Clara Oswald... Love, Like and Hate
So, way, way back in September 2012 something horrible happened. It was positively awful. Apparently, it was the worst thing that every happened to Doctor Who. On September 29, 2012, "The Angels Take Manhattan" aired and Amy Pond and Rory Williams... died. Thus began much crying and gnashing of teeth. We had already been introduced to the next companion, Clara "Oswin" Oswald in the series premiere, but we were all confused because Clara died at the end of the episode. That's not a very auspicious beginning for a new companion, is it?
So, everyone missed Rory and Amy. We had this new companion that died in her very next episode as well. So, it seemed to me and some Whovians that the writers replaced the wonder that was Rory and Amy with a cheap gimmick.
I mean, what were we supposed to think? Shouldn't her character be allowed to speak for herself without the whole mystery gimmick to try to make her interesting to us viewers? Of course, we, the viewers, weren't asking the right questions. This is because, we, the viewers (or me, the viewer) weren't really thinking in a story sense.
See, if you look at the Doctor's timeline instead of just focusing on the Eleventh Doctor alone, if you look at everything, different story elements make more sense. Te wider picture offers a better perspective. The Ninth and Tenth Doctors lost their people and then a lot of companions in short order. The Eleventh Doctor befriended Amy and Rory, and he stayed friends with them for hundreds of years of his life. He went from being in his 900s to being in his 1200s, if I recall properly, while still being friends with Amy and Rory. He was friends with them for longer than he was friends with Rose, Martha, Mickey, and Donna. He might still occasionally associate with Jack. There's no proof though.
The Eleventh Doctor was tired of losing people when he was the Tenth Doctor. He regenerated into the Eleventh Doctor and it was like his lease on life was restored... little did we know it was because he knew that would be his last life. He could make friends because he wasn't going to live very much longer. Not only that, but those two friends became his family. Then, he lost that family. He still had the Paternoster Gang, but everyone else he loved was gone. So he literally needed someone "interesting" to force him out of his self-imposed exile. He was on his last life. He fully intended to stay in Victorian England with the Paternoster Gang and live to death too. He might have even aged until he could visit Amy and Rory as an old man in New York... going the long way round.
Then he met Clara and she ended that. She was just interesting enough to spark his interest, to be a puzzle for him to suss out for the end of his life. He probably figured he'd just solve the mystery and then go back to moping, but instead he solved the mystery and found out when he died. He didn't know if he was going to actually die or find a way out of it. I'm pretty sure he didn't care. From the Twelfth Doctor, I can tell that he probably fully intended to die if only to stop losing people. However, Clara changed that. Clara gave him a new lease on life. She even begged the Time Lords to give him more regenerations... and they did.
So... why do we hate her?
Some of the hate was the same hate people felt for River Song. Some Whovians still talk about Series 6 derisively by calling it "The River Song Show". Series 8 and 9 are sometimes called the "Clara Oswald Show" in the same tones. That's mostly fans throwing a fit and being a bit immature in my opinion. Rose Tyler, Donna Noble, and Amy Pond all had seasons and episodes where they took up as much if not more of the spotlight from the Doctor.
I don't mind that so much because the Companion is supposed to be the lens through which the viewer sees the Doctor. If you don't have a good idea of how the lens works, you might end up with an image that is out of focus or just weird looking. So, we have to get to know the Companion so that the Doctor doesn't randomly look orange and fat when he's actually blue and skinny. It's just the way the show is designed. The way the Doctor interacts with his companions reveals as much about him to the viewers as the companion's interactions with the Doctor. So, if sometimes the show seems more about the companions than the Doctor, I get it. I'm fine with that.
In short, some of the Clara hate is obviously silly. It's just immature behavior on the part of immature people who refuse to recognize the show they're watching for what it is or just don't care. That's fine. Those people are everywhere. Look at the Star Wars fandom.
However, I disliked Clara as well. It wasn't just the gimmick which I felt was poorly resolved and rushed due to the show getting fewer episodes the very year of the 50th anniversary. It was also the fact that I felt I'd seen her character before.
