Live watch and review of Doctor Who: LISTEN

I missed last week's episode so I'm a little confused as to where Jenna Coleman is right now.

I like this intro though! Capaldi talking out loud to himself is a very good way of showing how the Doctor lives inside his own head.

LISTEN!

Obviously this date isn't going well, but I love her dress. It's gorgeous!

This is hilarious. 'I thought I'd hide in the bedroom in case you brought him home' shows just how out of touch the Doctor is. And this is why I love this older doctor. I've never been a fan of the romantic element between the Doctor and his companions. I think it's so much funnier when there's no sexual chemistry.

They're probably at the date's childhood right? something he'll have mentioned during dinner.

Breaking into kid's homes and stealing coffee. That's just how Capaldi rolls.

Oh I was right! It's his childhood.

My housemate's just come in and I kept everyone up last night when I came in drunk at 3am. I'm sorry!

This is pretty spooky! I do like the creepier episodes of Doctor Who. When they do things like this that play on our natural fears.

Something on the bed, and Capaldi is a great doctor. He's building up a sense of confidence in young Danny by talking of fear as a superpower, which is very cute.

Don't look Clara! Oh that's nice though- helping him with his toy soldiers. Ha! Dan the soldier man! What a great moment.

Ooh, good direction! I felt the hairs on the back of my neck prickle with that close up.

Aww she's going back to her failed date!

Oh dear, Clara. You let his real name slip! Poor Rupert/Danny. And now she's ruining it again, but who's this deep-sea-diver! Doctor! Whut r u doin?? Why are you such a bad wing man?

Wait. This isn't going to be the doctor is it?

Oh, damn it. It's Danny.

Or not...? Orson Pink! What a name!

The last man at the edge of time. What is he scared of? What's out there?

Is Clara going to flirt with Rupert's descendant? That would be weird.

He's got Dan the soldier man!

Ohh, a family story about a great grandparent to do with time travel? Have we just seen Clara's future?

A lot of ghosts indeed!

They're doing the rational explanation for spooky noises! We've all done that.

BANG BANG BANG

No! Don't open the door!



This is scary!

He's such a dad. DO AS YOU ARE TOLD!

Great, now he's in trouble! Silly Doctor.

Clara's flying the TARDIS on her own now. That's a bit neat!

Where are they? This looks like a barn?

That's probably not Rupert is it? It's the doctor as a child!!!

Ooh! A nice touch. Clara's the source of the Doctor's nightmares and also of his courage when he returns to the barn years later to banish the Time Lords from existence.

I like this background of the Doctor. It's a good way of building the relationship between Clara and the doctor as equals.

Wait, so she gives away the army soldier toy? Is that going to show up again later?

FINAL THOUGHTS

I think this episode is a great return for the spookier element of Doctor Who. I always found Matt Smith's doctor a little too naive for the more serious side of things but Peter Capaldi's Doctor has a great face for spooky lighting and the idea that there's something haunting us that we can't see.

Having said that, this one did leave some unanswered questions. The final message of this episode was that it's ok to be afraid of the dark, and of nothing, yet there was something on the bed in the children's home. There was something trying to get into Orson Pink's base when they unlocked the door. The end of the episode negates the rest of it unless it's revisited later.

Having said that, it's nice to see there's some heart in this episode. Clara comforting a young Doctor in his childhood evens the difference between them a little, which is a good thing!

I have a good feeling about Capaldi, and I hope he's on my telly for a long time yet!

When did we all start preferring the villains?

There's something that I've noticed changing in the general attitude towards villains (particularly in regards to Disney) that seems to be bleeding out from the internet into the mainstream media. We're losing interest in heroes. The trend of increasingly featuring antiheroes as protagonists has been going strong for a while (for more on the general rise of the antihero trend see this Den of Geek article but watch out for Dexter spoilers!)

On Youtube, there are a few musical parodies of Disney films in which the villain is painted very sympathetically. The below two are very well done with varying seriousness (and plausibility).

And this public interest in Disney villains has definitely been noticed by the studio. With its release of 'Maleficent' we saw what they can do when  given free reign to explore darker personalities and it resulted in 'Maleficent' absolutely storming the box office.

Were we always so interested in villains? Disney's legacy was built on infallible good vs abhorrent evil and Snow White premiered during the depression, which I guess makes sense. When it seems like the world is out to destroy itself it must be nice to sit in the cinema and put a face to that evil for an hour or so.

During World War II we saw the rise of the Superhero; Superman was indestructible and could do anything, anything, to get the job done. When boys were growing up watching fathers and brothers leave for an unknown enemy it must have been a comfort to read about an all-American (well, kind of.) man facing down against the odds and rising up against villainy of all forms.

It may have to do with the political leanings of the time. From a distance (England), I think that since America is a two party country that swings from Conservative to Liberal it's interesting to see how the public likes to see the villain portrayed. A Conservative audience paints things much more black and white than Liberals, who want to see the reasoning behind the traditional villain's motives.

Bane was tortured, for goodness' sake. Wouldn't you go a bit mental?

In England we saw the riots of the 1980's and sympathised. The general public (particularly in the North and the Midlands) saw the riots less as the actions of a mindless lower class and more of an outpouring of frustration when the system seems so firmly set against normal people.

