Doctor Who - Listen & Time Heist - Review: "The Memory Tricks"

Episode 8.04: Listen
Written by: Steven Moffat
Directed by: Douglas Mackinnon
Airdate: 13 September 2014
We're all afraid. There are the fears we have to face everyday, the ones we actively try to avoid, the ones that take us by surprise and the fear of the unknown, of the things we can't see and can't quite understand or explain to each other. In Listen The Doctor decides to solve the mystery of one of his own and oldest fears: what's out there hiding under the bed, in the darkness, somewhere between reality and the nightmares. Is there actually something, can we find it if we listen carefully, or maybe it's just a fear born from our countless other fears? Do we have a courage to face it, or maybe are we brave enough to look away?

Like it happens with Doctor Who, once in a while we get these very well made, stand-alone, beautifully written and constructed episodes that deal with the horrors and mystery, the ones that have a way of sending chills down our spines and impress us with the actors' fantastic performances. Like Blink, Midnight and now Listen. They're always unique and end up being one of the fan-favorites. Personally I always believed them to be great, but not the very best from my perspective. I think I prefer the more emotional, heartwarming and/or heartbreaking stories, with less mystery but more heart and character-driven moments. It's also a true for Listen, I really enjoyed the hour, I think it was wonderfully made but I'm not sure if the subject of the episode is something I like to revisit too often. But for right not, let's discuss the four stories of Listen.

First, the story of the timeless date of Clara Oswin Oswald and Danny Pink. The two get along pretty well, even with a few awkward moments in the middle. I think that they have a great potential as a couple and I like how we get to see the little bits of their story without it taking too much of the episode. Despite their best intentions, the date doesn't work as great as they would both like. First, Danny thinks that everyone, including Clara, doesn't see him as much more than a soldier, soldier who took lives, not saved people. Then, it's Clara who's offended by Danny's assumptions and leaves the restaurant. After she joins the Doctor in the TARDIS and meets young Rupert Pink (Danny's birth name), more on that later, she decides to come back and give Danny another chance. It doesn't take long until Clara hiding the truth (about her travels with the Doctor and knowing Danny's other name) and a problem with their communication causes Danny to leave her behind. But after everything that happens in the episode, at the very end, Clara goes to his place, facing her fear of commitment and letting someone in and the two kiss. And thus, their relationship begins.

The second story of the episode takes place after Clara comes back home from her date (the first time) and the Doctor asks her to help him explore his theory, that no one is ever alone, that there's always a shadow, a silent passenger close-by and all the people share the exact same nightmare at some point in their lives. They fall asleep, they wake up (or do they?) and feel like there's something under their beds and then, a hand grabs their foot in the dark. By using TARDIS telepathic interface Clara can take them to the day where she had the dream herself. But after she's distracted by the phone call and she thinks of Danny, the two end up in a children's home in Gloucester in the mid 1990s, where a little Rupert Pink lives.

Clara meets the young boy first and tries to convince him that there's nothing to be afraid of, they both even hide under his bed to make sure, but that's when a mysterious entity, hidden under Rupert's blankets, sits on the bed above them. The Doctor, who suddenly appears in the room, convinces the two to look away and let the entity leave without seeing its face and choose to believe that it was probably just another kid from the home playing a trick on scared Rupert. The Doctor tells the little boy that it's okay to be afraid. The fear can be like a superpower because the adrenaline that comes with it can make us do the most amazing things and fight even the scariest foes. To make Rupert feel safer, Clara puts the toy soldiers around his bed to protect him, unintentionally effecting his future choices, to become a soldier and change his name to Danny. Especially after the Doctor puts him to sleep, taking away the memories of their meeting and leaving him with a dream of being "Dan the soldier man".

The third story starts in the restaurant, after Danny leaves and a figure in a spacesuit appears to take Clara back to the TARDIS. At first she assumes it's the Doctor but it ends up being Orson Pink, one of the Earth's first time travellers, Danny's descendant and look-alike, and a man the Doctor met at the end of the universe where he was stranded for a few months before being found by the Time Lord. He tells Clara about his great grandparents's stories about the time travel and even gives her a family heirloom, the lead soldier without his weapon that Clara gave Rupert earlier. The Doctor, Clara and Orson travel to the last planet in the universe at the end of time where Pink spent the last few months. It is revealed that he's afraid that he wasn't there alone and the Doctor believes that he's going to find the hidden entity there, where all the life in existence disappeared, except inside the TARDIS. He tries to confront the entity but the ship's air containment is breached and he has to be rescued by Orson. With the unconscious Doctor and ringing Cloister Bell, Clara uses the TARDIS telepathic circuit to leave the planet.

