A Few Thoughts on “Special” Companions (Doctor Who)

When you get down to it, there have been a number of times in new Who when companions have had that Extra Something – most particularly, a special tie to the season’s arc, the full nature of which isn’t revealed until the finale.  I’ve had different reactions to this device over the years, although, by and large, I’m not a big fan.  Spoilers pretty much across the new Who spectrum.

A lot of genre series have Chosen Ones, but new Who’s “special” companions generally tend a different way.  On Who, it’s not usually about a predestined hero, but rather, something tricky to do with time that connects them to a central mystery on the show.  Sometimes the Doctor starts to twig to it before the reveal, and sometimes it’s brought out at the last moment.  But it always leads to a huge climactic scene that’s probably at least half deus ex machina, and depending on the emotional execution of the scene, I’ll either lap it up anyway (i.e., Rose as the Bad Wolf in series 1) or give it the side-eye (i.e. Clara the “Impossible Girl” in series 7.)

There are four main “special companion” bits I’m looking at today.  In addition to the Rose and Clara moments I already mentioned, we also have Donna becoming the Doctor-Donna in series 4 and Amy’s connection to the Time Crack in series 5 (Amy also gets the Schrödinger’s Pregnancy thing in series 6 – poor Amy! – but I’m mainly gonna focus on the Time Crack.)  I’m not here to rank them according to what I feel are their merits or lack thereof.  Rather, I want to look at two narrative consequences of these storylines that tend to fall back onto the characters they effect.

First, there’s the tendency of a companion to be more of a mystery than a character.  We see this especially with Amy and Clara, and I’ve talked about both before.  Whereas the Doctor has been drawn to other companions by their curiosity, intelligence, bravery, compassion, and whatnot, qualities he admires, Amy and Clara get their initial invitations onto the TARDIS under false pretenses.  Regardless of how the Doctor feels about what they can do, the real reason he brings them aboard is to give him time to figure this out.  What’s with this weird Crack in Amy’s wall?  How does he keep meeting different versions of Clara throughout time and space?  Even though these mysteries don’t get a huge amount of screentime devoted to them throughout their respective seasons, there’s still this sense that the mystery is “enough” for those companions.  Throughout series 5 for Amy and series 7B for Clara, I have little handle on who they are – so few occasions when I can say, “That’s so Amy!”/“That’s Clara all over!”, because I genuinely don’t know.  It’s not until their following seasons, after their mystery has been revealed/solved, that the show starts putting in the work of showing them to us as fuller, more defined people.

Rose and Donna escape this issue, by the way.  Both of them are quite distinct from the start, and the Doctor appreciates them both primarily for who they are, not for the puzzles they represent.  It helps that their respective season mysteries are a) subtler and b) not immediately tied to them specifically.  It’s not until this very end that Rose discovers that she was the Bad Wolf all along, and while the Doctor notices some strange force manipulating the timelines to bring him and Donna together, the series 4 arc has several different threads woven into it, so it’s not such a major focus on What’s This Thing with Donna?

However, none of these companions are immune to the other problem I see cropping up here:  once the mystery is over, it ceases to matter.  Rose looks into the heart of the TARDIS and absorbs the Time Vortex.  She sees all of time and space and, for a short time, has the powers of a god.  But even though the Doctor is forced to regenerate after he pulls that energy from her, there is little lasting impact on Rose herself.  It seems at first that she has no memory of what happened, and she goes back to her regular self in series 2, but the next time she meets the Daleks, she tells them about atomizing the Emperor.  So she does remember?  But has no thoughts about what it was like to be a god?  That’s what we like to call a wasted opportunity.