In a way, I had. You see, Steven Moffat isn't very good at creating original characters. A lot of his characters, especially the females, seem like the same female characters given new actors and new faces. Amy, River, Susan (from Coupling), and a lot of the female characters I know about seem very, very similar. They're all "strong women" with "foreful attitudes" and personalities. I'm just left underwhelmed.
However, I loved Amy and River and even Susan, Sally, and Jane. The actors helped the characters become their own people. Jenna Coleman did the same with Clara. Rewatching the episodes, I saw that. Actually, it was upon rewatching the episodes that I realized something really surprising.
I hated Clara when the episodes first aired. In fact, I tried to only watch them once because I really didn't like Clara and I didn't want to deal with her stupid face. I didn't want to complain anymore. I just decided to keep watching the episodes so I would know what happened and to keep ratings up to a certain extent so that Doctor Who would survive, but I wasn't going to do it well. I usually watched the episodes while doing other things. Obviously, that was different with Series 10 because I loved Bill, but Bill is another topic entirely.
Well this Christmas, the Twelfth Doctor regenerated into the Thirteenth Doctor. Whenever the Doctor regenerates, I marathon all the episodes of the Doctor Who that Doctor was in. So, I rewatched Series 8, 9, and 10. I rewatched all the Christmas episodes. I did the whole Whovian thing. It was awesome because I was even off work for most of it so I was binging like a champ.
I got about halfway through when I suddenly realized the weirdest thing...
I don't hate Clara anymore. I don't dislike her. I don't find her face annoying. I don't severely dislike the episodes where she's the major character and not the Doctor.
It was the weirdest revelation I ever had since I realized how much I dislike Rose Tyler. In fact, when I was done, I briefly watched a Rose Tyler episodes. I still don't like her. I don't hate her anymore, but I don't like Rose Tyler. However, I actually...
I like Clara. I like her story. It's hard to wrap my head around it because it's weird. I found her ending highly unsatisfying. I felt "Face the Raven" was a great ending for Clara and a great way to resolve her character arc. However, I even understood why the Twelfth Doctor would do what he did to save her. He tried to save Clara for the same reason he tried to redeem and save The Master. He just doesn't want to be alone anymore, no matter what the cost. I felt bad for Clara to get mixed up in that.
So... what changed my mind? Was it that Bill gave me enough space from Clara to go back to the episodes with a clear mind? Was it just that I'm not as big of a Doctor Who fan as I was before? Was it because I watched some of the older episodes of Doctor Who and Teagan and Adric are just so annoying that Clara pales by comparison?
I really don't know, but I think that everyone who hates Clara should examine why. Do you hate her just because she replaced the Ponds and, "Nobody can replace the Ponds!"? Do you hate Clara because you feel the episodes revolve around her too much? Do you hate Clara because she's just annoying to you? Do you hate Clara because of Jenna Coleman's eyes? Or do you just hate Clara because everyone else did?
There are a lot of reasons you could hate Clara, but there are also reasons to like her. My favorite part about Season 8 was when Clara stopped seeing the Doctor as her boyfriend and as a friend. In fact, she moved on so much, she found a guy who behaved like the Doctor in a lot of ways, but looked nothing like the Eleventh Doctor... as seen in the episode "The Caretaker". That season, Clara also reveals her most human side, her flaws. She loves and respects both Danny Pink and the Doctor, and she wants them both to like and approve of her. So... she lies to them both, and then she gets found out. She has to apologize. Heck, if you want to see how similar Clara and the Doctor are, see how they react to loss. Clara loses Danny Pink and she goes to extraordinary lengths to get him back, using the only way she knows how: the Doctor. Meanwhile, when the Doctor loses Clara... well, he uses the Time Lords to do pretty much the same thing. He nearly destroys the universe to get Clara back. Yes, Clara was really played up in Series 7 because they were replacing such well-loved companions, but she ends up growing to be more than that.
