Everybody hates Clara

I've been toying with the idea of writing this post for a while, though I hadn't quite found the time in between posts about each episode. But after feeling really underwhelmed by Saturday's episode 'A Nightmare in Silver', I couldn't summon the enthusiasm to write about it specifically. I'm not sure that I can accurately get across what I didn't like about it, other than it not living up to my expectations for an episode written by Neil Gaiman. It may also have to do with the sudden realisation that the next episode is the last one this series and we're still no closer to finding out what Clara's secret is.

It seems like a lot of people have been quick to claim that this half-series is the worst period of the show ever, with Clara being their common problem. Penny Arcade Report have a whole article on the subject from someone who started watching in the Amy Pond period but I've seen the same criticisms from fans of companions written by Russell T. Davies. I've been doing my best to give her the benefit of the doubt but I'm not sure if I'm grudgingly starting to agree with this assessment.

It can be hard to agree though when some people seem to veer so close to attacking her portrayal as a whole rather than just the way she's written. Jenna Louise Coleman still seems to be doing pretty well with the material she's given and I don't find anything about her actively offensive. And while she's perhaps lacking in character development I wouldn't describe her as a complete cardboard cut-out either - I was reminded again of Mr. Plinkett's Star Wars reviews and how people hilariously struggled to describe Queen Amidala in the Phantom Menace. Clara by comparison has had some nice human touches and you could certainly come up with a list of characteristics to describe her.

If anything she perhaps comes across as not having a consistent character as she can be scared one episode and then taking charge in another, also occasionally seeming to be written more like Amy Pond. But mostly people seem to just describe her as a 'normal person' with nothing 'special' about her, which seemed like an unfair assessment - something already highlighted in 'Hide'. I can understand that some people might have been upset that she wasn't more like her incarnations in 'Asylum of the Daleks' and 'The Snowmen' but I felt it cemented the fact that she was definitely a different character.

The problem seems more to be that the show has built up the idea that she's a huge mystery to solve but then the Doctor seems to do almost nothing to investigate it. I can count about two instances where the idea has been pushed forward in any way - The Doctor's initial investigation of her past in 'The Rings of Akhaten' and surreptitiously taking her to see a psychic in 'Hide'. Any other mention of her mystery has been a variation on "Ooh, you're so impossible, tell me who you are", when the audience is already on board with the idea of her knowing nothing about her past lives.

Coincidentally, both episodes that featured any kind of progress were by the same writer - I don't know if that's significant or if the episode's writer would not have much choice in what was revealed about Clara. If that's the case, it feels like in most episodes the writers weren't given anything new to reveal, leaving both her character and the mystery in a holding pattern - not willing to do anything exciting with her character lest they contradict some unknown end goal.

But then after so much time treading water, it seems like the trailers and adverts for the final episode are quite happy to 'spoil' Clara's purpose. I don't know whether to take the radio advert at face value but it consists of a voice over from Jenna-Louise Coleman talking about how she has existed many times, feels like she is everywhere at once and knows she was born to save the Doctor. It might just be a hook to get people to watch the show but it felt like lazy exposition to me, to have her character suddenly come out with these motivations when everything has suggested she doesn't know anything consciously.

I mean people have kind of been coming to this conclusion already I suppose, due to the fact that nearly every episode has been resolved by Clara not the Doctor. I suppose some of these instances have felt a little forced but it still feels like too subtle an approach to take. If some of the episodes had tied into her protecting the Doctor more, it would have helped to keep people's interest and reveal the mystery more gradually.

So we're then left with a final episode that's either going to have to cram in a lot of explanation or leave a lot unresolved. Another common complaint this series has been that 45 minutes is just too short to really let the stories shine but sadly this doesn't seem likely to change. I can't see the length of an individual episode changing (although I think an hour would be more suitable) and Steven Moffat has previously talked about not wanting to do two part episodes anymore.

His reasons for doing so might seem very practical (it doesn't save them money and almost always results in declining audience figures) but while it might make sure the show survives on a long term basis, I can't help but feel that it could be limiting it. Surely whatever is the best way of telling a given story should come first, if something would work better as a two parter then it should at least be an option. And while it must be difficult to plan an overall series arc when you can jump anywhere in time, it really needs to find a good middle ground between every episode being connected and having no development whatsoever.