Donna gets less of this than the others, since she exits the show immediately after the biological metacrisis that mixes her humanity with a Time Lord mind.  Like Rose, her power is taken from her to save her life (against her will,) and she most definitely forgets – the Doctor erases all her memories of him in order to protect her, and she reverts back to the shallow person she was before she met him.  Except, when Donna returns for Ten’s final episodes, that whole “she can never remember, or her mind will burn!” thing turns out to be meaningless.  Not that I want Donna to die – of course not!  But first, I hate that there’s a loophole to keep her safe but not one to let her be who she was, and second, it undermines your solemn declaration when you so easily work around it the first time it becomes an issue.

Amy, for my money, is probably the most adversely affected by this problem.  The years she spent growing up next to the Time Crack (“the universe pouring into her head,” as per the Doctor) are what allows her to remember the Doctor and bring him back when he’s trapped on the other side of Crack, and to be fair, this specialness is brought up again at the end of series 6, when she can remember both versions of the world.  But what happens has zero bearing on her as a person.  Amy grew up with no parents because the Time Crack in her wall ate them, and then time was rewritten and she had parents!  And she was exactly the same.  Nothing different about her – not even any references to her parents after the series 5 finale.  That makes no sense to me, because she’s had two completely different upbringings, she remembers both simultaneously, and none of it matters.  How does that even work?  I’d say it’s the biggest disservice done to a character who the show never treated all that well, and it annoys me on her behalf that there was apparently no point to her backstory.

Clara, at the end of series 7, jumps into the Doctor’s timestream and is splintered into innumerable different Claras scattered throughout time and space.  (Of course, she’s also told the she’s very definitely going to die if she does this, and then it’s so easy to save her the show doesn’t even bother to say how it happened, but that’s a whole other thing.)  And after that, there are… maybe two references to the fact that any of this ever happened?  In “The Day of the Doctor,” Eleven points out that she’s met his past selves before, and she’s like, “Oh yeah, right,” suggesting that, like Rose, she sort-of-maybe-but-not-quite(?) remembers.  The Impossible Girl moniker is used once more in Twelve’s first episode, and then none of this is ever mentioned again.  Even if Clara can’t remember the experiences of the other Claras, she still knows that it happened, right?  (Right?  Does she?)  Does she ever think about the other Claras?  Has she ever wanted to meet any of them?  Who knows – ‘cause who cares, right?  :eyeroll:

Those are the biggest takeaways for me.  1)  Don’t let your companion’s mystery get in the way of your companion as a character.  2)  If you want the Big Finale Moment, go for it, but make it matter afterwards.  Seeing what happens to a human after they go through an experience like that has the potential to be even richer and more satisfying than that Big Finale Moment, undeniably cool as it is.  I’d sure like to see that follow-through sometime.

Relationship Spotlight: The Doctor & Donna Noble (Doctor Who)

Back when I first saw “The Runaway Bride,” I never would’ve figured Donna would become my favorite new-series companion or that I would grow to love her relationship with the Doctor as much as I do.  But while there are some hints amidst the early combativeness of “The Runaway Bride,” her next appearance hits the ground running, and from there, the Doctor and Doctor are all awesome, all the time (some Doctor-Donna-related spoilers.)

I love everything about “Partners in Crime,” the story of Donna and the Doctor finding their way back to one another.  Even as they conduct their separate investigations into Adipose, they’re so in sync.  Sure, part of that is to highlight them just missing each other so many times, the “so close, yet so far away” thing, but another part of it is to show how ready Donna is for this.  She’s done her homework, she pounds the pavement, and when she finally does cross paths with the Doctor again, it turns out she’s already packed and always has her luggage in the car.  It all sends a clear message:  Donna’s got this.

The episode also gives us another important element:  Donna’s got the Doctor, too.  As the Adipose plan goes into the final phase and the Doctor is freaking because he can’t fix it, Donna’s the one at his side calmly saying, “Doctor, tell me what you need.”  And again, because her investigation has so closely paralleled his, it turns out she just happens to have the one thing that will save everyone.  And that’s a lot of what the Doctor and Donna are about.  Whether it’s with a doodad, an action, or an empathetic word, Donna knows how to support the Doctor.  On that last point, she’s especially good at recognizing when he’s not all right – the stuff with Jenny in “The Doctor’s Daughter” and the tail-end of the Library two-parter are both great examples – and she’s such an excellent, caring friend in those moments.

