Doctor never found out the name of the ship, or why the robots wanted Madame du Pompadour. Once the TARDIS leaves, with the Doctor, Rose and Mickey, the shot zooms out to show the name of the ship.

While “Blink” wasn't mentioned in the episode and the villains weren’t the same creatures, the overall concept of the episode was similar. In “Blink,” the motto was ‘Don’t blink. Blink and you’re dead.’  The episode featured the weeping angels for the main antagonist. In “Deep Breath,” the motto seemed to be ‘Don’t breath. Breath and you’re dead.’ The robots which were trying to kill the Doctor and his companions would only know someone was there if they were breathing. While I overall liked “Deep Breath,” the similarities with “Blink” made the episode feel a little like a repeat.

Weeping Angel by by williamsbd Wikimedia
Finally, the references to “Fires of Pompeii” focused around Capaldi’s face, as he played a character that the Tenth Doctor saves in that episode. There were a few times in “Deep Breath” that Capaldi’s Twelfth Doctor mentioned his face. The most notable was when he was in an alley with a homeless man, looking into a mirror. Capaldi kept saying things like “I’ve seen this face before” and “I am trying to remind myself of something” but he never connected Caecilius, man he saved in Pompeii all those centuries ago, with the face. Since so much of the information given about Capaldi’s Doctor says he will be darker than the previous incarnations, I hope that they explain the similar face to the Doctor reminding himself to help people and to be compassionate, as he was when he saved Caecilius and his family.

Peter Capaldi by Stuart Crawford Wikimedia
As I said, I enjoyed this episode very much and I'm am so glad that Doctor Who is back for a new season. I’m excited to see what Peter Capaldi does with the role. So far, I think he’s a great Doctor. My post for the second episode, “Into the Dalek” will be up soon.

If I had a clever sign off line, I’d insert that here. Thanks for dropping by!