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Twelve and Clara’s dynamic
- Thread starter Annie McCoy
- Start date
I'm in Canada.
I'm in Canada. I have Disney+.
Which telecom do you use? They don't all have the same packages or prices. The one I dropped was an extra $5/month. Money is that tight.
I use Rogers for cable and Internet, but I just bought Disney as an annual subscription that works out to $10 a month. Not as cheap as it could be.
Yeah, it's a lot like Sarah Jane and the Fourth Doctor, she may have started with Smith, but she really is a Twelfth Doctor companion through-and-through. I don't see any kind of heat between them, though, especially in the first season where Moffat seemed to be going for this version of the Doctor being face-blind, but it always came out as just bullying her and Danny (at least, until "Last Christmas" put a very sweet button on it with him being genuinely unable to tell if Clara was in her twenties or her eighties).
For the season 9 arc, with Clara really embracing being Doctor, Jr since she didn't have anything else going on after Danny died, I think the Doctor was put in an uncomfortable position. He likes being able to show off, and being the one in charge, but I think Clara taking more initiative and knowing him so well because of the "X of the Doctor" trilogy... I don't know, maybe she was reminding him of River, and he wasn't being as firm about her taking needless risks as he should've because he liked having someone on his level when he hadn't seen his wife in so long. Not for nothing, seeing River again was what got him going again after Clara disappeared and he was left with all questions and no answers.
Given the return of Donna, it's also worth mentioning, how Clara's finale with the memory wipe, and that she seemed to put him off using it as an easy solution to hard problems with Bill (after Bill happened to say the right thing to make him think about it) is in conversation with how Donna had been written off the show, which was itself in conversation with the exit of Rose, where in all three cases, the companion ended up in a situation where they wouldn't leave the Doctor (and the Doctor wouldn't leave them) willingly, and so the writing had to force them apart. I don't think that's necessarily a great trope, especially how it relies on the idea that the Doctor never visits or runs into companions again after their time on the show is over, a trope I especially don't love.
All shows have both the mindset of the viewer, coupled with having good and bad episodes - and, as with all other shows, B7 has its share of really bad doozies. Gotta take the good with the bad, but the characters definitely make up and more for any iffy plotting ideas.
Overall and IMHO, B7 is a great show, which was also a fairly early example of a show where watching in linear order helped. As much as I'd love to introduce episodes out of order, due to any number of surprises, I can't... with one possible exception:
I'd start with "Seek-Locate-Destroy" (S01/E06) as it feels like a mini reboot and consolidation of what's happened up to that point and then floors it with the proverbial accelerator. If a person liked that one, I'd then bring up watching the earliest episodes with the option to skip ahead". The early episodes are generally and surprisingly strong, IMHO... with one or two exceptions, but there are shows whose first six episodes are even shakier mixed bags, and the fact the show went for several years definitely confirms it found itself right enough...
Okay, Classic Doctor Who is another one that does some arcs -- the first thirteen episodes from 1963/64 (in a 40+something episode season) have a definite character arc and payoff, which the novelizations and movies that sprung from it quickly curtail (among other things). After those, there is some flexibility to an extent as the stories do loosen up and typically make only passing references to previous stories but aren't integrally intertwined.
Yup.
It's not that I'm looking for shows to gawk at an actor cuz they're hawt for the sake of it. It's just an added bonus and added dimension. With series 10 being a genuine improvement over 9, it's a shame viewers didn't return, though parts one and two of Capaldi's finale surely helped contribute to a 2.8-million spike for "Twice Upon a Time" (which isn't a bad story at all and is one of the best Christmas/historical episodes up to that time, partial mishandling of the first Doctor aside.)
Clara rocked, plus it helped that Coleman is major eye candy....
I think Clara should have left the show permanently after the Face Huggers Christmas special. I did like her as a companion, and there was something to be said about the intentional unhealthy co-dependancy but I don't think it worked out quite as well.
In a weak season Hell Bent/Heaven Sent were incredible but also went too far in treating the Doctor as a god on his final triumphant return to Gallifrey.
Bill was an extremely underrated companion (aside from the pyramid monster trilogy) and I think her death at the end of The Doctor Falls really pushed the attitude change the Doctor needed in order to regenerate.
In a weak season Hell Bent/Heaven Sent were incredible but also went too far in treating the Doctor as a god on his final triumphant return to Gallifrey.
Bill was an extremely underrated companion (aside from the pyramid monster trilogy) and I think her death at the end of The Doctor Falls really pushed the attitude change the Doctor needed in order to regenerate.
I couldn't understand why two-thirds of Doctor Twelve's career was taken up in resolving Clara's situation.
Agreed completely. I love "Last Christmas" and I really wish the episode had ended with Clara as an old woman. I think that's a far better ending for the character than what she ultimately got and I think Moffat probably initially agreed. The only reason for the last-minute change was because Colman changed her mind about leaving.
I'm torn about Clara leaving during Last Christmas. On the one hand we likely would have got Faye Marsay's Shona as a companion and I adore Faye Marsay, but Clara staying allowed more Jenna (swoon) but also led the way to Bill and I loved Bill and her dynamic with 12.
I remember thinking at the time "Last Christmas" aired that it'd be pretty hard to write a better exit for Clara, but the trouble is, I think that bar was cleared. While "Last Christmas" would've been the most wonderfully emotionally devastating farewell to a companion ever, aside from "Sleep No More," I think season 9 had the highest sustained quality of any season of the revival, and "Heaven Sent" is in contention for being one of the best Doctor Who stories ever. Clara biting off more than she could chew in "Face the Raven" and accepting it was still a good conclusion, and the idea that she's got a second life a space adventurer for as long as she wishes, having completed her "apprenticeship" with the Doctor has a pleasing, hero's-journey, death-and-rebirth aspect to it.
In the end, the most disappointing part of "Last Christmas" is that, since we lack perfect foresight, the story couldn't have been saved for an actual companion exit, but that's nothing new. There are plenty of great episodes of stuff that come out of nowhere and could've been magnificent as special event episodes if someone could just reshape reality and move circumstances around so they were written a few years earlier or later.
In the end, the most disappointing part of "Last Christmas" is that, since we lack perfect foresight, the story couldn't have been saved for an actual companion exit, but that's nothing new. There are plenty of great episodes of stuff that come out of nowhere and could've been magnificent as special event episodes if someone could just reshape reality and move circumstances around so they were written a few years earlier or later.
I think I would agree if I disliked season 9 but it’s one of my favourite seasons because I love The Magicians Apprentice, The Witch’s Familiar, The Zygon doubleparter, The 3 part finale, and the specials. So despite not liking just a third of the episodes the 9 that I do like I absolutely adore and are some of my most rewatched (Seasons 4,5,6,8,9,10 are my most rewatched). However, I do see how the christmas episode would have been a good send off, especially because of the end scenes (but then I wouldn’t have gotten midlife crisis 12 and angry 12 in the beginning of season 9 which I cannot have)
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