Day 804: Listen

I wish that I had Listen when I was a kid. You see, when I was a kid, I was pretty much petrified of everything. Not only was I afraid of normal things like the dark, and heights, and water, but I was also afraid of more peculiar things like cinemas, or moral espousing vegetables, or fruit based episodes of Thomas the Tank Engine. And my reaction to all of that fear was to avoid it wherever possible, to the point of avoiding all contact with it whatsoever because I simply didn't want to have that feeling of dread again. That moment when fear takes over your entire body, and you feel blood rushing through your heart, and all you want to do is curl up in a ball and cry. And Listen is all about that.

Listen is a story about fear. It doesn't appear that way, on first glance, instead it looks like a curious story all about monsters that can hide perfectly - an evolution of the paranoia that was first seen in Moffat's two part story The Impossible Astronaut/The Day of the Moon. But Listen decides to go down a slightly different path, by looking instead at the characters' emotional responses to the situation. In particular, we notice their reaction to fear, and how they cope with it. The young Danny Pink just lets it fester within his mind, preventing him from being able to do anything, as seen in his petrified state through most of his scenes. Clara works with fear by building around it, putting herself into a situation where she has at least some control over the situation, like when she helps young Danny overcome his fears through giving him an army of toy soldiers. Orson Pink, on the other hand, hides from his fear, trying desperately to ignore it but always knowing that it's there.

And then there's the Doctor. Over the course of the episode, we learn that he uses fear to his advantage, in part due to an encounter that he had with Clara when he was just a child on Gallifrey. Fear is the thing that can inspire him, to make him into such a brave person. For him, fear is a superpower, allowing you to do fantastic things instead of curling up in a ball and hoping that it can all be over. And that's the sort of message that I needed when I was a kid.

I never realised the potential of fear when I was a kid, I never realised that I could use it to my advantage. I just let it control me, instead of that symbiotic relationship that Listen advocates for. And I can't help but wish that my younger self know about all of that, that fear doesn't have to be an adversary, it can instead be a companion; helping out and driving that scared little kid to do something instead of hide in his room all day. Because, really, fear makes companions of us all.