For his part, the Doctor is quite a good friend to Donna as well (which, after his periodic obtuseness with Martha, is very welcome.)  It can sometimes be hard to pick up on Donna’s insecuritites, because she so often masks them with overconfidence, but the Doctor’s often the one saying, “Don’t you know how brilliant you are?”  Even though, over the course of the season, he learns this about her, it still surprises him every time.  Not because he hasn’t noticed or it hasn’t sunken in – the moments show up multiple times in the season – but because he thinks so highly of her and her abilities that it’s a recurring shock to him that she can’t always recognize that about herself.

And come on – they just have fun together.  As the Doctor tells Donna at the end of “Partners in Crime,” “I just want a mate” (i.e., the British meaning, “friend.”)  And that’s exactly what they are, mates, having tons of fun getting into all kinds of crazy situations throughout time and space.  She models period duds for him when they visit the past, he relishes showing her new things, they crack jokes in front of bad guys and bicker as they run for their lives.  They’re an absolute blast, proving that the company you’re in can actually improve upon the objectively-awesome experience of seeing the universe.

In “The End of Time,” the Doctor calls Donna his best friend.  While the Doctor has obviously loved pretty much all his companions, it’s not often that he actually says those words, but he says them about her.  That alone makes it special.

Thoughts on New Who Companion Introduction Episodes

I’ve already looked at how new Who has said both hello and goodbye to Doctors, so why not companions, too?  Intros today; we’ll save the extreme angst for another time.  Also, rather than look at the quality of the episodes as a whole, like I’ve done for the Doctors, I’m really just looking at the companions themselves and how they’re presented.  Because I have to make the cut-off somewhere, I’m only including Rose, Martha, Donna, Amy, Rory, and Clara – sorry, Mickey, Jack, River, and other short-term or recurring companions!  Spoilers for “Rose,” “Smith and Jones,” “Partners in Crime,” “The Eleventh Hour,” and “The Bells of Saint John.”

“Rose,” obviously, kicks things off with a whirlwind look into the life of Rose Tyler.  It starts a trend for new Who, increased emphasis on the companion’s home life.  RTD tends to focus more on family while Moffat seems to prefer romantic partners, but it’s the same general idea.  The important part, though, is what Rose does when she comes in contact with the Doctor.  I’d say she proves herself companion-material in a reasonable way.  Although she doesn’t do anything too jaw-dropping (she does do a bit of gymnastics to free the Doctor from some Autons, but that moment is more about her determination to help than her amazing moves,) she still demonstrates why the Doctor is interested in her beyond the Living Plastic in the department store where she works.  She gets in some Excellent Questions and makes good observations.  She takes the initiative to try and figure out who the Doctor is, researching online and then meeting with Clive.  And while she’s clearly overwhelmed to step inside the TARDIS for the first time, she handles the revolution that it and the Doctor are both alien very well.  I’m a fan of this intro; it shows off Rose’s brand of ordinary-person awesomeness potential.

For my money, Martha is the biggest boss of the group.  She’s terrific throughout “Smith and Jones.”  Her medical training to keep calm in a crisis serves her well, which allows her intuition (realizing there must be an air bubble around the hospital,) bravery (standing up to the Judoon,) and resourcefulness (thinking to grab the manual when she absolutely needs to able to operate the X-ray machine in a mad hurry) to shine through.  I also like that she doesn’t spend any time denying that what’s happening is alien, as well as the fact that she takes a moment to go outside with the Doctor and just enjoy standing on the moon.  Oh, and did I mention she saves the Doctor’s life, remembering to factor in his alien biology as she resuscitates him, all while dealing with extreme oxygen deprivation?  Martha Jones can get things done!

