What interests me is the difference of approach between Moffat and RTD, concerning companions in general and female companions in particular. Moffatt likes to elevate them to a superhuman status. They become The Impossible Girl, The Girl Who Waited, Madge the eternal mother figure, etc. He's stated in interviews that he very much wanted Billie back for the special, and I find it intriguing that this was the role he imagined her having. Her role as the conscience of the Doctor, seen most specifically with Nine, is reflected back through time, making her the natural choice for the task even though the War Doctor doesn't know who she is yet. It's another example of Moffat's favoured technique of "scattering through time and space" to rescue/save the Doctor.
RTD goes in the opposite direction. To him, it's all about what you take back from the Doctor's example into ordinary, day-to-day life. And that is where his heroines end up. They are stripped rapidly of any magical powers they have acquired, sometimes brutally and against their will. Some would say that Moffat's idealisation of the feminine is reductive, but I think I prefer it to the fate RTD chose for Donna with its implication that danger was implicit in any human being aspiring to the Doctor's qualities and role in the universe.
Actually, I don't think Rose and Clara are that far apart. Both are ordinary girls (I accept Emma Grayling's statement re Clara in Hide) who become something extraordinary through taking an extreme action to save the Doctor: Rose looks into the Time Vortex and becomes Bad Wolf, Clara leaps into the Doctor's timeline and becomes the Impossible Girl. But neither is a permanent transformation. When the Doctor removes the Vortex, Bad Wolf becomes Rose again. River Song says that the million copies of Clara aren't really her; I believe that she emerges from the timeline as her original and ordinary self.
When Clara says "I'm the Impossible Girl; I was born to save the Doctor" as she's falling through the timeline, I think that's true of the Impossible Girl, the million other selves who were born of Clara's action. I don't think it's true of Original Clara; the leaf isn't a magic leaf, it's just a symbol of the random series of events which bring us to life.
Of course, I may read things this way because I don't want the companions to be Special People; I was annoyed at one point when someone (was it Rose?) suddenly claimed that there had been special signs around Donna since birth, because what I liked about Donna - what I like about most of the companions - is the idea of the ordinary person who rises to the challenge of life with the Doctor. (I never forget E. V. Rieu's introduction to his translation of the Iliad, when he draws attention to Pedasus, the mortal horse yoked with the immortal horses of Achilles - an ordinary horse who keeps up with the immortal pair.) I don't see Madge as an archetype; I see her as an ordinary mother who discovers extraordinary resources within herself when her children require them.
I'm not sure that RTD and Moffat can be divided quite as sharply as we tend to think. I don't have enough data on companions to be sure if there's a significant difference; Rose and Donna were separated from the Doctor against their will, but Martha chose to leave him while taking up a new career influenced by her experiences with him. Amy was forced to make a choice, and chose Rory, as she always did. Ironically, her departure was closer to what I originally expected for Rose; I thought Rose would choose to stay in the AU because it could offer her the one thing the Doctor could not, her father. What I disliked about Rose's exit was the sense that she felt worse off as a result of losing the Doctor, rather than stronger as a result of her time with him, though this did seem to be corrected by the later glimpse of Rose as a capable agent of AU Torchwood. Similarly, School Reunion initially gave a negative impression of Sarah Jane's feelings about life without the Doctor, but The Sarah Jane Adventures presented a much more positive picture of a woman who had learned to save the world single-handed. And Donna... well, the only thing to do with Donna is fix it!
Rose ran around with the Doctor, eventually was grounded in a parallel universe with her own human Doctor whom presumably became her husband with a possibility of children. Also, she has a sibling, now.
Martha ran around with the Doctor, eventually left him and stayed on Earth. Implications are that she married Mickey. Children are not an impossibility.
Donna ran around with the Doctor. Had every single growth and experience blocked and if she gets them back, dead Donna. Seems to have married a perfectly decent man who loves her as she is, but we did see signs that she was not the shallow, selfish person she appeared to outsiders, even in her first adventure, when she herded children to safety at her aborted wedding. There may someday be children.
Amy, pretty much from introduction on her way to the wedding eventually gets married. Eventually is able to escape from being dragged on assorted adventures with the Doctor, you know like the multiple times she or Rory were tormented. Like when she was kept in a dreaming coma for months, gestating her baby which was then stolen from her, whose entire childhood she really was robbed of, oh and then sterilized by the writer's deci - oh, excuse me, by the enemies' fiddling. Anyway, she and Rory finally escaped from the Doctor and eventually adopted a son.
