What planet did Clara visit in "Listen"?

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

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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 50^th 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 50^th 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 50^th, 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 50^th. 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.