The TARDIS lands in the barn and Clara finds a crying boy hidden under his covers there and she believes it to be Rupert again. But after overhearing a conversation between the two people talking about the scared child, she realizes it's actually the Doctor. She hides under his bed and when he gets out of his bed, she accidentally grabs his leg and immediately understands that she's the "monster" from his childhood that he was afraid of. She calmly assures him he's only dreaming, comforts him and tells him that being afraid is all right, like she heard him say to Rupert before. She says that fear can give him a great power and that when one day he'll come back to this barn (in the Day of The Doctor) and be very afraid his fear can make him kind. And he's always going to be afraid but it's okay because the fear has a way of bringing people together, bringing them home. And she leaves him with the same little toy soldier she got from Orson, the unarmed leader. Then Clara joins Twelve and Orson in the TARDIS where she makes the Doctor promise not to ever check where they were and from there the two say goodbye to Pink, The Doctor apparently stops looking for proofs of entity's existence and Clara goes to Danny's home.

Episode 8.05: Time Heist
Written by: Stephen Thompson and Steven Moffat
Directed by: Douglas Mackinnon
Airdate: 20 September 2014
This week's episode review I'm going to start with a simple: I love heist movies. I remember how impressed I was the first time I finished watching Inside Man. Such a great concept. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. Anyway, I was pretty excited to hear there's gonna be a Doctor Who heist episode. And it ended up being quite an entertaining one. With a few twists and turns, some easy to figure out (The Doctor was a pretty obvious choice for "The Architect"), some harder (the not-dead team), two great one-episode characters and even a happy ending for both sides. It wasn't my favorite episode of the season but I had a great watching it and the promo in the end made me very excited for next week. John Smith is back! But for now, let's talk about Time Heist.

We start the episode with Clara preparing for her second date with Danny and the Doctor convincing her to go sightseeing with him in the TARDIS. Before she can leave the apartment the TARDIS phone rings, not a number a lot of people knows in the entire universe. The second he answers the phone the two suddenly find themselves in a strange room with two other people and no memories about how they got there (thanks to the memory worms they have in their hands). The Doctor and Clara meet Psi, an augmented human with hacker skills and computer in his brain and Saibra, mutant human with the ability to shapeshift. All four of them hear the recording where they agree to have their memories of the last few days removed. They find the briefcase and inside a message from someone called the Architect who tells them about the most impregnable bank in the universe, the Bank of Karabraxos which they are instructed to rob. That's when they realize they're already inside and escape the room before the guards find them.

They manage to get to the main floor of the vault thanks to Saibra's ability to change her appearance and look like one of the bank's customers. That's where they witness the Ms. Delphox, the Head of Bank Security, accusing one of the other customers of criminal plans to steal from the facility. To assess the threat she turns to the Teller, a last-of-his-kind alien with powerful psychic abilities who scans the man's brain and after locating his guilt turns his brain into "soup" while everyone else on the floor is forced to watch. Then the body is taken by the guards and The Doctor, Clara and their two new companions enter the deposit booth where they find another briefcase with dimensional shift bomb that allows them to follow the Architect's plan underground. There they locate another case with six devices which they can't identify inside.

For a moment, the Doctor and Saibra are seperated from Clara and Psi and we learn more about the two strangers. Saibra is struggling with loneliness, her ability makes her change into everyone she touches so they all keep their distance from her. She's also great at spotting lies and realizes that the Doctor knows what the six devices they found are but he chose not to tell anyone the truth. Meanwhile, Psi shares with Clara his own sad story about the time he was interrogated in prison and deleted his own memories of the people he loved, his family and friends, to keep them safe and now remembers nothing about them, wishing he could bring the memories back. Soon everyone is back together and in order to enter the vault they plan to rob, the four have to get through a room where the Teller is kept in his cage, almost hibernated, yet still able to pick up their brainwaves. Before he can scan Clara's mind and destroy it, they find a way out and manage to get away, all but Saibra who is caught in the scan and uses one of the devices the Doctor reveals to be atomic disintegrators to take her own life and die on her own terms, peacefully disappearing.