So, just give her a second chance. If you still don't like Clara Oswald, there are a lot of seasons of Doctor Who and companions to find that you love. After all, I immediately loved Bill... even though a bunch of people still hated her too.
Until next time, this is Hanorah and these are my words.
So, everyone missed Rory and Amy. We had this new companion that died in her very next episode as well. So, it seemed to me and some Whovians that the writers replaced the wonder that was Rory and Amy with a cheap gimmick.
I mean, what were we supposed to think? Shouldn't her character be allowed to speak for herself without the whole mystery gimmick to try to make her interesting to us viewers? Of course, we, the viewers, weren't asking the right questions. This is because, we, the viewers (or me, the viewer) weren't really thinking in a story sense.
See, if you look at the Doctor's timeline instead of just focusing on the Eleventh Doctor alone, if you look at everything, different story elements make more sense. Te wider picture offers a better perspective. The Ninth and Tenth Doctors lost their people and then a lot of companions in short order. The Eleventh Doctor befriended Amy and Rory, and he stayed friends with them for hundreds of years of his life. He went from being in his 900s to being in his 1200s, if I recall properly, while still being friends with Amy and Rory. He was friends with them for longer than he was friends with Rose, Martha, Mickey, and Donna. He might still occasionally associate with Jack. There's no proof though.
The Eleventh Doctor was tired of losing people when he was the Tenth Doctor. He regenerated into the Eleventh Doctor and it was like his lease on life was restored... little did we know it was because he knew that would be his last life. He could make friends because he wasn't going to live very much longer. Not only that, but those two friends became his family. Then, he lost that family. He still had the Paternoster Gang, but everyone else he loved was gone. So he literally needed someone "interesting" to force him out of his self-imposed exile. He was on his last life. He fully intended to stay in Victorian England with the Paternoster Gang and live to death too. He might have even aged until he could visit Amy and Rory as an old man in New York... going the long way round.
Then he met Clara and she ended that. She was just interesting enough to spark his interest, to be a puzzle for him to suss out for the end of his life. He probably figured he'd just solve the mystery and then go back to moping, but instead he solved the mystery and found out when he died. He didn't know if he was going to actually die or find a way out of it. I'm pretty sure he didn't care. From the Twelfth Doctor, I can tell that he probably fully intended to die if only to stop losing people. However, Clara changed that. Clara gave him a new lease on life. She even begged the Time Lords to give him more regenerations... and they did.
So... why do we hate her?
Some of the hate was the same hate people felt for River Song. Some Whovians still talk about Series 6 derisively by calling it "The River Song Show". Series 8 and 9 are sometimes called the "Clara Oswald Show" in the same tones. That's mostly fans throwing a fit and being a bit immature in my opinion. Rose Tyler, Donna Noble, and Amy Pond all had seasons and episodes where they took up as much if not more of the spotlight from the Doctor.
I don't mind that so much because the Companion is supposed to be the lens through which the viewer sees the Doctor. If you don't have a good idea of how the lens works, you might end up with an image that is out of focus or just weird looking. So, we have to get to know the Companion so that the Doctor doesn't randomly look orange and fat when he's actually blue and skinny. It's just the way the show is designed. The way the Doctor interacts with his companions reveals as much about him to the viewers as the companion's interactions with the Doctor. So, if sometimes the show seems more about the companions than the Doctor, I get it. I'm fine with that.
In short, some of the Clara hate is obviously silly. It's just immature behavior on the part of immature people who refuse to recognize the show they're watching for what it is or just don't care. That's fine. Those people are everywhere. Look at the Star Wars fandom.
However, I disliked Clara as well. It wasn't just the gimmick which I felt was poorly resolved and rushed due to the show getting fewer episodes the very year of the 50th anniversary. It was also the fact that I felt I'd seen her character before.
In a way, I had. You see, Steven Moffat isn't very good at creating original characters. A lot of his characters, especially the females, seem like the same female characters given new actors and new faces. Amy, River, Susan (from Coupling), and a lot of the female characters I know about seem very, very similar. They're all "strong women" with "foreful attitudes" and personalities. I'm just left underwhelmed.