Doctor Who - The Crimson Horror (2013)

As previously mentioned, I didn't really have high hopes for this episode, so I was pleasantly surprised by it overall. To be honest, I probably should have expected that the return of Vastra, Jenny and Strax would make it at least watchable, with Strax in particular often being the best thing in weaker episodes. This episode could be seen as being written for all those that would like to see the trio on their own adventures, as the Doctor does not even feature in the first third of it.

This provided an interesting angle to the episode, as Jenny takes the lead in investigating the deaths of people in a town in Yorkshire, her being the only one of the team able to blend in easily. They know of the Doctor's involvement from the beginning though, as through some Victorian pseudo-science they discover that his face was the last thing one of the the victims saw. I wasn't entirely sure whether the trio would have taken the case if not for this fact and despite making for a good opening I wonder if it might have added to the mystery if they hadn't known about him at first.

It turns out that the Doctor has fallen prey to the same fate as all of the other victims, his alien DNA being the only thing saving him from death. Red skinned and almost immobile, he's been locked up by the daughter of Sweetville's leader Mrs. Gillyflower, who dotes on him as her 'Monster'. It seems obvious with hindsight but at the time I didn't see this coming, as whatever was locked up did seem malevolent while you couldn't see it. A quick sonic-shower or something is enough to reverse the process though, and we then get a quick flashback of how the Doctor got involved in the situation - I found Matt Smith's attempt at a Yorkshire accent surprisingly amusing. Jenny is naturally confused when the Doctor immediately wants to find Clara, thinking he's referring to the person who died in 'The Snowmen'. I liked how this almost made it appear he was a mad man chasing a ghost in his grief if you didn't know the rest of the story.

Meanwhile, Vastra discovers that whatever is causing the deaths and red skin is not alien in origin but instead another of the Earth's first inhabitants, a red leech that was a problem at the height of the Silurian empire. In low enough doses it merely paralyses and preserves those treated with it, which is the first part of Mrs. Gillyflowers plan to protect those she deems worthy of populating her new world. Essentially a Victorian take on Noah's Ark, she plans to use the pure form of the leech venom to decimate the rest of the Earths population. Her obsession with perfection seemed quite reflective of the Victorian age in general, in a similar manner to 'The Snowmen's villain being the personification of the coldness in their relationships.

It came as no surprise then that Mrs. Gillyflower's own daughter Ada (played by Diana Rigg's real life daughter Rachael Stirling), had no place in her future utopia, her blindness and scarring making her imperfect. This is first said to have been the result of her drunken father beating her but it's eventually revealed to be the result of her mother's initial experiments with the leech venom. This disturbing, twisted mother/daughter relationship was probably the most memorable part of the episode, with their last words to each other being pure spite. I particularly liked how Ada managed to foil the Doctor's peaceful plans for dealing with the red leech once the danger had been averted, a scene that felt quite like something from The League of Gentlemen.

This relationship should perhaps not have worked alongside some of the other comedy elements in the episode but it didn't seem to bother me. Humour is always a very personal preference but some jokes that fell flat for others were still funny to me - the constantly fainting gentleman (who I thought was an attempt to reverse the stereotype of  Victorian ladies fainting - even if tight fitting corsets were usually the cause) and 'Thomas Thomas' giving Strax directions. Strax threatening to shoot his horse for treason before this was pretty hilarious too.

Clara's return to modern day had an unexpected confrontation with the children she looks after, as they've found pictures of her from various times on the internet. The fact that it included her incarnation from 'The Snowmen' throws her and causes her to pretty much confirm the kid's suspicions. They then proceed to  blackmail her into taking them on a trip with her, which I wouldn't perhaps normally have jumped for but with Neil Gaiman on writing duties next episode, I feel pretty confident that he can handle younger characters well.

