What will The Doctor find at the end of the universe? Listen!
What scares The Doctor? Ghosts of the past and future crowd into the lives of the Doctor and Clara: a terrified caretaker in a children’s home, the last man standing in the universe and a little boy who doesn’t want to join the army. Listen!
NOTES
Robert Goodman plays Reg, the man the Twelfth Doctor chats to at the children’s home. Robert played a crew member in 1986’s The Trial of a Time Lord and back in 1979 he made his Doctor Who debut as a Mandrel in Nightmare of Eden.
Filming locations included Mermaid Quay, Bute Park and Whitchurch (all in Cardiff) as well as Porthcawl, a coastal town in Bridgend, Wales.
Listen also features the return of the psychic paper, first seen in The End of the World and later employed on several occasions by the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors.
The idea of something scary under the bed has been touched on in another episode written by Steven Moffat – The Girl in the Fireplace. During that adventure one of the clockwork droids hides under Reinette’s bed.
When the Twelfth Doctor finds it, the robot gets to its feet and stands behind Reinette. The Time Lord then advises the young girl, ‘Don’t look round!’ In Listen, when the mysterious figure in Rupert’s bedroom stands behind The Doctor, Clara and Rupert, the Twelfth Doctor says the exact words to Clara. Moments later, when Rupert asks, ‘Has it gone?’ the Twelfth Doctor again replies, ‘Don’t look round!’
When Clara sees Orson Pink in his spacesuit she initially mistakes him for the Twelfth Doctor. That’s because Orson’s suit strongly resembles the one used by the Time Lord, first seen in The Impossible Planet. In Hide,Clara saw The Doctor wearing it – or a similar version of it – when they visited different periods of Earth’s history. She said the suit’s colour was ‘a bit boisterous’ and it made her eyes hurt…
Clara wonders if asking to be brought back in her recent past might break the laws of time.
Clara connects to the TARDIS telephatic interface, first to retrieve the source of her nightmare, then to pilot the TARDIS.
The barn that the young Doctor seeks shelter in is the same one the War Doctor goes to detonate the Moment. It became the place he always went to whenever there was trouble, and he returned there out of sentimentality. (The Day of the Doctor)
Despite the account about Orson Pink being a pioneer of time travel in 22nd century, The Talons of Weng Chiang suggested that time travel was still experimental on Earth in 51st century.
