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Clara OswaldJenna Coleman |
"This Woman's Work" by Thomas Cookson 11/6/18
(This review will focus solely on Clara's time with Matt Smith)
Some actors have a deep effect on us. Their performances can beguile and haunt us. We can find ourselves falling in love with them or feeling like we're seeing into their souls.
In 2013, during the lead up to Series 7b, I moved house to a single flat in suburbia away from my family, and during this emotionally chaotic move and many lonely nights in this unfamiliar place, I developed an overwhelming crush on the actress Judi Bowker from 1977's BBC production of Dracula. I thought it would pass after a few weeks, but it didn't. I wrote her a fan letter, hoping some kind of contact with her might take the edge off my feelings. I cried for weeks when no reply came.
I discovered she still performed plays in London and spent lonely nights awaiting her next performance, compulsively rehearsing what I'd say if I met her but scared it could all go wrong. Ultimately, I was dealing with an influx of libedal energy from the move, chasing memories of emotions I'd somehow missed, like the new area I lived in was already host to the ghost of wonderful lives past. I was feeling lost, needing an anchor.
Rooting through my old videos, I found the perfect comfort food in 1980's Somewhere in Time, where Christopher Reeve falls in love with a radiant, delicate old school actress from years gone. Enchanted by how she immortalised such raw, graceful emotion. When Christopher Reeve slipped back in time and said everything to Jane Seymour I wanted to tell Judi, it soothed me deeply. When Jane admitted she was guarded and cold to him because she'd known the scarier side of mass adoration, I understood why Judi never wrote me back.
Series 7 similarly saw the Doctor haunted by the impression of Clara, desperate to find her anew, understand her and win her trust. Naturally, I expected and wanted Clara's story to speak to my current passions and pain.
But when The Bells of Saint John aired, I didn't really warm to it. It was all over the place. It felt too rushed, too flippant, and too bogged down with arc fodder overkill. The Doctor's 'reunion' with Clara felt far too 'wacky', right when the moment called for genuine elation on the Doctor's part at seeing her alive again, having been haunted by witnessing her death, which was the biggest failing in terms of feeling emotionally with him.
I feel Moffat has a neurotic fixation with never emotionally compromising his characters and treating them and their interpersonal dynamics rather sociopathically. In this case, keeping the Doctor's fascination with Clara based solely on her mystery, which quickly became one-note and obnoxious. It turned the Doctor into a paranoid neurotic prick, convinced there's something wrong with Clara, regardless how many times she proves herself trustworthy.
RTD's approach had painted the Doctor as emotional but also as secretive and someone who kept things unhealthily close to his chest. Moffat emulated that secretive aspect but failed to balance this with moments of trust, taking it one step further by having the Doctor incapable of trusting his companion with the truth, like his frequently scanning Amy's womb without her permission.
Clara is basically a Manic Pixie Dream girl, and she carried Asylum of the Daleks and The Snowmen impressively well. Her following the Doctor up the spiral staircase to the clouds was a magical moment.
But Series 7b was supposed to offer Clara as a real ordinary woman. Like the Claras we'd met before were astral projections of her wilder dream selves. The Doctor's seeking of Clara seemed reminiscent of many Kate Bush songs where she plays a ghost wishing she could comfort her widower, wishing time could be turned back, for one last moment.
The Doctor has lost Amy for good, but not Clara. He can find her anew, but at a cost. She won't be his Clara, and the relationship he had with her predecessor won't exist unless he can forge it anew. But Bells feels like a false start. Everything that extends from its core feels like a cold distraction and burial of its heart, not a conductor or a natural outgrowth from it. Compare with Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead which had River's romance, a library of memories and sentiments and a heavenly virtual reality zone of families, offspring and second chances.
Bells doesn't stay anywhere long enough for any roots to be sowed. So the Doctor's indelicacy with Clara and aggressive intrusion into her home comes off sinister. Her indifference to this kills her believability.
Claudia Boleyn was particularly concerned about Smith's stalkerish behaviour towards Clara. But had the story taken itself more seriously, with a more committed tone and been genuinely chilling, it'd have simplified the issue of which suspect alien fixated with her Clara should trust.
