Although
today’s review is about a fictional relationship, it’s not exactly a
Relationship Spotlight post. More than
anything, it’s my thoughts on the very uneasy Doctor-companion dynamic we wound
up with this season and wondering What’s It All About.
Back
when I posted my Whovian wish list last Christmas, I hoped for no romance and
good friendship. Well, my first wish
definitely came true, although not entirely the way I would have liked. I’ve mentioned this before, but it really
annoys me that Twelve so frequently criticizes Clara appearance, as if the show
needs to explain why he’s no longer interested
in being her “boyfriend.” She looks
old! She has a wide face! She wears too much makeup! (And, point of interest, this unfortunate
quirk seems to appear most often in Moffat-penned episodes.) I don’t know what the show’s goal is with
this – to show how alien Twelve is that he doesn’t recognize Clara’s a
beautiful woman? To show how brusque,
dismissive, and unfiltered he is? To
show, “See, he’s not into her anymore!
Hey, do you see how not into her he is?
‘Cause he’s not!” The whole thing
is really unpleasant, and that’s not something I like thinking about the
Doctor.
And of
course, Clara no longer has any interest in him “that way” either. I kind of wonder how the Doctor feels about
that. Even though he doesn’t want that
from her, does it hurt to see her looking at him with the same eyes and such a
different expression? It’s probably
easier for Clara to reconcile his altered feelings; since he has a new body and
personality (and I don’t think, despite the big scene at the end of “Deep
Breath,” that she quite equates him with Eleven,) it makes sense that he
wouldn’t necessarily feel the same way.
The change is a reflection of him, not her. Whereas, for the Doctor, Clara is the same as
she’s always been, but she doesn’t treat him the same way. In her case, the change is definitely about
him.
Unfortunately,
my second wish was even further from the mark.
The Doctor obviously still cares about Clara a great deal, and she waxes
poetic about their friendship whenever the show needs her to for Teh Angst, but
for the most part, she really doesn’t feel like his friend anymore. She only wants to travel with him when it’s
convenient for her (it’s painful to
watch him follow her around her flat trying to convince her to go on an
adventure with him,) she keeps secrets and tries to manipulate him rather than
talking things through, and she doesn’t seem to particularly like who he is (I’m
pretty sure Clara would’ve never said she “didn’t know” if Eleven was a good
man.)
On the
wish list, I mentioned my hope that Clara wouldn’t feel saddled with Twelve
after losing “the young, cute one,” and although they seem to mainly get past
the age thing in “Deep Breath,” I think there is at least a hint of that. Apart from his youthful appearance and oddly
appealing looks, Eleven has a young, cute personality that Twelve just
doesn’t. Not that Eleven is cuddly all
the time – he can go scary-angry with the best of them, and when he makes the
hard decisions, it’s with world-weary gravitas – but his default setting is a
puppy with ADHD and a genius-level IQ.
He’s fun and silly and easy to love.
In contrast, Twelve is prickly, a bit misanthropic, and not one to make
a great first impression. There’s still
a lot of warmth in him, but he keeps it below the surface, and Clara doesn’t
seem terribly interested in looking for it.
With their interactions, I sometimes get the feeling that he desperately
wants her to, maybe even needs her to, but he can’t say it and she’s not
picking up on it.
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