The rise of Feminism has also seen us looking to the evil Queens of Disney stories past to ask 'Why are they evil?'. More recent villains seem to be much more sympathetic than they have been in the past. Mother Gothel in Tangled was seeking eternal youth but was also seen to treasure her adopted 'daughter' in her own way.

Whether she loved her or not is difficult to tell, but for someone who's lived so long, so selfishly, she sure did provide Rapunzel with the materials to keep her entertained and educated rather than locking her up with no means of escape.

Did Mother Gothel grow to honestly love Rapunzel?

If we look at superheroes again, we're seeing many more 'antiheroes' portrayed more successfully than their straight-edged compatriots. Iron Man has become one of the biggest single superheroes on modern times and I hadn't heard of him before Robert Downey Jr. became the biggest millionaire playboy to grace my screen.

His appeal lies not just in his heroism, but in his arrogance and selfishness. He's developing, and becoming a little more serious but the fact that he was an arsehole is precisely why he's so popular. Hell, we even made Thor an arrogant jock to suit our own tastes.

If we love our antiheroes that much, then it's a natural progression to want to see more of the villains. Loki, as played by Tom Hiddleston, has one of the most ardent fan-bases on the internet. He's greedy, selfish (that word again), and doesn't really care who he hurts or kills. So why do we love him so much?

We do. We do love you.

Maybe it's wish fulfillment. We're all, in general, obedient to the rules of society and the law and yet we see villains who take whatever bad thing that's happened to them and using it to go beserk on society. Freud said we are, as a species, inherently selfish, with no real compassion. We act compassionate in order to gain others' admiration, which benefits us selfishly.

Maybe he has a point. GTA is popular because we get to do whatever the hell we want, so maybe we do all have a secret desire to steal and kill everything.

On the other hand, maybe villains are a way for us to face the parts of us that we don't like. Carl Jung believed healthy confrontation of our 'shadow selves' would help us to evolve and better ourselves. Villains can be a good way to focus our anger at ourselves and become aware of our own faults.

Maybe we'd rather be the villain instead of letting those bad things in our past defeat us. No one likes to be the pitiable person who can't defend themselves, so we might want to not get sad, but get mad. Let's fight back against our bullies, and let's assert our authority over weaker people in order to find our own self-worth. If we hurt people along the way, then it's their fault for not fighting back right?

Right?

Or maybe we're fascinated by the incomprehensible. We can't fathom being that heartless, but this person has so much power and we can't look away. We explore that character, trying to find an explanation for what's happened, even where there might not be one.

Good transitioning to Evil

This might be why we love Walter White so much. We've seen that journey. We might not comprehend it, and we might not want to believe that this could happen to us, but we desperately want to understand it, and we're endlessly fascinated by it.

This is the option I'd like to believe, but it's different for everyone.

Book review: How to Fall in Love

How to fall in Love

Cecelia Ahern

She has just two weeks. Two weeks to teach him how to fall in love – with his own life.

Published by: Harper
ISBN: 978-0-00-735051-3

Picked up from the shelf at ASDA, this was a safe buy book when I was off work sick. I've read books by the author before, and not read one that I haven't enjoyed. I tend not to enjoy pure romance novels but Ahern's books have a very pleasant, meandering sort of way about them that I find easy to lose myself in. I have to admit, I didn't get this when it first came out because the title felt just a little bit too saccharine for me at the time, but that all changed when I was feeling unwell!

How to Fall in Love is told from the point of view of Christine, the owner of a recruitment agency in her early thirties who finds herself in the unenviable position of trying to talk a stranger out of killing himself. Adam is 34, and at the end of his tether, but in a fit of desperation, Christine makes him promise to let her show him life is worth living by his birthday... Which is in two weeks.

Fancying herself as some kind of hobby-therapist, and armed to the teeth with self-help books, Christine practically handcuffs herself to Adam and begins talking him through steps to help him win over the girl of his dreams, repair broken family relationships and find meaning in the little things.

It's a testament to Ahern's character writing that someone who is, at face value a bit clingy, and a nosy parker who is meddling with serious mental health problems in the most simplistic way possible, becomes so engaging and likeable. Christine could have appeared very unsympathetic and cloying in lesser hands but Ahern's mastery of writing with heart creates a relatable person whose shoes I had no problem putting myself into.

Adam swings between disarmingly charming and sullen in mood swings that I had no real difficulty believing. As Ahern says in her acknowledgements, she worked with a few clinicians and specialists in depression in order to rework the story until it was 'just right' and I have to say that it definitely shows; the highs and lows, the extreme charisma contrasting against extreme melancholy is a very real thing that I've experienced and seen in people with depression, and the way that so many people around him were unaware of it rings true as well. There are so many ways this subject topic could have gone wrong but it works itself into a wonderfully well balanced story with just the right amount of bittersweet.

The thing with Cecelia Ahern's books is that you never know where the plot is going to take you. I've read books that have been most definitely of the supernatural persuasion (The Book of Tomorrow), and books that have been firmly rooted in the 'real world' such as P.S. I Love you. Something I particularly like about the more recent of Cecelia Ahern's books is that there is always something held just out of sight of the reader to provide that lightbulb moment near the end... usually along with tears!

This really is a truly wonderful story by a very talented writer, and I wholeheartedly give the novel a full 8/10.