Rings of Akhaten was much better. Its notion of immortalised emotional souvenirs struck a real chord with me when I'd been treasuring the memory of a small-screen starlet of the past, completely beyond my reach or years. An emotion that would've meant nothing to anyone but was precious to me.
Clara reveals her leaf as her souvenir. A momentum of her mother's passing. It poisons the sun-god by being the antithesis of its usual food of sentimental memories. A symbol of days ahead that didn't come, in permanence. In the end, Clara comes to understand the importance of her days ahead.
Unfortunately, Series 7 didn't follow up on this growth. As an anniversary season, stories became preoccupied with continuity navelgazing of Ice Warriors or Cybermen whilst Clara became sidelined, merely a tagalong, repeatedly overegged for her most interesting quality until it became her most boring.
I think with Moffat's arcs he's often clutching too tight to things the show doesn't need. He kept teasing a revelation to the Doctor's true name, to the point it almost overshadowed Clara's mystery. Making the latter seem to exist just for providing a kind of two-for-one deal to viewers.
Hide was refreshing stuff. Especially the moment Clara asks Jessica why, despite her telepathic ability, she doesn't feel confident enough to act on her crush, and she responds that even empaths can't assume their secret feelings are being returned, because sometimes messages get mixed up with the fantasy the other party actually mightn't want.
Jessica also warns of the Doctor's cold interest in Clara. Perhaps Clara's arc might've been better seen entirely from Clara's perspective, being about her view of this stranger's obsession with her and the secret he's keeping, and about her trying to unravel it, rather than the other way around.
Journey To the Centre of the TARDIS brought us closer to Clara's mystery and why it matters so much to the Doctor, rather than the writing making an asinine big deal out of its existence. But it also gets quite nasty when he becomes intimidating, demanding to know who Clara is and accusing her.
The Doctor terrifies Clara, roaring at her for answers, demanding to know if she's a trap, despite the fact that she's saved his life several times and he could've easily not picked her up in the first place. The Doctor is our viewpoint and it's as though the story's telling us how suspicious we should've been about Clara when so far she's done nothing to suggest anything so nefarious. It's insulting to the viewer and to Clara to mischaracterise her like this.
But even after we've seen this forged trust, Nightmare in Silver ends with the Doctor still acting like she's a suspect mystery, which is beyond infuriating. We're pages ahead of him now, but he seems determined to fixate on his suspicion like a stubborn child and refuses to understand anything else or to have gained any trust or empathy with her, which she's more than earned now. Clara is such a familiar, generic companion that portraying her as a figure of distrust to the Doctor comes off as nonsensical.
Nightmare in Silver seems to treat Clara as some mesmerising God-like being that no one in the army dare question or disobey. Their deference to her makes no sense otherwise, resembling the soldiers suddenly playing some childish roleplay game, which I kept expecting them to cut out at any moment.
It might've worked had Clara's first warnings not been heeded and the repercussions leaving the soldiers more willing to follow her. Clara constant warning of them not to use the planet buster makes it seem the commander woman eventually pressed the button because she was compelled to by incessant reverse psychology. It rendered Clara insufferably smug. Worse, it becomes painfully apparent that there's no tension regarding this companion who can't die.
Series 7 felt split down the middle by its successes and failures, and wherever it was a success it largely seemed in spite of Moffat rather than because of him. Name of the Doctor however was a triumph for Moffat. It had Moffat's puzzle-box clever layerings but was much more coherently focused toward a point, with a Holmesian spiralling descent motif.
It compensated for the emotionally stunted nature of the Doctor-Clara dynamic, by showing how much it destroys the Doctor to see Clara sacrifice herself and how overjoyed he is when he saves her. I was holding back the tears when he revealed he could see and hear River all along and didn't want to feel the hurt again.
I'd thought the Doctor's petulant suspicions about Clara could only mean she was intended to be a trap. Instead, she proved closer to my initial theory that she was a gift from a sentient universe to give the Doctor hope anew. But, overall, as a season finale Name of the Doctor only completed half its journey and didn't entirely satisfy. It was Moffat putting all his eggs in one basket.