Oh, hey! River, who was raised with her entire existence meant to revolve around the Doctor, at least had her own life, which she had to live if only to get a breather from pretending to be always light-hearted and hell-bent, as the Doctor reacted to any sign that she was maturing with teeth-rattling terror (though we know this is because he knew that he would have to let her go to the Library where she would die). She seems to have led a happy sex life. I wonder if she left any children behind?
Speaking of children: JENNY!!!!
So, presently I joke that when Clara starts to form an attachment to another male is when we can expect them to get around to writing her out of the series.
Of course, we're being led to believe Trenzalor will turn out to be only death for 11/12. The scar left behind not so bad, and perhaps the TARDIS will generate a copy of herself... baby TARDIS, or be the copy left behind around the glowing scar that is 11/12.
RTD goes in the opposite direction. To him, it's all about what you take back from the Doctor's example into ordinary, day-to-day life. And that is where his heroines end up. They are stripped rapidly of any magical powers they have acquired, sometimes brutally and against their will. Some would say that Moffat's idealisation of the feminine is reductive, but I think I prefer it to the fate RTD chose for Donna with its implication that danger was implicit in any human being aspiring to the Doctor's qualities and role in the universe.
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When Clara says "I'm the Impossible Girl; I was born to save the Doctor" as she's falling through the timeline, I think that's true of the Impossible Girl, the million other selves who were born of Clara's action. I don't think it's true of Original Clara; the leaf isn't a magic leaf, it's just a symbol of the random series of events which bring us to life.
Of course, I may read things this way because I don't want the companions to be Special People; I was annoyed at one point when someone (was it Rose?) suddenly claimed that there had been special signs around Donna since birth, because what I liked about Donna - what I like about most of the companions - is the idea of the ordinary person who rises to the challenge of life with the Doctor. (I never forget E. V. Rieu's introduction to his translation of the Iliad, when he draws attention to Pedasus, the mortal horse yoked with the immortal horses of Achilles - an ordinary horse who keeps up with the immortal pair.) I don't see Madge as an archetype; I see her as an ordinary mother who discovers extraordinary resources within herself when her children require them.
I'm not sure that RTD and Moffat can be divided quite as sharply as we tend to think. I don't have enough data on companions to be sure if there's a significant difference; Rose and Donna were separated from the Doctor against their will, but Martha chose to leave him while taking up a new career influenced by her experiences with him. Amy was forced to make a choice, and chose Rory, as she always did. Ironically, her departure was closer to what I originally expected for Rose; I thought Rose would choose to stay in the AU because it could offer her the one thing the Doctor could not, her father. What I disliked about Rose's exit was the sense that she felt worse off as a result of losing the Doctor, rather than stronger as a result of her time with him, though this did seem to be corrected by the later glimpse of Rose as a capable agent of AU Torchwood. Similarly, School Reunion initially gave a negative impression of Sarah Jane's feelings about life without the Doctor, but The Sarah Jane Adventures presented a much more positive picture of a woman who had learned to save the world single-handed. And Donna... well, the only thing to do with Donna is fix it!
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Martha ran around with the Doctor, eventually left him and stayed on Earth. Implications are that she married Mickey. Children are not an impossibility.
Donna ran around with the Doctor. Had every single growth and experience blocked and if she gets them back, dead Donna. Seems to have married a perfectly decent man who loves her as she is, but we did see signs that she was not the shallow, selfish person she appeared to outsiders, even in her first adventure, when she herded children to safety at her aborted wedding. There may someday be children.
Amy, pretty much from introduction on her way to the wedding eventually gets married. Eventually is able to escape from being dragged on assorted adventures with the Doctor, you know like the multiple times she or Rory were tormented. Like when she was kept in a dreaming coma for months, gestating her baby which was then stolen from her, whose entire childhood she really was robbed of, oh and then sterilized by the writer's deci - oh, excuse me, by the enemies' fiddling. Anyway, she and Rory finally escaped from the Doctor and eventually adopted a son.
Oh, hey! River, who was raised with her entire existence meant to revolve around the Doctor, at least had her own life, which she had to live if only to get a breather from pretending to be always light-hearted and hell-bent, as the Doctor reacted to any sign that she was maturing with teeth-rattling terror (though we know this is because he knew that he would have to let her go to the Library where she would die). She seems to have led a happy sex life. I wonder if she left any children behind?
Speaking of children: JENNY!!!!
So, presently I joke that when Clara starts to form an attachment to another male is when we can expect them to get around to writing her out of the series.
Of course, we're being led to believe Trenzalor will turn out to be only death for 11/12. The scar left behind not so bad, and perhaps the TARDIS will generate a copy of herself... baby TARDIS, or be the copy left behind around the glowing scar that is 11/12.
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