Crimes against Clara Oswald: Series 8 Edition (Doctor Who)

For the most part, my series 7 complaints about Clara all vanish when series 8 comes along.  Unfortunately, for her and me, those moderate quibbles are replaced with numerous larger problems that bug me a lot more and make liking her something of a struggle for me.  I honestly can’t tell of the writers are unaware of how unpleasant they frequently make her, or if it’s intentional on their parts (and if the latter, why?)  Some series 8 spoilers.

I’ve already talked at length about Clara’s relationship with Twelve, so I’ll try to stick mainly to the character herself.  In series 7, I wasn’t really sure who Clara was.  Well, I definitely know now – last season, she was given lots of traits, most of which aren’t very likeable.  The main definer, from which her other attributes largely spring, is “control freak.”  This moniker actually comes up first in “The Time of the Doctor,” pre-series 8, and it baffled me there.  It’s part of a throwaway line, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why the show would say something so off-the-mark about her.  It’s strange, too, in “Deep Breath,” when she and the Doctor argue about her “control freak” and “egomania” tendencies, but by season’s end, both fit her to a T.

So, how does “control freak” present itself?  AsI’ve said, she’s a part-time companion, traveling with the Doctor when it fits her schedule.  She orders the Doctor around, scolds him like a schoolboy, and gets monumentally furious when he does something she doesn’t like; for all of Twelve’s bite and bluster, he seems a little cowed by Clara.  She expects to get something from the Doctor, the TARDIS, and the universe, whether it’s as serious as breaking the laws of time or as minor as getting her home at the precise moment she wants.  On the “egomania” side, she seems to have lost one of her few consistent qualities from series 7, her empathy.  Again, I won’t rehash her and the Doctor, but she’s impatient and dismissive with her students, and she has zero tact in approaching the clearly-sensitive Danny, making repeated cracks about soldiers beings killers.  What happened to the Clara who reassures Merry Gejelh in “The Rings of Akhaten”?

Beyond that, she lies, almost constantly, and I’m really not sure why.  (The Doctor isn’t very beholden to the truth either, but I can usually see his motives for it.)  After her early, thwarted attempts to come clean about getting “distracted” in “Listen,” she spends the rest of the episode lying about what happened, and the Doctor goes on a needless wild goose chase to figure out what went wrong because he doesn’t have all the information.  She of course initially keeps the Doctor a secret from Danny, but once it’s out in the open, she goes back to lying about it.  When she decides to keep traveling at the end of “Mummy on the Orient Express,” she lies once to Danny (saying that she’s finished with the Doctor) and twice to the Doctor (saying Danny’s fine with it and claiming that he was the one who’d wanted her to stop in the first place.)  This is bizarre, because Danny actually seemed okay with her staying on the TARDIS if she wanted to, but instead of just being open about what she wants, she lies to two people she purports to care about.  I’ve also already talked about the stunt she tries to pull on the Doctor in “Dark Water,” so I won’t get into it again, but, extenuating circumstances or not, what the crap?!  Who does that?!  To anyone, let alone their supposed best friend who they “would never, ever lie to.”  Yeah, right.

All of which begs the question:  what’s the goal here?  Does the show want a female lead like that?  Does it know what it’s doing?  What did Jenna Coleman do to deserve characterization like this?  What is going on?