Moffat seemed to be competing with Ashes to Ashes' ongoing mystery with its blurred destination point that's always just beyond reach. But Ashes to Ashes was more emotionally full-blooded, which made its mystery resolutions more cathartic and rewarding. It matters as much to the characters having to live with this helpless confusion and unanswered question as the viewer. The show's concept feels big and tight enough that the mystery never feels gratuitous or forced, but rather a natural outgrowth of the show's nature.
The revelation that Clara was destined to jump into the Doctor's timeline isn't quite enough to justify the preceding hype. In Ashes to Ashes, the core mystery feels so big, so entrenched in the series' heart that it couldn't be avoided if the writer tried. Conversely, I feel Clara's mystery could be removed completely from the season without affecting its overstory.
Perhaps her persuading Hartnell to take a different TARDIS somehow foils Simeon's plans by leading him down the wrong tunnel, but this isn't made lucid. Also Clara's past appearances in Asylum of the Daleks and The Snowmen raise the question whether she's actually changed anything.
Day of the Doctor leaps months ahead, in a story that defines the Doctor and the bond of love and protection every companion feels for him. Here Clara gracefully passes the torch of being the Doctor's healer to the Moment. A sentient being of love who carefully sows the seeds of hope and redemption in him.
Time of the Doctor sees Clara separated from the Doctor, who's decided to fight alone to protect Trenzalore. But after centuries pass, he finally needs her one last time, and she answers his call. Her final moments with him, gently helping him pull the cracker are beautiful. But time has done its damages. She can't heal him anymore.
All she can do for him is pray.
"Egomaniac needy game-player? That was me?" by Donna Bratley
11/8/19
From unpromising beginnings to one of my favourite companions, Clara started with nothing but the charisma of Jenna Coleman to support her. Impossible Girl? Implausible Plot Contrivance, more likely!
I barely bothered with the first half of Matt Smith's swansong - tired of the Doctor's "goofy charm" and eternally unable to warm to Ms Pond. A new companion offered hope: I sat down for The Bells of Saint John (couldn't be bothered interrupting Christmas for The Snowmen) wondering if, just possibly, the show might turn my way again.
And found the new lady perky, pert and far too pleased with herself.
Calling the TARDIS a "snog box" and breezily advising the Doctor to invite her again tomorrow was hateful: and that's before we get to him making leeringly out-of-character remarks about her skirt. Clara brought nothing beyond her "mystery".
Perhaps those scenes contain the green shoots of her later recovery: an early trace of control-freakery unidentified until much later. From my perspective, while Jenna acted her socks off what she was given for characterisation was - basically - a muddle.
"Souffle Girl"; "The Impossible Girl" "born to save the Doctor". I saw all the worst failings of Steven Moffat's showrunning in the gimmickry and glossed-over characterisation. Not for the first time, I felt for an actor doing her level best to keep a coherent personality afloat.
The Day of the Doctor didn't help. Suddenly we've got three Doctors and a schoolteacher (and not a reference to when that happened). I liked everything better with the wonderfully dry War Doctor around, but Clara, general sparkiness and grand speeches notwithstanding, remained a blank canvas. All right. Generic.
Enter the Twelfth Doctor. Exit - hooray! - any pretence at flirtation. Peter Capaldi's casting was the best thing that happened to Clara - and to Jenna, too.
Suddenly she had a defined trajectory to work with: the control-freak left flailing as the leading reins are snatched from her hands. On the back foot, confused and powerless to manage the Doctor as before, the lake, as Madame Vastra puts it, is finally ruffled. The perky, plucky assortment of random "companion" traits begins her transformation into a person.
I won't claim she's always likeable. From a confrontation with the veiled Silurian that reveals both her egotism and an uncomfortable shallowness, we're confronted head-on with a very flawed, basically decent young woman. That's a good thing. Unremitting sweetness rots teeth. We need faults to magnify our merits.
