Clara Oswald Rant (unfinished)

This was a vicious little essay I wrote about a year ago when the hatred for Clara Oswald was still strong in me. By this point, I'm no longer bothered enough to finish it(though who knows what will happen after I finish my rewatch of New Who) so I decided to release what I had anyway, given how long it already was. Enjoy.

Also, fuck Clara.
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It seems that, much like the violently divisive eighth chapter in the Star Wars saga causes civil war amongst its fans, the Doctor Who fandom can never really decide upon a definitive opinion on Jenna Coleman's intrepid companion. Now, of course there's always going to be varying opinions because art is subjective and all that: everything has its fans and its haters and that's fine. But I doubt anyone would deny that episodes like Time And The Rani have many defenders. Or that Tom Baker's Fourth Doctor isn't near-universally beloved. With those two, you have a sort of overlapping opinion to define them and even those who don't agree are understanding to those who do, because, well, there's so many of them.

Clara Oswald is not such an easy to subject to tackle, mainly because the fandom is split into two camps as far as she's concerned: they either absolutely love her and the self-destructive arc that she and Peter Capaldi's Twelfth Doctor shared, or they loathe the very ground she stands on. I'm not even gonna pretend I'm not in the latter camp. I despise this character(editorial note: character, not actress. Jenna Coleman is lovely and I don't hold Clara's characterisation against her in any way). I am completely biased against Clara Oswald and whilst I will try to keep an open mind for the purpose of this analysis, my dislike towards her is not going to go away. This essay has the single purpose of making it clear once and for all exactly why I find her to be a deplorable addition to the franchise and big lead weight on her years in the show. So with that in mind, let's get started.

It may surprise you to know that way back in 2013, I was actually a fierce defender of Clara! Most seem to look back on her short, half-season tenure with Matt Smith as a sort of prototype era, or a filler until the Eleventh Doctor's regeneration. And yes, it would be fair to say that because of the nature of her "Impossible Girl" arc, Moffat neglected to develop Clara as a character.
But was she really any worse than the likes of Vicki and Dodo, or Ben and Polly, or even Nyssa?

If anything, Clara was a relaxing a callback to a simpler type of companion, one who could be a blank slate for the audience to insert themselves into. The fact that she also had great camaraderie with Smith's Doctor helped considerably, and the two had their sweet moments from time to time(Clara actually got scared in these episodes, which pretty much never happened again).

She was uptight, but seemed to have a wide-eyed sense of wonder. The Doctor and her bantered, but things never descended into insults or petty stabs. And I liked that whilst Amy and Rory were the Doctor's best friends, Clara brought out the professorial side of the Eleventh Doctor.

Funnily enough, it wasn't Capaldi's first episode that killed this vibe, but rather the first episode Capaldi appeared in: The Day Of The Doctor. Clara's fine for most of the episode, give or take a few "three of you in one room and nobody tried the door?" moments, but then we get this scene:

Leaving aside the amazing hypocrisy of not questioning the Doctor's genocidal actions before actually seeing the Gallifreyans running around playing football, this is something that Clara knows has haunted the Doctor for hundreds of years. And unless I'm very much mistaken, she's also the only companion to have some first-hand insight into his thoughts about the whole thing, given that she read that "History Of The Time War" book in Journey To The Centre Of The TARDIS(Moffat pointedly restored her memories of that in the Series 7 finale).

Not to mention, this is after her little pep talk to the War Doctor about his much younger eyes, and how much the guilt has worn the Eleventh Doctor down, et cetera et cetera, my point is, she knows that this is the part of his life that he most regrets... 

and she fucking guilt trips him? As if there's a choice? Yes, Moffat pulls one out of his butt later(a story for another time), but how would she know that?! Does she think the Doctor didn't try with all his might to save the kiddies the first time? That if he got a hug and some sharp words, then he would know exactly how to save everyone? 

But okay, Gallifrey gets saved, the kids at home get a godawful moral lesson about fairies fixing away any and all problems in their life if they just love enough, let's move on. The Time Of The Doctor isn't really egregious on the Clara-side, though her lecturing to the Time Lords about the meaning of the Doctor's name is really dumb. I don't mind her turning on the puppy dog eyes for Matt Smith's going away, that's gonna be traumatic no matter if you know the guy can change or not. 

Besides, it was Matt Smith, you all had the puppy dog eyes too.

But then we get into Deep Breath and... where to even start with this one? Well, the TARDIS lands in Victorian London and Moffat tries to make a comfortable transition to the new era by using the Paternoster Gang(who only really became a thing in Series 7B, which in retrospect does kind of feel like a proto-Capaldi era). It's not a bad idea: if familiar characters can recognise the Doctor as played by a different actor even if they don't understand regeneration, then so will the audience. 

It worked wonders back in 1970 with UNIT. What could go wrong?

Well, first of all, without any hint of an explanation, Madame Vastra and co are all well versed in the process(to the point where Vastra appears to have been present at some other Time Lord's regeneration). Sure, maybe the Doctor gave them a heads-up. It's kind of a lost oppurtunity to see them learn about it onscreen, but whatever. 

