34.04: Listen

Great episode, enjoyed this one the most of the season to date! I can only echo what's been said by others so I'd like to pick up on the Gallifrey thing..

Dave said:

Gallifrey - hasn't the Doctor been trying and failing to find Gallifrey since the 'Time War'? Someone thought the blackboard planetary diagrams in an earlier episode proved this was still the case. If all it took was turn off some TARDIS safety restrictions then surely he would have tried that already. This was just a retcon again about him not liking soldiers and not wanting to be a soldier. Which fits with John Hurt Doctor but not with all those that went before him, where he clearly had no problem with soldiers. I'm not clear on what a 'Time War' is exactly but I expected that the war was fought throughout all time and so the destruction of Gallifrey was in all times at once, but somehow it was instead hidden somewhere and he can find it if he only tries harder than he has been. With most of the other loose ends tied up, I expect we are going to see the Doctor find the lost planet of Gallifrey sometime soon.

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Yeah. Timey wimey?

We will cause our own existence to fall into a "Moffat loop" if we think too hard about this one. But will the Doctor know that Clara took the TARDIS back to Gallifrey? She told him to never check where they'd been - because of interfering in his timeline.

But would the other Timelords not have noticed the Doctor's TARDIS landing in that barn and gone to investigate? His own parents seemed oblivious. Or are TARDIS' scattered about the place so frequently that no-one pays attention to them?

Oh and I liked his sparkly jumper!

Haven't read the whole thread but it was ok - the OH commented quite well that it started off well then turned into a "nothing episode" - he isn't a big fan of the reboot so I doubt I will be able to get him to watch any more.

I like the whole fear of fear ideas that you get every now and then, but this seemed to take it lightly - even with the whole superpower thing, felt it made light of quite an important topic ie fear.

But the soldiers were good. However, not pleased with how the red blanket monster and the door knocker weren't really resolved.

Lenny said:

Incredibly, it looks like the Beeb have carved out a regular time slot. As with the past couple of weeks, this episode airs on BBC1 at: 19:30

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You had to say this out loud, didn't you?

While Episode 5 (this coming Saturday) airs at 19:30, Episode 6 (on the 27th) airs at 20:30. And if the Radio Times can be believed, at 45 minutes duration, Episode 6 is five minutes shorter.

Well, you know, things that don't get resolved sometimes get shown from another perspective later on....

Ursa major said:

While Episode 5 (this coming Saturday) airs at 19:30, Episode 6 (on the 27th) airs at 20:30. And if the Radio Times can be believed, at 45 minutes duration, Episode 6 is five minutes shorter.

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That's more like it! Having it on at the same time each week was starting to put me on edge.

markpud said:

But would the other Timelords not have noticed the Doctor's TARDIS landing in that barn and gone to investigate? His own parents seemed oblivious. Or are TARDIS' scattered about the place so frequently that no-one pays attention to them?

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I rather got the impression that that planet/place/whatever it was not Gallifrey itself, his parents/guardians/whoever they turn out to be, did say about 'sending him to the Time Lords', after all.
That also gets around the old 'time lock' issue

I really liked the episode, it's nice to have an occasional one where everything isn't wrapped up by the end. It's what keeps the show fresh and the viewers guessing.
On that note, like some others have said already, there's a few other obvious candidates for what was going on. The Silen(ts/ce) being the most obvious ones, but personally, I thought it had interesting parallels to Midnight from the 4th (new) season. (the one where the Dr, and others, are trapped on a bus... basically and there is some unknown entity trying both to break in and control them.)
That's one of the very few other episodes where the 'enemy' is never seen or anything is really known about it.

They might have tried very hard to make sure there was always an alternate rational explanation for what was going on, but really.. can we believe the Dr would just 'forget' moving things around while he was concentrating? He's never been scatterbrained like that short of post-regeneration funk.
No, I think there's more to it.

Though whether they ever show us what that more IS... is another matter

Laeraneth said:

I rather got the impression that that planet/place/whatever it was not Gallifrey itself, his parents/guardians/whoever they turn out to be, did say about 'sending him to the Time Lords', after all.
That also gets around the old 'time lock' issue

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Just went back to rewatch the barn scenes, here's a transcript of what the "parents" said:
"Why does he have to sleep out here?"
"He doesn't want the others to hear him crying"
"Why does he have to cry all the time?"
"You know why"
"There'll be no crying in the army"
"Hush"
To the child/Doctor(?):
"Don't pretend you're not awake, we're not idiots"
"Come and sleep in the house. You don't have to be alone. If you can hear me you're very welcome in the house with the other boys. I'll leave the door on the latch. Come in any time"
"He can't just run away crying all the time if he wants to join the army"
"He doesn't want to join the army, I keep telling you"
"Well he's not going to the Academy is he, that boy?! He'll never make a Timelord"

Certainly not conclusive, and nor would we expect it to be. But Clara clearly figures this is the Doctor as a child (and Doctor Who Extra on the BBC (UK only) did too). Then she grabs his leg, seeding the dream, and then repeats the Doctor's story about fear being a superpower (and a companion) - the one he did/will say to Rupert & her. SHe also gave him the toy soldier, so will he have that somewhere stashed away that we'll see again..

So if this isn't Gallifrey and that wasn't the Doctor then this wouldn't make sense to the plot (OK that's hardly unusual).

But she also knows that finding Gallifrey is a big thing, so she could have told him to move forward in time without changing location - interfering with his own timeline, impossible girl blah!

And "come back to this barn" is overlaid with John Hurt approaching the barn with The Moment. I certainly thought that happened on Gallifrey?

Yes, I thought it certainly had to be the Doctor -- all the implications were there, anyway.

Except the toy soldier seems like it's been removed from a loop with that.

I'm sure I didn't say anything about it not being the Doctor as a child...
In fact, given the reasoning in the episode that the Tardis was homing on on the timelines of people connected to Clara as she was thinking of them, it couldn't be anyone BUT him... unless she's met some other Time Lords along the way that we don't know about

I only said that it wasn't necessarily Gallifrey.

I suspect if we were to go back to the scene with John Hurt's Doctor going there, it wouldn't give us any more concrete information either, but I definitely don't remember it being said conclusively that it was Gallifrey, nor is it likely that a super-weapon of the type they have there would have to be on the place it's being used.

Yup, it's not explicitly stated that John Hurt was on Gallifrey, as far as I remember anyway. But there wasn't anything to make us think otherwise at the time.

Mr Moffat will always leave himself some wiggle room (or invent some, retrospectively)