Ask yourself this one question…are we ever alone, when we are alone?  Things go bump in the night, more specifically under your bed?  This paranoid question is the heart of this episode.  The Doctor rambles on about the silent whispers you here around you, or a conversation you have to yourself.  We see the mad Doctor alone in the TARDIS trying to figure out if we are truly by ourselves or do we have an unseen companion lingering around.  He needs Clara’s help with this mystery so he ends up in her apartment, waiting for her to come home.  She arrives a little upset.  He doesn’t care about why she is upset, but he asks anyway what happened.  She told him she was on a date with a colleague from work, but she doesn’t tell him his name.  Actually it was Danny Pink, a new teacher from the same school she worked at.  At first, the date was going fine until his past as a soldier came up in the conversation.  It then got uncomfortable for the both of them.  They were fumbling out remarks that ended up drawing conclusions about one another that were not flattering on a first date.  Clara stormed out of the restaurant leaving Danny alone feeling like an idiot for ruining their night.  Doctor Who Listen 02The Doctor tried to be sympathetic, but was failing miserably.  The Doctor insisted that she come on this mystery ride with him.  She reluctantly did so.  The Doctor asked Clara that if she ever had a nightmare where you think you are being watched and that something is under your bed ready to grab your feet when you get off the bed.  Clara says yes.  The Doctor then takes Clara’s hands and guides them to a strange console.  He then puts her hands on the console.  He asks her to try remembering that time when that experience first happened.  She tried, only to be distracted by the image of that terrible date with Danny.  The Doctor explains that what she was doing was interfacing with the TARDIS telepathic link.  It connects her timeline to the TARDIS.  Using her timeline, he can try to solve the mystery that has been bothering him.  They end up in the front yard of a children’s home.  The Doctor thinks it is her childhood, but Clara states that she never stayed in a children’s home.  She notices a little boy in the window of the home.  He waves to her, she asks for his name and he said Rupert Pink.  She froze there.  She realizes this is not her timeline, but Danny’s.  Her little distraction when she was connecting with the TARDIS was just enough push to bring her off course.  But everybody knows that the TARDIS brings you to where you are needed, and not to where you want to go.  The Doctor walks into the children’s home and finds a night watchman drinking coffee and watching tv.  He asks the watchman if there were any strange things happening in the night.  The watchman says yes.  Just then they hear the tv go off by itself and hearing a rustling sound in the hallway.  Clara sneaks past the Doctor and walks upstairs to Rupert’s room.  He looks frightened and doesn’t want to climb in bed.  Clara uses her school teaching experience and tries to comfort Rupert.  She crawls under the bed with Rupert trying to tell him to not be afraid, that nothing will hurt him.  Just then the bed sinks down giving us the impression that someone is sitting on the bed.  Clara and Rupert then got up from under the bed to find a figure under the covers and sitting upright.  It doesn’t move.

The Doctor suddenly reappears trying to help Rupert with his fear.  He believes that if you turn away from it, it will go away.  All of them do it and eventually the figure goes away.  Rupert is still not convinced that he is safe.  So Clara uses her teaching skills again and says to Rupert that he can use his army toy soldier and put them around his bed so that he can be protected.  She then asks him which soldier is his favorite, he says Danny soldier.  Clara is taken aback by his answer.  The Doctor and Clara then leaves him with his army of protection.  Clara then asks The Doctor if he can do her a favor.  She goes back to the restaurant where Danny is still there and she sees other self leaving the place.  She goes back to the table and attempts to correct her mistake.  It goes well until she slips and calls Danny…..Rupert.  Thinking Clara is mocking Danny, he storms out leaving her alone.  All of a sudden a man in a spacesuit appears and signals Clara to come with him.  She follows him back into the TARDIS only to find the man in the spacesuit is a man who looks exactly like Danny.  Doctor Who Listen 01He introduces himself as Orson Pink.  He is the first time traveler, actually about 100 years in the future.  The Doctor tells Clara that he was searching in the TARDIS telepathic link of her timeline to find clues as to why they ended up in a different timeline and not Clara’s.  The timeline led him to Orsen.  He is a pioneer time traveler that was supposed to travel only a week in the future, but his time space capsule ended up on the only planet in the universe, and reached the end of time.  He is the only human in the universe.  The Doctor believes that there is something out there on the planet and tells Clara to hide in the TARDIS.  Night falls and strange sounds occur around the capsule.  The Doctor wants to confront it.  He unlocks the airlock hatch only to be nearly sucked outside.  Orsen reaches out and grabs the Doctor into the TARDIS.  With the Doctor unconscious, Clara helps Orsen bring his things back into the TARDIS and stumbles onto a toy soldier that looks just like Rupert’s army soldier.  Clara asks where did he get this.  He said it has been in his family for generations that his great grandfather had since he was a child.  He was about to give it to Clara, when she said it is a family heirloom, it is yours.  He said yes it is.  With that single gesture and comment, Clara believes that there is a connection between him and her.  Clara then tries to bring Orsen back to his timeline by using the TARDIS telepathic link, but ends up in a dark barn.  She hears a little boy crying, just when she was about to try to talk to him a woman and a man walk in the barn.  They argue that the boy always cries because he doesn’t want to be in the army.  The man says that he has to, because he will never be Time Lord.  Clara realizes that she jumped into the very old past of the Doctor.  She is under the bed when the boy tries to get up, she suddenly grabs his ankles.  Realizing what she did, Clara has discovered that she is the thing that grabs him in the night.  Trying to comfort the boy, she says it okay, go back to bed.  He does that, and then she tells him that being afraid is not a bad thing.  That fear will make you strong, and courageous.  You will do great things.

Clara returns back to the TARDIS where the Doctor is awake.  Clara makes him promise not to look outside the TARDIS, just keep moving forward.  He promises.  The episode ends up Clara at Danny’s apartment.  She walks in and they talk.  They end up kissing..

This episode digs deeper into the history of Danny Pink and a possible love interest for Clara.  The connection between the Doctor and Clara has deepened in this episode.  Her teaching skills came in handy in this episode.  She helps the Doctor and little Danny overcome their fears by facing whatever troubles them.  Clara is the teacher and the Doctor is the student.  I love it.