The Clara Oswald Hour

Below was originally written some weeks ago, before the 'Christmas Special.'  After which I feel no reason to rewrite or retract any of the same...

Some few weeks ago, a lot of hot air was vented about the trailer for the New Star Wars movie.  Now personally, I think the controversy over a black stormtrooper is just about equally as stupid and ridiculous as putting lasers on the hilt of a light sabre, but then again I never actually watched the trailer...or any of the post-ROJ films for that matter, and nor do I intend to.  Fact is I don't really give a shit about Star Wars, or even Star Trek for that matter. I like them well enough, but I don't really have any emotional investment in them. Doctor Who is a different matter.  Like so many, I grew up with Doctor Who. It was a part of my life as long as I can remember and it was an established cultural institution well before I was born. I still resent the fact that the BBC cancelled it, and I still see as an act of cultural vandalism the wiping of tapes that took place in the sixties and the seventies. When Russell T Davies brought the show back in 2005, I didn't care for many of his choices, but I stuck with it, and it got better as David Tennant was brought in, as we lost the chavvy companion, as old enemies returned, and as writers like Steven Moffat gave us the occasional compelling stories like Blink.  I was initially sceptical of the casting Moffat chose as he took over the reins of 'showrunner' from Davies, but little Amelia Pond quickly won me over as did Karen Gillan as her older self, Arthur Darvill as Rory, and Matt Smith as an impossibly manic childlike Doctor. I thoroughly enjoyed Moffat's early tenure and even as the writing faltered over the two previous half-series, I wouldn't want to miss an episode.  And then we had the fiftieth anniversary (with ridiculous number of special this, that, and the other) , followed by the revelation that Moffat was to give us a new darker more alien Doctor, played for the first time in decades by an older actor in Peter Capaldi, a throwback to William Hartnell's original. Brilliant !  So why, so long after the 'eighth' series of Doctor Who ended back in November can I still not get over how impossibly shite it all was ?

Not everyone would agree of course.  Some people loved it.  Many, more I suspect, hated it. It was if nothing else...divisive.  So what you may ask did I dislike about it so much ?  Was it Capaldi ?  Nope.  Jenna Coleman or Sam Anderson ?  Nope.  Was it the crap opening sequence (Hey, how can we symbolise time in a way that will be culturally relevant to millenials ?  I know, antique clockwork timepieces, geddit ?!) or the shit theme tune ?  That's not it.  The cheapo budget, the almost total lack of multi-part stories, the refusal to use any of the characters created by Moffat's predecessor ?  Not really.  The writing, it must be the writing, right ?  No, at this point, the substandard writing goes without saying, though this series did certainly produce some real stinkers (thinking of you, Kill the Moon).  I know, it was Clara, right ?  You think it's been turned into 'The Clara Oswald Show, guest starring the Doctor' ?  Well...yeah, but it's more than just that.

See, I believe that as a rule, if you want an audience to invest emotionally in a character of yours they have to be either a)Interesting, b)Likeable, or preferably c)Both.  Having created a character in Clara Oswald/Oswin/whatever that previously served merely as a sort of cipher, or arguably even a Macguffin, Moffat faced a lot of criticism over the lack of depth or character development in Clara.  And he decided to follow up by making the next series of Doctor Who ALL ABOUT CLARA...ALL THE TIME.  He turned the show into a sort of soap opera, with a central cast of just three (four, if you count Missy, blech), revolving around Clara Oswald and the conflicting relationships she had with the two men in her life: her new boyfriend Danny Pink and the Doctor.  Forget spending more time exploring this newly mysterious and unpredictable Doctor, forget the monsters and the adventures, what we really need is a thorough exploration of the thoroughly toxic relationships between these three characters who spend much of the series lying to one another, threatening and insulting one another, and generally being assholes to one another.  Moffat took a character in Clara Oswald who was ('Impossible Girl' not withstanding) not particularly interesting and mildly likeable, and gave us a character who was still not particularly interesting, and over the course of the series increasingly actively unlikable.