However, I loved Amy and River and even Susan, Sally, and Jane. The actors helped the characters become their own people. Jenna Coleman did the same with Clara. Rewatching the episodes, I saw that. Actually, it was upon rewatching the episodes that I realized something really surprising.
I hated Clara when the episodes first aired. In fact, I tried to only watch them once because I really didn't like Clara and I didn't want to deal with her stupid face. I didn't want to complain anymore. I just decided to keep watching the episodes so I would know what happened and to keep ratings up to a certain extent so that Doctor Who would survive, but I wasn't going to do it well. I usually watched the episodes while doing other things. Obviously, that was different with Series 10 because I loved Bill, but Bill is another topic entirely.
Well this Christmas, the Twelfth Doctor regenerated into the Thirteenth Doctor. Whenever the Doctor regenerates, I marathon all the episodes of the Doctor Who that Doctor was in. So, I rewatched Series 8, 9, and 10. I rewatched all the Christmas episodes. I did the whole Whovian thing. It was awesome because I was even off work for most of it so I was binging like a champ.
I got about halfway through when I suddenly realized the weirdest thing...
I don't hate Clara anymore. I don't dislike her. I don't find her face annoying. I don't severely dislike the episodes where she's the major character and not the Doctor.
It was the weirdest revelation I ever had since I realized how much I dislike Rose Tyler. In fact, when I was done, I briefly watched a Rose Tyler episodes. I still don't like her. I don't hate her anymore, but I don't like Rose Tyler. However, I actually...
I like Clara. I like her story. It's hard to wrap my head around it because it's weird. I found her ending highly unsatisfying. I felt "Face the Raven" was a great ending for Clara and a great way to resolve her character arc. However, I even understood why the Twelfth Doctor would do what he did to save her. He tried to save Clara for the same reason he tried to redeem and save The Master. He just doesn't want to be alone anymore, no matter what the cost. I felt bad for Clara to get mixed up in that.
So... what changed my mind? Was it that Bill gave me enough space from Clara to go back to the episodes with a clear mind? Was it just that I'm not as big of a Doctor Who fan as I was before? Was it because I watched some of the older episodes of Doctor Who and Teagan and Adric are just so annoying that Clara pales by comparison?
I really don't know, but I think that everyone who hates Clara should examine why. Do you hate her just because she replaced the Ponds and, "Nobody can replace the Ponds!"? Do you hate Clara because you feel the episodes revolve around her too much? Do you hate Clara because she's just annoying to you? Do you hate Clara because of Jenna Coleman's eyes? Or do you just hate Clara because everyone else did?
There are a lot of reasons you could hate Clara, but there are also reasons to like her. My favorite part about Season 8 was when Clara stopped seeing the Doctor as her boyfriend and as a friend. In fact, she moved on so much, she found a guy who behaved like the Doctor in a lot of ways, but looked nothing like the Eleventh Doctor... as seen in the episode "The Caretaker". That season, Clara also reveals her most human side, her flaws. She loves and respects both Danny Pink and the Doctor, and she wants them both to like and approve of her. So... she lies to them both, and then she gets found out. She has to apologize. Heck, if you want to see how similar Clara and the Doctor are, see how they react to loss. Clara loses Danny Pink and she goes to extraordinary lengths to get him back, using the only way she knows how: the Doctor. Meanwhile, when the Doctor loses Clara... well, he uses the Time Lords to do pretty much the same thing. He nearly destroys the universe to get Clara back. Yes, Clara was really played up in Series 7 because they were replacing such well-loved companions, but she ends up growing to be more than that.
So, just give her a second chance. If you still don't like Clara Oswald, there are a lot of seasons of Doctor Who and companions to find that you love. After all, I immediately loved Bill... even though a bunch of people still hated her too.
Until next time, this is Hanorah and these are my words.
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