Listen to your Fear

This past Saturday, the Doctor Who episode "Listen" aired and probably scared a significant number of people.

The central message of the episode was that Fear can make you ready to fight against whatever's scaring you. The adrenaline that comes with the emotion is such that it increases your strength and speed. Fear can help you fight the monsters that lurk in the shadows.

This message in itself appears to be a response to an aspect of Doctor Who that's been there since the beginning: Scary Episodes. As far back as The Daleks, the second serial of the series in 1963, children have watched from behind their sofas, fearing the creatures that the Doctor faced, but still being compelled to watch the show to see how the hero defeats the frightful robots and aliens. And this episode explicitly sent the message that the fear, the urge to jump behind the couch, is what gives them the power to fight off a Zygon or a Rutan for themselves. The episode changed the message from "Don't worry if you're afraid, the Doctor will save you" to "Don't worry if you're afraid, that's what helps you save yourself." Frankly, I love that concept.

Neil Gaiman, noted Young Adult/Children's Lit author and writer of several Doctor Who episodes, said as an epigraph in his book, Coraline, “Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.” (This is, of course, a misquoting of G.K. Chesterton, but I prefer Dragons to Bogeys, so I like to use the Gaiman variant.) Doctor Who is, in many ways, a Fairy Tale. This episode was about the monsters in the shadows and underneath your bed. Those are the monsters that children know are there and the adults lie to themselves about  not existing. They're the monsters that fairy tales provide the hope of defeating. This episode of Doctor Who explicitly tells the kids that they can be the White Knight and the Good Wizard and The Doctor and whatever other hero they would otherwise hope for simply by embracing the power that fear can grant them.