Doctor Who - Journey to the Center of the TARDIS (2013)

Given such an exciting title and premise, this episode was always going to have a tough time living up to it. On the one hand it was nice to see more of the TARDIS, with callbacks to earlier episodes as we finally get a glimpse of its library and swimming pool (as mentioned in the first episode of Matt Smith's tenure - pointed out by +Adam Rollings). The M.C. Escher touches in the poster left me hoping to see some more surreal touches though, something to really sell the idea of the ship's impossible architecture. All we really got were a bunch of similar corridors that wrapped round to the same location like a retro videogame. On top of that, we didn't really learn much of consequence about the TARDIS, especially given the question of why the TARDIS doesn't like Clara is being pushed as an important point recently.

Depending on your personal influences, I'd imagine the salvage ship that captures the TARDIS brought to mind either Red Dwarf or Alien - I think I thought of Red Dwarf first just because they're both English shows. I quite often enjoy sci-fi that revolves around the more mundane aspects of life, with the Van Baalen brothers being the intergalactic equivalent of scrap merchants. It's just a shame that they weren't really interesting or varied in any way, with the 'twist' about one of them being pretty obvious from the outset.

All the elements were there to tie this together as a strong episode though. The TARDIS was only able to be captured because the Doctor disabled its shields to let Clara take basic control of it, in the hope that they might be able to bond. From the glimpses shown in the trailer I expected this episode to revolve around Clara forming an uneasy alliance with the ship to solve whatever problem had befallen it. Instead she spends the episode wandering around and discovering the Doctor's collection of nick-nacks at random and running away from a monster that looked like it was made of molten lava.

There is an attempt at referring to something of greater importance, as she finds a history book detailing the Time War and discovers the Doctor's true name - something we know is going to play a part in the last episode of this series. There's been hints about the importance of his name for quite some time now but it's not something that really grabs me. I can't personally see a reason why it's going to have such significance and why he is so concerned about keeping it secret (maybe he should have put that book somewhere safer if there was a danger Clara could stumble across it). Is it going to turn out like Voldemort where there is some curse upon saying it out loud?

Anyway, with the Doctor somehow escaping the TARDIS when it's torn into the salvage ship, he promises the crew that they can take whatever they want from his ship if they help him search for Clara inside (which naturally bemuses them until they set foot on it). Even if it's eventually revealed to be a ruse, I really liked the Doctor's ruthless attitude in trapping the Van Baalen's on board to help him out. The line about not getting on a spaceship with a mad man was a nice reflection of the same thing he'd said to Amy on her first trip, giving it a slightly more sinister edge.

Naturally the Doctor has some trouble controlling his scrap merchant guests as they search for Clara and when they split up to cover more ground, they clearly see it as an opportunity to start stripping the TARDIS for parts. This only results in the ship trying to defend itself, temporarily locking some of them in a room when one of them takes part of a techno-organic looking machine that the Doctor assures can create anything mechanical your heart desires.

The molten lava creature takes its first life when one of the Van Baalen's encounters it while scavenging the main control room. I initially thought that this character had been merged with the creature as when you next see it there are two shambling humanoid forms fused together. However they are eventually revealed to be 'Time Zombies', the ultimate fate of all of the characters, including the Doctor, should they die in the heart of the TARDIS.

Seeing no reason to hold back with his life on the line, the Doctor finally confronts Clara with all of the questions he's been skirting around since he met this incarnation. As we all expected, Clara doesn't have any answers for him and I think he finally accepts her for who she is - immediately treating her a lot more warmly. I felt like this worked well as a half way point in this mini-series but I'm not exactly sure what will push the mystery forward now but his attitude to her was starting to drag so I think it was the right decision.

But then the end of the episode pushes a big friendly reset button, leaving it unclear what anyone actually took away from the episode. It clumsily hints that at least one of the Van Baalen's has retained something of his experience but it's very 'timey wimey' reasoning for something that should be impossible. It really felt like each character would only remember what was convenient to the script writer. I'm kind of in two minds about this episode overall, as I kind of enjoyed it at the time but the complete lack of consequences just made it fall flat at the end. Weirdly I don't feel overly enthusiastic about tomorrow's 'The Crimson Horror' either, as it looks more like some of Mark Gatiss' lesser episodes compared to 'Cold War', despite the reappearance of Vastra, Jenny, and Strax from 'The Snowmen'.