Don't get me wrong, it's not Jenna.  She's a fine actress, and if nothing else, this last series gave her ample opportunities to show her chops.  Her CV and future earning potential will justly benefit.  And she's certainly, er...easy on the eye, Capaldi's Doctor's constant jibes at the expense of Clara's physical appearance not withstanding.  I quite liked 'Souffle Girl' and was ready to warm to 'Victorian Governess Clara.'  Still, my favourite moment of the opening episode to this latest series (Deep Breath) was when Clara got hit in the head by a rolled up newspaper from Strax, a) for the slapstick timing & b) 'cos Clara was royally pissing me off with her constant childish & selfish whining about the Doctor's grey hair and wrinkles by that point.  By the time I watched the series finale, I found myself actively rooting for the character's death (No really, not kidding, kill the MF, get it over with, now !).  It may be the extortionate scene with her throwing the Tardis keys into the lava that finally did it, but at some point, I realised that a) I don't particularly like this person AT ALL and b) I don't really care any more what happens to them.  It's sort of like watching EastEnders out of morbid habit, then suddenly realising how utterly miserable, depressing, and soul-destroying the whole affair is, and that if nothing else, you could always watch Corrie(...or, if you actually like that sort of thing, maybe the 24/7 Car Crash Channel: CCC: All crashes, All bloody corpses and mangled metal...All the time...)  (Except again, that I really don't give a shit about EastEnders.)  Clara lies to both the Doctor and Danny as she maintains a double life between the two, and her relationship with the Doctor is one that is increasingly described in terms of that between two mutually enabling addicts.  Is one supposed to feel any real sorrow at the (apparent) collapse of this relationship by the end of the series, when it is so obvious that these are two individuals who don't belong within a thousand lightyears of one another ?  It is, I suppose, a somewhat interesting psychosocialogical diagnostic of the relationship, but this show was supposed to be escapism, right ?  Maybe for kids, even ?

And as for Danny, well, did anyone really believe that this character would survive a single series ?  That he wouldn't be killed off/written out as yet another sacrificial lamb ?  That the ridiculous contrived soldier/officer antipathy between himself and the Doctor wasn't just rammed in for the (ultimately uninspiring) payoff later in the series ?  Danny was toast, and we all knew it.  He might as well have been walking around the whole series in a bright red polyester suit and a StarFleet badge on his chest.  I get the feeling Moffat desperately wanted us to care about/empathise with the character, what with all the self-deprecating neurotic head-banging re: his attempts at dating co-worker Ms. Oswald.  But it never really clicked, and then we get all this ridiculous theatrics vis-a-vis pantomime 'Officer' Doctor.  Did anyone really care what happened to Danny by the events of Dark Water and Death in Heaven ?  No really, c'mon...honestly, anyone ?  ANYONE ?

Which, the whole series being about a grand total of just THREE central characters, brings us back to the Doctor.  You remember him, surely ?  Timelord, two hearts, stole a Tardis, spends way too much time in modern-day Britain ?  Nine-hundred/two-thousand/whatever-the-hell-made-up-number-it-is-now years old ?  Had a show named after him ?  So this new Doctor looks older and has a Scottish accent.  We will now proceed to squander much of the feature-length opener of the series dwelling upon these facts to the exclusion of all else, due to ultimately irrational fears that the younger demographic is reluctant or unwilling to accept an older Doctor after pretty boy Tennant and not-quite-baby-faced Matt Smith.  We'll hint that this Doctor may be willing to sacrifice others to achieve his ends, to betray his companions.  We'll have him repeatedly take sexist (hey, it's okay, he's an alien, so he doesn't get what he's saying, and...snigger, snigger...it gives us an excuse to say naughty things about Jenna...snigger) potshots at the physical appearance of his companion.  And then we'll pretty much let him increasingly slip into the shadows as Clara takes over the show, even hinting (Boo sucks to you Clara haters !) in the opening of the finale that really, Clara was the true Doctor after all (take that all those who pooh pooh the idea of a female Doctor, oh and yeah, that's right, The Master is Missy now, live with it !  Totally not sexist, us.  Yeah, and we're totally gonna find us some female writers one of these days...soon as they get over their periods, snigger).  There's nothing wrong with Capaldi's performance as the Doctor (other than the shameful degree to which it is overshadowed by the growing soap opera that is Clara's life).  And there's nothing at all wrong with a darker more mysterious Doctor, a la Hartnell.