Suddenly however, Clara appears to be completely lost, whining about how the Doctor was supposed to get younger and how she just can't recognise the same man in him. It's a hamfisted allegory of how Moffat expects the audience to react to Peter Capaldi. The usual defence I hear of Clara's OOC temper tantrum is that she's not experienced regeneration herself and thus just reacted poorly and hey, Rose did the same thing!

That is, if we ignore that Rose never met a Doctor other than the one she travelled with and still arguably accepted the Tenth Doctor faster than Clara did Twelve, despite her having had cordial interactions with other Doctors two episodes ago and proudly proclaiming she'd recognise the Doctor anywhere... even in John Hurt. 

Yeeees! YEEEEES! LET THE HATE FLOW THROUGH YOU!!!
sorry

It's just poor writing, and a terrible start for a relationship that would only go downhill from there. 

The one thing I could never figure out was why exactly the Twelfth Doctor and Clara travel together, aside from their previous history together. Watching Capaldi and Coleman act together onscreen in Series 8, it often seemed like the Doctor just had nobody else to talk to and so kept inconveniencing Clara by showing up at random times when she had other things to do, leading to her having to humor him.

And speaking of "other things to do", forgive me if this sounds like a stupid question, but why does Clara have a life outside of the Doctor? Before you shout sexist, think about that a little: before Clara came along, how many companions treated TARDIS travel as something you do on Wednesdays? 

There were the Ponds in Series 7, who had already spent, what, a decade travelling onboard the TARDIS before starting to settle down? That's fine, they're a couple who want some normalcy together after everything(especially losing Melody). There was Sarah Jane way back in Season 11, but that was when the Doctor himself was still somewhat tied to UNIT. As for the RTD era companions, it seemed more like the trips home were the Wednesdays. Pauses in months of travelling and living in the TARDIS to see the family.

My point is, it's kind of hard to get excited for seeing the universe when your lead character is about as impressed as Mike Ehrmantraut. Who looks at the TARDIS and thinks "eh, I'll still teach kids, maybe he can come pick me up tomorrow"? And don't get me wrong, teaching's great, but can't she apply those skills out there as well? Teach some alien kids about Earth or whatever? Maybe she could even get a job as a history teacher in the future? Anything to show that she actually appreciates this insane one in a billion oppurtunity that just dropped into her lap?

Time And Relative Dimensions In Space
yaaaaay

Judging from Into The Dalek, she doesn't even seem to trust the Doctor, as she can't answer his "Am I a good man?" with the obvious "Yes, you rewrote history to save billions of kids and regularly go out of your way to make people's lives better and even if you fail, you still try and omg why is this even a thing". 

Speaking of that episode, she spends the majority of it patronising the Doctor(by 'convince', I mean slapping him in the face because 💗💗💗) for daring to hate the creatures who've put him through hell countless of times. And then daring to be happy that he's allowed to hate them when it turns out(even though technically the Doctor should already know this) that Daleks are only good when they break. Can you even imagine what she's like with her students? She'd passive aggressive them to death.

From what I remember, the biggest source of criticism for Listen was Clara's appropriation of First Doctor dialogue and his role in inspiring the Doctor as a child. Which I'm actually not going to hold against her. It's not a storyline choice that I'm particularly fond of, but I think it takes away more from the Doctor's character than Clara's(and the Twelfth Doctor's abysmal character progression is a story for another time). 

No, for me, the biggest issue in Listen are those loathsome date scenes between her and Danny Pink. Like the Doctor and Clara, Danny is about as dysfunctional as you can get - constantly assuming that he's being mocked and then biting back like a rabid dog. The three of them together in The Caretaker are a passive aggressive volcano of unpleasantness: the Doctor devaluing Danny because he's a soldier, Danny immediately assuming the Doctor's an uncaring individual because of his Time Lord title and Clara lying so well that you could almost visibly see her nose grow. 

All three of them are deeply unpleasant people this season, but at least I can sort of see where the Doctor and Danny are coming from - they're both traumatised, lonely people trying to find themselves again and lashing out at each other for trying to take away what they perceive as a chance at somewhat normalised existence. It'd be kinda sweet if that chance wasn't a manipulative s**t who regularly toys with their emotions, constantly drops insulting comments("shut up", "do this or I'll punch you" etc.) and acts like she knows everything when the truth of the matter is that Clara doesn't know anything about war or how it can affect individuals. Her calling out people suffering from PTSD is horrible, least of all because she makes mistakes all the time without having that excuse. She has zero moral high ground over the 900-year old Time Lord, thank you very much. 

Be honest: how many of you would be excited to hang out with this person?

Let's talk about Dark Water. Clara finds out that Danny's dead and has a mental breakdown, trying to force the Doctor to reverse his death the way he saved Gallifrey. Now, I'm not against this idea - if it would've led to Clara realising what a godawful person she's been and recovering, I would've applauded it.

Ha. Ha. Ha.

No, the Doctor just waves it off because "friendship" and instead of sending her to hardcore therapy(you know, something a friend would do), they instead randomly decide to go hunting for Danny's soul in the TARDIS. 

Well, if it makes sense to Moffat.