I actually kinda like this idea, although if Clara ends up a Time Lady and travels to just the right place, it opens up the possibility that somehow she could also end up being the Doctor's [human] mother.
Now that would piss some people off.
Last Christmas Grading and Discussion Thread
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I actually kinda like this idea, although if Clara ends up a Time Lady and travels to just the right place, it opens up the possibility that somehow she could also end up being the Doctor's [human] mother.
Now that would piss some people off.
About the manuals.
There should not have been 8 and there should not have been 4.
In your house where you live with with four people, yes I am calling your child a person, congratulations, do you all have your own white pages and yellow pages?
There should have been one manual. Or two, a back up in case anything happened to the first.
There should not have been 8 and there should not have been 4.
In your house where you live with with four people, yes I am calling your child a person, congratulations, do you all have your own white pages and yellow pages?
There should have been one manual. Or two, a back up in case anything happened to the first.
I despise Clara as the Perfect Companion Who Saved Everything (Literally). She's like Worf, who ate TNG and then DS9. I subscribed to the Space Channel specifically for Doctor Who and feel cheated because of these stupid episodes with junk science that not even an 8-year-old could find plausible, and a companion who out-Doctors the Doctor.
I don't know why you think I should go back and watch Pertwee episodes. First-season Sarah Jane was okay, but I prefer the Jo Grant/Third Doctor stories, thankyouverymuch, and the Fourth Doctor stories/companions are the best.
I'm nearly caught up with acquiring the DVDs for Classic Who. But with the exception of the 50th anniversary special, I don't own any nuWho on DVD, nor do I plan to. I enjoyed some of Eccleston's and Tennant's stories, but Matt Smith and on are just crap.
That would be the last time I would ever watch any nuWho. Why don't they just write a story where Clara is simultaneously the Doctor's mother, wife, daughter, and the Doctor himself and God (or whatever other supernatural being you might prefer) and get it over with?
I actually kinda like this idea, although if Clara ends up a Time Lady and travels to just the right place, it opens up the possibility that somehow she could also end up being the Doctor's [human] mother.
Now that would piss some people off.
Every place where people work where there is a rule book, each employee gets their own manual. When I worked for Elections Canada, I didn't have to share a manual with the other employees; I got one of my own.
^ 
You're funny. You expect real science from a science fiction show about an immortal alien obsessed with the British Isles that flies around in a blue police phone box. That spins as it flies. Like a Christmas ornament you can spin with your fingers. Um, okay.
I picked 1973 as a random Classic Who year. Anything pre-2005 would suffice for you guys (who hate the nuSeries but continue to watch it just so you can hate it....interesting), but I picked something from the 70's since that's the decade that inspires the most love-fests.
Clara was the 50th Anniversary companion. Her story arc totally makes sense to me as the girl who saved the Doctor, traveling through his entire timestream, and who now will likely be his apprentice. She is a companion that connects the past to the present, CELEBRATING the show's history. Becoming the successor to Susan, in a way. If not the Doctor's granddaughter, then someone who is very close to him and has influence on his life, and he on hers. I fail to see what's wrong with that.
The Doctor wouldn't bother with companions if he could do it all alone and not turn into Mr. Grumpypants in the process. What's wrong with a companion like Clara who is special to him and he to her?
What's wrong with the show and its character dynamics evolving? It's been 50 years, after all.
You're funny. You expect real science from a science fiction show about an immortal alien obsessed with the British Isles that flies around in a blue police phone box. That spins as it flies. Like a Christmas ornament you can spin with your fingers. Um, okay.I picked 1973 as a random Classic Who year. Anything pre-2005 would suffice for you guys (who hate the nuSeries but continue to watch it just so you can hate it....interesting), but I picked something from the 70's since that's the decade that inspires the most love-fests.
Clara was the 50th Anniversary companion. Her story arc totally makes sense to me as the girl who saved the Doctor, traveling through his entire timestream, and who now will likely be his apprentice. She is a companion that connects the past to the present, CELEBRATING the show's history. Becoming the successor to Susan, in a way. If not the Doctor's granddaughter, then someone who is very close to him and has influence on his life, and he on hers. I fail to see what's wrong with that.
The Doctor wouldn't bother with companions if he could do it all alone and not turn into Mr. Grumpypants in the process. What's wrong with a companion like Clara who is special to him and he to her?
What's wrong with the show and its character dynamics evolving? It's been 50 years, after all.
I had to reply to this specifically too. You're within your rights to despise her, but since when has she been "perfect"? She's been proven to have flaws. She lies, doubted herself early on, she used her position as The Doctor's trusted confidant to destroy his TARDIS keys in order to force him to do something. And after she did it, she was immediately remorseful and contrite. We were also shown that she had difficulties when she first started as a teacher, and really struggled with the events of "Kill the Moon."
I despise Clara as the Perfect Companion Who Saved Everything (Literally). [..] a companion who out-Doctors the Doctor.
Yes, in Series 7 she was portrayed as this girl who was bossy and a control freak who wrapped Eleven around her finger, but when Twelve showed up, that was over and done with.
