Oh, so it's more about her? That's great...

Oh, so it's more about her? That's great...

Yes, quite a bit. That would be great, but they have done it at the expense of the Doctor. Now it seems like he has become the background character instead of the main one. 

if this season keeps going the way it is I'm going to have to stop watching very soon

they're probably just giving her the extra attention because she'll be leaving soon. they went all this time without giving her much in the way of a character, and now they're trying to rush one in as fast as possible so they'll A. have a story for her departure and B. give us a reason to care.

Clara is finally being developed as a character, I'm loving it.

if by "developed as a character" you mean "they gave her a boyfriend" then sure, yeah.

Oh yeah sure, that's what it's become. The 'Clara' show, not the 'men fight over Clara as though they're somehow entitled to her and emotionally abuse and manipulate her while they're at it' show.
Doctor Who is supposed to be about the companions. Right now all I'm seeing is a forced romantic subplot being used to teach the Doctor a lesson about the soldier prejudices he never had until now, and the use of Clara as a plot device to facilitate this unnecessary Doctor-centric character development.

but y'know what let's just name it clara, because even with all of these issues this is somehow still better treatment than she got last season

(as a side-note, if this is a comment on clara being forced into literally every moment in the doctor's timeline then yes, i agree)

- Indigo Individual

Oh yeah sure, that's what it's become. The 'Clara' show, not the 'men fight over Clara as though they're somehow entitled to her and emotionally abuse and manipulate her while they're at it' show.

Doctor Who is supposed to be about the companions. Right now all I'm seeing is a forced romantic subplot being used to teach the Doctor a lesson about the soldier prejudices he never had until now, and the use of Clara as a plot device to facilitate this unnecessary Doctor-centric charavter development.

 

but y'know what let's just name it clara, because even with all of these issues this is somehow still better treatment than she got last season

 

(as a side-note, if this is a comment on clara being forced into literally every moment in the doctor's timeline then yes, i agree)

 

- Indigo Individual

I'm not against characterization of Clara, and it agree that the whole "men fight over Clara..." thing wouldn't be good. The only reason I'm bothered is that they are overdoing it, causing a new doctor to have little development when he needs it most. 

Meh, I have no issues with this. The show is usually at its worst when it focuses on the Doctor, because it kills all sense of tension. I couldn't have been less involved with the Series 6 arc, because unless the stars have aligned and Cthulhu starts lumbering out of his watery Premier Inn, the Doctor obviously wasn't going to face his final and ultimate death. The same with The Time of the Doctor. It was pretty darn obvious something would jump out of nowhere and help the Doctor to regenerate because otherwise the show would be over. And that would mean the money the BBC makes would be over and I sure don't see them letting a cash cow like this go following the hype built up by the 50th anniversary. Heck, the only time when the Doctor being in peril was genuinely surprising was during The Stolen Earth when Ten started to regenerate right before the credits rolled. Almost nobody who didn't routinely scour the web for leaks could see that one coming, and that's what got people excited. Unfortunately Moffat likes to think he's cleverer than he is and that he does the unexpected, but in reality what he does is just trite and typical. 

Ultimately, the point I'm trying to make is that companions come and go, but The Doctor is a constant that must remain for the series to go on, and the BBC isn't about to let that happen. And so for the sake of drama, I'm happy for the episodes to be companion-centric because that keeps them fresh and interesting. That and the companions were always meant to be the centre of attention, because they're the audience surrogates who ask the Doctor "What's this?" and "What's that?" and get him to explain everything in basic terms that the general viewing public can understand. So long as he's still there to do so, I don't see the problem. 

Of course, it could still be more interesting. I've never found the drama in a relationship to be a particularly pulse-pounding part of the show, at least not to the extent where it deserves to be centre-stage of the story. This Skovox Blitzer was apparently one of the greatest weapons ever created and for some reason it deserved to be in the background under Clara's angst over the Doctor and Danny meeting. It took the wind out of the episode's sails as a result, and just felt like a massive missed opportunity. I'm not upset that the episodes have been Clara-centric, I'm upset that the fact that them being Clara-centric has caused them to be more soap-opera than science fiction. 

I'm not against characterization of Clara, and it agree that the whole "men fight over Clara..." thing wouldn't be good. The only reason I'm bothered is that they are overdoing it, causing a new doctor to have little development when he needs it most. 

 

frankly i don't think i really want to see this new doctor have development because it's already pretty clear he's just scottish alien sherlock and i really hate that

also, 'wouldn't be good'?

*isn't good

it's happening, in the show, that was a huge theme of the last episode

it isn't good

sorry for being stubborn on this point but... yeah

- Indigo Individual

I never really liked Clara as a character, and I thought that they brought her in to be important when her character is just kind of ... well, bland. That and the fact that they had the side-plot of the 11 crushing on her, which I despised.
 
With 12, I think she works better - there's certainly a better dynamic - but all the same, I don't feel like we know her as a character. She doesn't have the little quirks that have made previous companions enjoyable; it's almost like she was written as "generic female companion" instead of "Clara Oswald." Moffat had two and a half seasons to develop Amy and Rory, and his character-development shortcomings are definitely coming to the forefront with Clara.
 
