The Doctor and his Companions
I have been thinking about this a lot lately and it seems even more obvious now that we have seen the 'bad' side of the Doctor coming to the forefront, instead of being a small side of his personality.
His companions are there not just for company. They're his link to the real world for a lack of a better term. They keep him grounded and as sane as possible. They keep him from going the way of the Master. He needs them to stop him.
And sometimes they don't. Sometimes they don't challenge him enough. Sometimes they allow him to run all over their emotions and even if they hate that part of him, they will allow it because of who he is. The Doctor. An alien being.
This is the problem with two of the companions from New Who so far, Rose and Clara. They challenged him rarely, and only if what he did goes completely against what they believe in. Rose stopped the Doctor from killing the 'turned good' Dalek, and Clara slapped him over a Dalek 'turned good'. Neither of the Daleks were actually good. One was corrupted by Rose and her humanness, and the other was flipped in morality so instead of hating everything in the universe, it only hated its own species.
And apart from Clara's fight with the Doctor (and her need to lie when it isn't needed) she doesn't stop him. She allows him to insult, mock and belittle her, because she sees this as just the main personality trait of this Doctor. She ignores the fact that the Doctor, no matter what regeneration, does act that way with people. He mocks, he teases in hurtful ways, he insults professions, he insults personal things, he is a horrible person when alone. Sometimes it is deliberate, sometimes he may not even realise he is doing it. Sometimes it is deliberate but he doesn't mean it, like in the life and death situation in Mummy on the Orient Express. Like he said, people can't have the time to grieve the dead if there is a gun to their heads.
The only difference with the other times is that he had someone who either would insult and belittle back, or someone to stop him acting that way beforehand.
There is a special list as I call it for companions, the ones who were obsessed with him and let him be as he is with little to no challenging or making him better as a person. Those characters are Rose with Ten, Amy before she married Rory, Melody until she changed her name to River and Clara with Twelve. Amy and River went forward, dropped their obsession, and grew to love him as just a friend or husband. Clara and Rose though, they went backwards. Which is a damn shame for both their characters.
This is all the real character development we have gotten from Clara, and I'd like her more if she just dropped with the pretense of trying to be someone she's not and live in the real world with the rest of humanity. She was fine until she found out what Impossible Girl meant to the Doctor personally. The sad thing is, without the Doctor in her life she is a good and likeable person. I like Clara, I just don't like her like this. And that was way too many likes. Thankfully, it looks like she may be getting some good characterization in the Christmas special, so I am definitely looking forward to that.
And Rose...well, she cared so little for other people in the end, she did something the Doctor told her he couldn't do, because it could rip two entire universes full of people apart. Just because she couldn't stand the thought of not being with him. Boo Hoo. Yeah, Clara could end up being a good companion if she just drops the act. Rose was a good companion to start with but turned into an Anti-Doctor character that I just could not like and it ruined her completely for me.
His companions are there not just for company. They're his link to the real world for a lack of a better term. They keep him grounded and as sane as possible. They keep him from going the way of the Master. He needs them to stop him.
And sometimes they don't. Sometimes they don't challenge him enough. Sometimes they allow him to run all over their emotions and even if they hate that part of him, they will allow it because of who he is. The Doctor. An alien being.
This is the problem with two of the companions from New Who so far, Rose and Clara. They challenged him rarely, and only if what he did goes completely against what they believe in. Rose stopped the Doctor from killing the 'turned good' Dalek, and Clara slapped him over a Dalek 'turned good'. Neither of the Daleks were actually good. One was corrupted by Rose and her humanness, and the other was flipped in morality so instead of hating everything in the universe, it only hated its own species.
And apart from Clara's fight with the Doctor (and her need to lie when it isn't needed) she doesn't stop him. She allows him to insult, mock and belittle her, because she sees this as just the main personality trait of this Doctor. She ignores the fact that the Doctor, no matter what regeneration, does act that way with people. He mocks, he teases in hurtful ways, he insults professions, he insults personal things, he is a horrible person when alone. Sometimes it is deliberate, sometimes he may not even realise he is doing it. Sometimes it is deliberate but he doesn't mean it, like in the life and death situation in Mummy on the Orient Express. Like he said, people can't have the time to grieve the dead if there is a gun to their heads.
The only difference with the other times is that he had someone who either would insult and belittle back, or someone to stop him acting that way beforehand.
There is a special list as I call it for companions, the ones who were obsessed with him and let him be as he is with little to no challenging or making him better as a person. Those characters are Rose with Ten, Amy before she married Rory, Melody until she changed her name to River and Clara with Twelve. Amy and River went forward, dropped their obsession, and grew to love him as just a friend or husband. Clara and Rose though, they went backwards. Which is a damn shame for both their characters.
This is all the real character development we have gotten from Clara, and I'd like her more if she just dropped with the pretense of trying to be someone she's not and live in the real world with the rest of humanity. She was fine until she found out what Impossible Girl meant to the Doctor personally. The sad thing is, without the Doctor in her life she is a good and likeable person. I like Clara, I just don't like her like this. And that was way too many likes. Thankfully, it looks like she may be getting some good characterization in the Christmas special, so I am definitely looking forward to that.
And Rose...well, she cared so little for other people in the end, she did something the Doctor told her he couldn't do, because it could rip two entire universes full of people apart. Just because she couldn't stand the thought of not being with him. Boo Hoo. Yeah, Clara could end up being a good companion if she just drops the act. Rose was a good companion to start with but turned into an Anti-Doctor character that I just could not like and it ruined her completely for me.