And "out Doctors the Doctor"? Other than "The Name of the Doctor" (obviously), "Flatline" where she was the focal point and given the Sonic (and even then, she had the Doctor in her ear most of the time), and maybe "Nightmare in Silver" when she was given responsibility as his lieutenant, it's the Doctor that ends up saving the day most of the time. So that's 3 occasions out of however many episodes she's been in.
So methinks you're overstating things a wee bit.
That would be the last time I would ever watch any nuWho. Why don't they just write a story where Clara is simultaneously the Doctor's mother, wife, daughter, and the Doctor himself and God (or whatever other supernatural being you might prefer) and get it over with?
That would be actually awesome. Especially after it has been alluded that she might, potentially, be the Doctor. I was kinda disappointed she wasn't.
Both would actually solve the problem with "the perfect companion who saved everything", because nobody could have that particular complaint about the Doctor herself. Or her mother. Let alone about both.
Making this a bit personal, I see.^
The Doctor is "obsessed" with the British Isles because it's a British TV show. It makes sense to emphasize the UK, just as American shows tend to emphasize American stuff and for Canadian shows to emphasize Canada, and for collaborative shows like Highlander/Highlander: The Raven to set some episodes in France since a French production company had a part in bringing the show to TV.
It was explained back in An Unearthly Child why the TARDIS looks like a Police Box. As for why it spins, I just chalked it up to the same reason why some other ships/space stations spin: it's how they have artificial gravity so the people inside aren't floating around in zero-g.
I don't necessarily expect real science from Doctor Who. But I don't expect outright fantasy that doesn't make even the tiniest smidgen of sense. I expect that when the show trots out science, that it be at least somewhat plausible, or have a damn good reason for why it isn't. Saying "because it's alien" isn't good enough. That's just like saying "because it's magic."
That's a rather presumptuous line of reasoning. I dislike nuWho because so much of it is poorly-written fantasy drivel that doesn't even try to make any sense, plus all the stuff with the companions' love lives and family angst makes me think that I'm watching "General TARDIS" instead of Doctor Who.
I don't watch it so I can hate it. I watch it because I want to find something good about it... but it's not easy to do, because there's not much to find. I've seen Christopher Eccleston in other things, and he's pretty good. There were some good stories in his run - especially the Dalek one where the Doctor mentions the Time War. I haven't seen David Tennant in anything else, but have been considering watching his Hamlet DVD. Matt Smith... I never want to see him or his version of the Doctor again. Ever. As for Capaldi, I don't hate his Doctor. I hate the writing and the companion he's been saddled with.
Well, Jo Grant was the 10th Anniversary companion, along with the U.N.I.T. team of the Brigadier, Yates, and Benton. The 20th anniversary companions were Tegan and Turlough, along with Susan, Jamie, Zoe, the Brigadier, Liz Shaw, Mike Yates, Sarah Jane, K-9, and Romana II. It was great to see all of them, but none of them were ever considered special enough to be The Super-Companion Of All Time.
What really disgusted me about this Clara Oswald, Supercompanion was how she was retconned into Classic Who. "Oh, you thought the Doctor and his companions got out of their sticky situations by themselves and solved the problems in their episodes? Nope, they weren't smart enough to do that, it was really SuperClara who saved everyone! And to make that perfectly clear, we're going to do some creative editing and delete one companion from Castrovalva and insert SuperClara there instead! Because it totally makes sense that a woman who can't figure out how to use a laptop is obviously better suited to solve a mathematical logic problem than a companion who really is a mathematically-gifted person!"
Clara was never in any of the Classic stories. If they wanted a real bridge between Classic and nuWho, they should have had Paul McGann in the anniversary special, instead of John Hurt.
There's nothing wrong with the Doctor having a companion he considers special. All the Doctors have had companions to whom they were good friends. But in Classic Who, those companions didn't eat the damn show!
This show is no longer Doctor Who. It's Doctor Who and Clara (or Clara and Doctor Who) in their little soap opera where they routinely lie and deceive each other. That's not Doctor Who. It's not even how nuWho started. Eccleston's Doctor didn't run around lying to people, and when Rose crossed the line, she didn't get insta-forgiveness, either.
The show has been evolving... backwards. Asking people to accept such crap as the Moon really being an egg, and that nonsense with the trees, and changing the reasons why things happen/unhappen isn't the mark of a science fiction series that has adult viewers (which the BBC should damn well be aware of by now). It's the mark of a TV show that thinks its primary audience is made up of 8-year-olds who read Grimm's fairy tales and think it's scientific.
Like with many things there are some aspects/stories of the currrent era of DW that I don't like. In some respects I prefer the time when RTD was show-runner to the Moffat era I might go so far as to say I think he should hand over the reigns to someone else after the next season. Don't get me wrong I think he has written some of the best episodes of the modern era, "The Empty Child", "The Doctor Dances", "Blink", "The Girl in the Fireplace". But in some respects his best work was when he was simply just a writter on the show.
