10 Doctor Who Moments Deeper Than You Think
5. Fear Makes Companions Of Us All
Clara's speech to the young Doctor in Listen is a beautiful meditation on how we respond to fear.
Do we run away? Do we stand and fight? It's essentially a speech that drills down to the core message of Doctor Who, so much so that it borrows a line from the very first Doctor Who serial way back in 1963. Or does it inspire it?
In typically wibbly-wobbly, Moffaty-woffaty fashion, Clara tells the child a reassuring story to lull him back to sleep. She tells him that "Fear makes companions of us all". In doing so, she accidentally influences the First Doctor, who uses almost the exact same words to reassure one of Clara's Coal Hill School predecessors.
After kidnapping Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright and dragging them back to the Stone Age, the Doctor is forced to trust the two humans of whom he was previously suspicious.
When Barbara expresses surprise at the Doctor's willingness to help them escape, he replies that "Fear makes companions of all of us."
Wise words indeed.