But...Hartnell's Doctor was one of a cast of four: The often tetchy mischieveous old alien that was the Doctor was not an especially likable or humane figure (Really, go back and watch a few episodes, memory playing tricks and all), but he was the central figure of interest in the series, whilst Ian and Barbara served as the far more likable far more human eyes and ears of the audience.  Ian and Barbara weren't especially fascinating figures, but they humanised the proceedings, and gave us our 'in' to the Doctor's alien ways and adventures.  Susan, meanwhile, was somewhere inbetween, at times (fewer than might have been desirable, some might say) the 'Unearthly Child' promised in the first episode, and at other times, the scared Sixties teenager of her adopted Earth.  Between the individual members of the Tardis crew, we had an almost optimal balance of Interesting and Likable.  In casting the new Doctor as a darker, more alien figure, Moffat needed to ensure that the accompanying companion was THAT MUCH MORE accessible and likable than ever before (And it's not like he hasn't been willing to pair a brand-new Doctor with a brand-new companion before, is is now ?).  Instead, he decided to pair the new Doctor with possibly his least reliable or trustworthy, or increasingly even likable companion since Vislor Turlough, at the same time as he was making the whole FUCKING series ALL about the companion, ALL the time.  Less likable Doctor plus still not-interesting and increasingly unlikable Clara Oswald plus Danny (does anybody really care) Pink /= a winning formula.

And while I'm at it, what the hell was up with the increasingly weird Freudian mother-son thing Clara and the Doctor seemed to have going on ?  The episode Listen could have been one of the best of the series, had it had any kind of meaningful payoff in terms of an actual enemy or mystery (I know, we'll just make it that the Doctor...wait for it...is...Afraid of the Dark !!!  Genius !), but then Steven Moffat apparently decided that having used his position as 'showrunner' to establish a companion of his creation as somehow the single most important companion of all time, via the 'Impossible Girl' single-handedly saving every single incarnation of the Doctor just wasn't enough.  There's legacy, and then, there's LEGACY.  There's adding your own humble contribution to the myths and legends of prior imaginations, and then there's re-drawing over the original of the Mona Lisa in permanent magic marker as an abstract Bart Simpson, and signing the thing 'Steven Moffat wuz here, Respect Yo !' in neon green.  So apparently, everything the Doctor was, is, ever will be, is now down to the speech given to his tearful boyish self, by, oh yes, GREATEST EVER COMPANION IN THE HISTORY OF DOCTOR WHO NOW AND FOREVERMORE, CLARA OSWALD !  Bow ye low before the all-seeing mighty gaze of the great god Clara !...  Again, I have absolutely nothing against Jenna, and had almost liked this character on first acquaintance.  But really, what's up with this, with Clara constantly berating, bullying the Doctor, ordering him about ?  Okay, she's not the only (or first one) to come up with the horrible 'Do as you're told !' line between this increasingly twisted couple (and it was a little creepy, even coming from the Doctor), but am I the only one that finds a submissive two-thousand (or whatever it is now) year-old Doctor being ordered about by the great god Clara (she of Coalhill) a little weird ?  This is 'Doctor Who', right ?  Not Great Goddess Clara ?

To be honest, I was glad when Steven Moffat took over as 'showrunner' (why the hell must we call it that, seriously ?) of Doctor Who from Russell T Davies, and only regretted that he couldn't have taken the reins earlier, whilst David Tennant was still playing the Doctor.  He's proven, to me at least, that he's capable of handling Doctor Who when he wants to, and yet, when I think back on that last series, I almost miss Russell T, farting aliens and all...  Maybe the critics of having Doctor Who fanboys running the show are right.  Maybe it would be better in the hands of less biased, less emotionally invested inviduals, even if it risks getting turned into something else entirely.  Part of my frustration with this last series, is I turned up night after night, Saturday after Saturday, hoping, praying that I had this series wrong.  That Steven Moffat had some ace up his sleeve, that his crack writers were churning out crap like Robot Robin Hood to throw us off the scent, that there was some clever payoff coming to justify all the apparent crap previous.  I didn't really truly give up till Dark Water, and even then, I turned up the next week for Death in Heaven, fully aware of the disappointment that would follow.  And I carried on watching even as I found myself egging on Clara to enable Cyber Danny's inhibitor circuit (Doctor: Don't do it Clara, he'll kill you !; Me: DO IT, DO IT, DO IT, DO IT NOW !)

Thing is, I love Doctor Who, and even given what he did to the last series, I can't quite hate Steven Moffat.  Guy's a fan, ain't 'e ?  But Clara Oswald's a fictional character, so...BURN WITCH, BURN !!!  No, not you Jenna, you're lovely.  Maybe a career in American soaps ?  Something historical perhaps ?  Oh, and, whoever retains or takes over the role of so-called 'show-runner'...give Capaldi a proper chance, will you...if he lasts beyond this execrable current run of mismanagement.  Only poor Colin had his opening chance as the Doctor so shabbily handled...

Oh, and I'll further out myself as a fan of Press Gang as further evidence, be it needed, that I have/had no prior beef with SM prior to this last series of DW.

Oh, and vis-a-vis Big Finish...don't get me started on Thomas Fucking Brewster...