Theory:Doctor Who television discontinuity and plot holes/Listen

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This page is for discussing the ways in which Listen doesn't fit well with other DWU narratives. You can also talk about the plot holes that render its own, internal narrative confusing.

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• If it was only just fear, then who wrote "LISTEN" on the Doctor's chalkboard and was under the cover's of child Danny's bed?

It's suggested that the Doctor wrote "LISTEN" in a moment of absentmindedness and that one of Danny's friends was playing a trick on him. However, it's by no means confirmed that either is the case.

Since the word in question was written in the Doctor's handwriting (it's been pointed out and is easy to see), it's probably the Doctor who wrote it himself without even realising it. That's Occam's Razor: the simplest of competing theories should be preferred to the more complex.

• This seems to occur numerous times at the end of series 7 and now 8. In some episodes like The Name of the Doctor and Robot of Sherwood, Clara knows everything that has happened to the Doctor and all of his faces. But in some episodes, like this one, she doesn't know everything. In this episode, she doesn't know about her coming to the Doctor's childhood.

She didn't know about her coming to the Doctor's childhood because it hadn't yet happened for her. I think it's hyperbole to say she knows "everything that happened to the Doctor". Moffat has said she only remembers bits and pieces of her other lives as if they were "dreamlike images". Also, the timeline we saw in Name of the Doctor didn't include the Twelfth since it was from a reality where the Doctor died on Trenzalore. So it's debatable whether Clara visited him as a boy in the "original history" or not.

• If "the monster under your bed that grabs your leg" is a dream that everyone has, but we saw that it was Clara who grabbed the Doctor's leg, then what about everyone else who has the same dream?

It's a dream. There doesn't have to be a reason for everyone to have it. A lot of people dream about that in real world too, but it's not like there's really someone under the bed.

• Wasn't the world of timelords supposed to be timelocked? With Ninth saying he couldn't return even if he wanted to. How come Clara just pops in there like nothing, in the time of Doctor's childhood for crying out loud?

Only the Last Great Time War was time-locked by the Moment, not the entire Gallifrey.

Alternatively, the doctor states he disabled all the safety precautions, hence how the Tardis is able to arrive at the last point before the universe dies. Perhaps with no safety allowed they were able to ram through.

Or, perhaps this is signifying that Gallifrey is no longer time-locked due to the events of The Day of the Doctor (TV story).