To be honest, I think Moffat had run out of good ideas. I loved Series 5 and Series 6 was a tad worse, but still enjoyable enough. Since then (aside from the 50th and a few other episodes), Moffat's writing has plummeted dramatically. There's only so long one writer can write for one show, and it's showing. Long-running shows require input from many different areas, and it's just not a good idea to leave a writer at the helm for as long as they've left Moffat at his.
 
"Scottish alien Sherlock" is an interesting way of summing up 12, but I quite like it. 12 is one of the most aloof and alien Doctors since 4, and just because his character traits resemble those of Cumberbatch's Sherlock doesn't imply that the writers have chosen to write 12 as they would write Sherlock. The trope has been there for a while within the show's narrative.
 
I didn't get the sense that there's any sort of fighting over Clara. Danny doesn't want to see Clara dying on a distant planet any more than Clara wants to die on a distant planet. Traveling with the Doctor is a dangerous business.
 
Is Danny a bit protective? Probably. But I don't think that stems from anything but wanting Clara to stay safe. Entitlement is that attitude on steroids, not the attitude itself.

I didn't get a 'fighting over Clara' vibe, I got a 'this new Doctor is a stubborn butt and Danny is very touchy' vibe, with Clara stuck in the middle. Both are just trying to protect her from the other. She has all the freedom to choose between them, and at the moment she's chosen both of them.

I've been enjoying the Clara/Danny thing so far, although it would've developed a bit better if they didn't skip ahead an entire year but whatever. The whole point of the companion role in Doctor Who is for us to understand the Doctor based on his interactions with them, and through their point of view. The Doctor is a very different person when he is monologuing by himself and when he's out there getting into it with his companions. The show would be very boring and the companions very wasted if we never had any episodes that focused on them. A common jab at the Classic series is that almost all of the time the companions were nothing more than damsels in distress and the audience surrogate only there to constantly ask the Doctor what's going on. At least now we see that these are actual characters with actual lives, and we had the exact same thing with Amy and Rory, and a fair bit with Rose, later Donna.

The Caretaker was the first really Clara-centric episode, in that it really focused on her day to day thing with the Doctor just wobbling about in the background, similar to Power of Three in Series 7. Until now, we only got to see bits and pieces of her life. We didn't know a single thing about her besides the fact that she was a babysitter for a while, and then in Day of the Doctor we finally learned what her job was, and in Time of the Doctor we finally met her family. The show is just catching up now, because there is a lot of a great character that they sort of delayed exploring. She's grown considerably as a character in these first 6 episodes, and we're finally being shown what she's like instead of told. 

We've had plenty of Doctor-centric episodes, considering that in the last 51 years he's the only character to be in every episode. We already know so much about him, and of course while getting to know the new regeneration is very important, I don't think they've been skipping out on that at all. Deep Breath established how different he's going to be to Eleven right away, and the latter episodes have all been rounding him out. I think he's already found his footing quite quickly, with so many character traits and habits and quirks and verbal things carrying over from episode to episode, and I feel like the only thing we have left to see now is his sympathetic side, as he's been mostly very very angry, moreso than his natural state seems to be. 

The Caretaker was a fun breather episode, between the very fast paced action filler of Time Heist and the next episode, which the writers say is going to "change the show forever"or whatever. Like the trailer said, they've got a big decision ahead of them. It's definitely going to be another big moment for Twelve where we learn what he's like.

All of that being said, I also really hate how they're shoving Clara into every single part of his life. I loved Name of the Doctor 'cause that at least sorta made sense and was really neat, and if that never happened then the end of Listen would've been great too, but with both it's just way too much. We get it, Moffat wants his character to be super important so that she's never forgotten. Lay off, it's annoying and just poorly done. Let her be normal, I thought that was the point of this season and the boyfriend arc. 

Another thing I want to point out that it really looks to me that Clara and Danny are gonna be an important thing, plot-wise, not just "oh she's a girl so she needs a boyfriend lets just make a subplot about it." Danny has his fair of mystery, and not in a good way. He complains about Clara always lying and making excuses, but he does the latter quite a lot. He put off their first date for mysterious "family stuff", which is kinda suspicious considering that episode we learned he lived in a childrens' home or whatever presumably 'cause he had no family, and in Caretaker he says he may or may not have had "a thing" going on. He seems very aloof and like a big goofy guy, but then just switches to this very scary, critical, paranoid dude is uncannily good at sensing when anything is out of the ordinary or untruthful. I feel like he's hiding something big. There's also that business with Orson Pink. Whatever is going on, I don't think it's in any way a cheap addition to Clara's story. 

Also on a mostly unrelated note, if we get one more "most dangerous" anything "in the universe" I'm gonna scream because the universe is an enormous place and saying "most dangerous" would not sound so overused and implausible if you just specified "in the galaxy" or something because honestly that sounds so much more realistic. And I was watching Caretaker again and at the end Twelve tells Courtney that in that corner of space he pointed to there were "a million stars, and a hundred million inhabited planets". How does that work? Is there a Star Georg with over ten million inhabited planets that is an outlier adn should not have been counted?