Yet complaints are raised against "Little Miss Perfect". Talk about taking someone at their own estimation! Manipulative. Self-absorbed. Hypocritical. As she proudly states, an incredible liar. Clara's all of those things, cossetted though she is from recognising them by the substantial ego she invariably fails to notice. If ever there was a companion ripe for the obverse of the time-honoured "journey", it's this one.
Because she's also highly capable, immensely bright, generous, brave and instinctively (eventually fatally) kind. In her good points as in her bad, she's as near a mirror for the Doctor's recklessly arrogant, wittily on-the-fly brilliance as any companion has ever been.
That's where Series 9 takes her arc and flies. While Series 8 challenges the perception that travelling with the Doctor makes a person "better", it's framed as a contrast to Twelve's gradual thawing - the counterpoint to his self-discovery in Clara's steady loss of human perspective.
Episodes 8 and 9 make it explicit. Having "pretended to be heartless" (while being resolutely pragmatic), the Doctor mourns the lives he couldn't save. Placed in that position after having defeated the Boneless, Clara is exultant, demanding accolades he never seeks. It's not admirable, but it's eminently credible, and in an era based more on intimate psychological tension than racing about waving the sonic, it's genius. Coleman plays it superbly.
I'm delighted she chose to remain another year. Mostly because Danny and the frazzled attempt to separate the two strands of her life merged into the least successful portion of Series 8, making Clara look a total cow with none of the redeeming warmth shown to strangers stumbling across the TARDIS.
Once he's gone, Clara throws herself fully into the Doctor's madcap life, becoming a frailer, less ingenious facsimile of her best friend. From wariness - even, daringly, outright hostility (however mishandled I found Kill the Moon) - to inseparable friends rattling toward inevitable catastrophe is a big step, but Clara made it. She revels in an assumed invincibility, and, as her experience grows, so does her hubris. Again, not likeable - real.
The foreshadowing of her doom was heavy-handed - within the modern show, any subtlety comes from performance, not script - but it made sense. Emotionally brittle - inclined to leap for blackmail as a first resort from Dark Water onward - and increasingly cocksure, Clara lost the natural me-first human instinct for self-preservation. It's a comprehensible progression driven by trauma, and, as Clara becomes more like him, the Doctor's recognition of where it's inevitably leading is palpable.
Said inevitability suffers from Steven Moffat's inability to resist a resurrection. Clara dies as she lived: bravely, compassionately, recklessly, giving herself up for another, just as the Doctor would. The difference is, he'd have heard the warning she missed. Too confident in their combined abilities, Clara falls straight into a trap of her own making. Bold, confident, headstrong, generous and at the last completely unselfish, she falls as she stood, her own woman to the last heartbeat.
Almost.
So along comes "The Hybrid" - a metaphor for the unhealthy co-dependence of a particular Time Lord and one very specific human. Missy - the lover of chaos - certainly got her money's worth! After a lifetime seeing the Doctor/companion team as a force for good, it's intriguing to face its complete subversion, and it allowed Messrs Moffat and Capaldi to do something with the central figure never attempted before. The result is shocking - but isn't that the point?
And it restores Clara's lost human perspective, seeing the Doctor willing to tear down worlds for her sake. At the last, the spell breaks: the Hybrid, for all the Matrix prophecies, is a myth. Those Time Lords aren't as clever as they think.
I hated The Stolen Earth/Journey's End for numerous reasons. Foremost amongst them was the sneering acceptance of Davros's suggestion that the Doctor turned his friends to violence, making them soldiers - surely a complete inversion of the traditional view that he makes them better, braver and more selfless than they ever imagined they could be. People willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater good - suddenly Doctor Who was against that?
Clara's progression is a subtler, more intimate exploration of the same theme. Her conclusion though is diametrically opposite. She lives well, fights for what's right and never regrets. She accepts the consequences of her own actions and demands the Doctor give credit for them too. She's not what he made of her; she is what she is: what she made of herself.
It works for me because it's beautifully written and perfectly played. This isn't the place to praise Peter Capaldi's superb contribution - except to observe that he brings out the best in Jenna Coleman. Faced with a leading man of formidable charisma, she's both compelling and charming.
Thanks to her, so is Clara Oswald.