The Doctor, Clara and Psi are able to locate the vault but have to split up when Ms. Delphox decides to send the Teller after them. Psi stays behind to open the vault's door but when he hears Clara's scream after she's caught by the psychic alien he saves her life by making the Teller go after him instead. He also uses the atomic disintegrator when he faces him, telling Clara before his death that unlike most people he won't see his life and the people he loved flashing in front of him and maybe it's gonna make it easier for him to go and be some kind of comfort for her. The Doctor and Clara reunite at the vault's still closed door and soon realize that a solar storm about to reach the planet means that they were sent to the bank at the exactly right time and it's more than just a heist, it's a time heist. When the storm messes with the bank's security systems they're finally able to enter the vault.

Inside, the Doctor and Clara find the things Psi and Saibra wanted the most in the world: a gene suppressant to stabilize Saibra's genetics and a device which can replace any lost data, including Psi's lost memories, their rewards from the Architect for robbing the bank. Before they can find the thing the two of them wanted from the bank (locked in the Private Vault) they are caught by Ms. Delphox who orders the guards to kill them. The guards, however, turn out to be Saibra and Psi, alive and well. They explain that the disintegrators were really hidden teleporters and the Doctor gives them the two items from the vault they were searching for. Then they all head to the Private Vault to uncover the last part of the mystery.

That's where they find the quarters of Ms. Karabraxos, the bank's owner. They realize that Ms. Delphox is her clone but it doesn't stop Karabraxos from wanting her dead for failing at her job. The Doctor starts to slowly understand how he ended up in the bank and before she can leave to escape the solar storm he tells her that he's a time traveler and gives her his number and encourages her to call him one day if she has any regrets. She departs and the Teller finds them, but this time the Doctor wants him to scan his memories to remember all the details of the last few days he forgot. That's when we see (in a series of flashbacks) that it was Ms. Karabraxos who called the Doctor at the beginning of the episode and her words caused him to disguise himself as the Architect and bring them all to the Private Vault at this exact moment, where he tells the Teller to use his telepathic link to Karabraxos to unlock a combination safe and free a trapped alien (of the same species as the Teller) locked inside by the bank's owner. The six of them use the six teleporters to escape before the building is destroyed. The Doctor finds a planet for the two aliens to live the rest of their lives in peace and takes everyone else home after a dinner and goodbye in TARDIS. And...that's it.

Whovian notes and questions:

1. "A woman in a shop" is mentioned once again. Do you think she's a part of The Promised Land arc or someone else completely? All the theories are welcomed below.
2. "A soldier so brave he doesn't need a gun." I never expected to meet a young Doctor, even like that. Great twist and my favorite scene of Listen. Even though I'm not entirely happy about this Clara's even deeper connection with the Doctor's timeline. Her speech was quite beautiful though, despite everything. Any favorite scenes of yours, in any or both the episodes?
3. Rupert/Danny and Orson. How are you feeling about the show's new character now that we had a chance to see more of him and his family? I continue to really enjoy his story and can't wait for his meeting with the Doctor. Could be a rocky one, but has a great potential. Also, I love the fact that John Smith is back next week. Missed him! Any favorite John Smith episodes? I was just re-watching School Reunion yesterday and it was certainly a great one for me.
4. Love all the references, like the one to The Day of The Doctor (the same barn!), the Fourth Doctor and the Eleventh Doctor' clothes and the mugshots of Slitheen, the Gunslinger and others that Psi uses to lure the Teller away from Clara. Kudos!
5. Anything else that comes to mind you'd like to share?

Thank you for all the comments and for reading. Go ahead and share your thoughts about the episodes below. Till the next week!

Justyna JJ Kubica

22. Student. SpoilerTV Writer. Loves Movies, TV Shows (Doctor Who, Teen Wolf, Sherlock, Person Of Interest, Arrow, Supernatural (especially 1-5), Agents Of SHIELD, Sleepy Hollow, The Musketeers, Fringe, Psych, etc.) and Books (Harry Potter!). Fantasy & SciFi geek! Scene Of The Week articles author. Member of SpoilerTV team since 27th November 2011.

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