But we shall have to wait and see what the next season brings up, for me aside from the odd episode I found the last season decidely average.
But we shall have to wait and see what the next season brings up, for me aside from the odd episode I found the last season decidely average.
That's not what happened. Classic Who happened as your DVDs said it happened. What the episode showed us is that The Great Intelligence interfered with The Doctor's timeline, all Clara did was jumped in and put things back the way they originally happened, she didn't do all those things originally, she fixed what The GI screwed up
Since we won't agree on pretty much anything regarding this, and since you've taken my sarcasm about the show's setting and the TARDIS literally, all I can say in response is that when I said Clara's function of celebrating the history of the show by being the 50th anniversary companion, I meant (obviously) connecting the two different eras. Which none of the previous companions you listed did. Well, perhaps Sarah Jane when she met Ten. But Clara's function was obviously meant to be different.
AND SO....if the insertion of her into Classic Who footage bothers you THAT much, you can do one of two things:
(1) See it in terms of the Great Intelligence messing up the timeline, and all "SuperClara" was doing was fixing the damage. It wasn't her retconning anything, just allowing him to get on with his job by stopping the GI from messing stuff up. Yeah, she told him what TARDIS to take at the start of his adventures, but if that bothers you too, then...
(2)...ignore the events of the end of "The Name of the Doctor" entirely.
Problem solved.
EDIT: Oops, Sindatur beat me to it.
AND SO....if the insertion of her into Classic Who footage bothers you THAT much, you can do one of two things:
(1) See it in terms of the Great Intelligence messing up the timeline, and all "SuperClara" was doing was fixing the damage. It wasn't her retconning anything, just allowing him to get on with his job by stopping the GI from messing stuff up. Yeah, she told him what TARDIS to take at the start of his adventures, but if that bothers you too, then...
(2)...ignore the events of the end of "The Name of the Doctor" entirely.
Problem solved.
EDIT: Oops, Sindatur beat me to it.
I did too. While I am a great fan of Clara and I appreciate that they tried to grow her character, I liked maybe 4 or 5 out of the 13 episodes this year. I didn't like some of the choices they made narratively or the way they tweaked her character to provide conflict with the Doctor.
But I'm on board for next year to see where things go.
It's the same as the rest of Capaldi's tenure: his performance is brilliant but the material he's been given is sub-par.
Give him a decently written episode and he'll shine. This is what happens when one person decides to write every damned episode.
Give him a decently written episode and he'll shine. This is what happens when one person decides to write every damned episode.
I don't care what excuse they used. They showed Clara in Adric's place in Castrovalva. That's shoehorning a modern companion into a story where she has no business being, for some dumb reason that makes no sense.
It was a way to show us what the Time War was really like. With The Daleks and Time Lord's each going back into each other's histories and changing victories to defeats. Clara and the GI was a Time War within the Doctor's Timestream.
It makes perfect sense, and gave a perfect visual reference of exactly how The Time War went down, before The Daleks finally invaded Gallifrey and The War Doctor (Along with 10 and 11) put an end to it all
Every series has diamonds as well as clunkers. This series is no different either. On balance, this series had more diamonds than clunkers BUT the clunkers were some of the worst episodes ever.
So, like I said, ignore it. If it bothers you that much pretend it didn't happen and watch your Classic DVDs, never touching "The Name of the Doctor" ever again.
Problem solved.
And it wasn't Castrovalva anyway... it was Matrix stuff from Arc of Infinity.
It is allowable to forget Arc, obviously. Unless you love Nyssa's hair, it's difficult not to doze off...
Yes, there is the Matrix Scene from Arc of Infinity, but, I'm pretty sure she's correct, that there is also a scene of when The Master has Adric trapped doing the Block Transfer Computations, from Castrovalva, and it's Clara instead of Adric.
This is a really interesting discussion, but of course it's going to be about Clara since she is getting a lot to do. I have a feeling she's Moffat's favorite companion, and she's easily my favorite companion of the new series, easily passing my old favorite (Martha).
And you know what? If Moffat wants to continue to make her the most important person in the Doctor's life, I was so ready to say goodbye to her in the Christmas special, unlike some of my friends I was convinced that was her last time on the show...and when I discovered it wasn't, well I was overjoyed.
And you know what? If Moffat wants to continue to make her the most important person in the Doctor's life, I was so ready to say goodbye to her in the Christmas special, unlike some of my friends I was convinced that was her last time on the show...and when I discovered it wasn't, well I was overjoyed.
I keep rewatching the scene with Clara going though the Doctor's time stream. I can't find any scene from Castrovalva in there. Neither at the start nor ending of The Name of the Doctor. The only once I can see that is Fifth Doctor era is Arc of Infinity . Inside the Matrix. With that and technically the Five Doctors during Pertwee's drive in Betsy. There is a scene that I can't place of Clara in near total darkness with some faint lights in the background...right after we see her overlooking the Tenth Doctor at the Library.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDxPGQQyD4g
(from BBC America)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDxPGQQyD4g
(from BBC America)
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