I'm officially sold on Peter Capaldi. "Listen" may, in fact, be the best episode of New Who. The Doctor's speech about fear is I think going to go down as one of his defining scenes.
The speech would be amazing enough on its own - "There's danger in this room, and guess what? it's you!" But then the end of the episode has to go and add another layer of meaning to it... awesome. Or the way the episode as a whole invites comparisons to "Blink" but then goes off in a completely different direction. It's not a monster-of-the-week episode at all, it's a character piece. The only real comparison is to "Midnight": pulling back the Doctor's mask by throwing him in out of his depth against a foe about which he knows nothing. I think "Midnight" has the edge in sheer pulse-pounding suspense, but "Listen" is much broader in its emotional scope. And in the end, there isn't even a villain at all! Surely it's impossible to get more character-driven than that.
Everything scares me... kitties scare me... squirrels scare me... corpses....corpses bring forth a pletora of confusing feeling which i prefer not to dwell on...:p
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
And what wrote "Listen" on the chalk board?
And what knocked on/opened the airlock?
{Magic: The RPG}
I hope the question of whatever was under the blanket gets answered at some point.