I realize that Donna’s real introduction comes in “The Runaway Bride,” but since she basically has two of these episodes, I’m gonna go with “Partners in Crime,” because how could I not?  It’s a different kind of companion intro, since she comes into it already knowing who the Doctor is and what he does (Moffat will do another take on that idea with Amy,) and that gives her something of an edge.  I don’t mind, though – she’s just too great here.  I like, beyond just investigating strange goings-on in the hopes of running into the Doctor, Donna does actual investigating into the strange goings-on themselves.  She’s quite the hustler, working at Health & Safety just long enough to get the badge she needs to infiltrate Adipose, snagging a customer list from a phone salesman, and pounding enough pavement to meet an Adipose client.  The parallels showing how her investigation aligns with the Doctor’s are pretty cool.  And once they do finally connect, it’s a lot of the awesome sci-fi hijinks I was hoping for – running around, making faces, and dangling outside windows – but Donna also proves how she can help.  I love that moment in the climax when the Doctor is freaking out about how he can’t stop the machine, and Donna gets through to him with that calm-but-stern, “Doctor, tell me what you need.”  The fact that she’s able to pull out that second capsule, critical to overriding the machine, is just gravy.

“The Eleventh Hour” is a bit unfortunate in that I feel like Amy comes off as better companion material as a kid than an adult.  Young Amelia takes the Doctor’s weirdness and alienness in stride and, with him beside her, takes on her fear of the Time Crack in her wall.  Adult Amy, meanwhile, doesn’t get a lot to do.  Probably her best move is passing herself off as a police officer when she finds the Doctor in her house, although that’s marred by no longer having the key to the handcuffs she uses and the camera’s sexualization of her in her cop costume.  When she pulls the trick again later, to get into the hospital, it’s only because the Doctor reminds her what she’s wearing.  Other than that, she holds up the Doctor to do an “explain now!!!!” when he’s insanely busy and on a massive time crunch, and she gets taken over by Prisoner Zero – though it’s not her fault, it’s an unfortunate position to put her in for her first episode.  I get that she’s not in her best state of mind, since being left by the Doctor as a kid really did a number on her and she can’t quite believe he’s actually back, but I wish we could see her doing more companion stuff.  As it is, if it weren’t for the Doctor’s memory of young Amelia, guilt at having come back so late, and suspicions about the Crack, I’m not sure if he would have invited Amy to come with him simply for her.

Strangely enough, it’s Rory who looks more like a pre-companion in that episode.  (I know, he doesn’t join the TARDIS crew till later, but “The Vampires of Venice” is his first trip, which doesn’t fit my pattern here – “The Eleventh Hour” is better.)  He’s the one who’s noticed something strange, Prisoner Zero disguised as the hospital’s coma patients, and he tries to tell his boss about it even though he knows how crazy it sounds.  But he’s come prepared for that, having taken pictures of Zero on his phone as proof.  Curious, determined, and smart; companion all over.  And yet, when he’s initially invited onto the TARDIS, it’s for Amy’s sake, not his.  It’s only after the events of “The Vampires of Venice” that both Amy and the Doctor suggest he stay on with them.  Tsk, tsk – the Doctor should’ve paid attention more.

For Clara, I’m going with “The Bells of Saint John,” since that’s when we actually meet Clara 1.0.  This is another one that comes in with some foreknowledge, but it’s on the Doctor’s side, not Clara’s.  He’s already met the “Impossible Girl” twice at this point and is totally weird and elated when he comes face to face with her.  Sadly, this is also one where the companion doesn’t come off great.  She’s taken out twice by the Spoonheads, and her only real contribution to the adventure – figuring out where the Great Intelligence’s base is located – is accomplished due to the temporary tech skills that the Great Intelligence gave her the first time it took her over.  It’s not knowledge she’s actually gained, and it’s not something she keeps going forward.  While she is brave and rolls with the shock of her first crazy journey in the TARDIS, she doesn’t get to do a lot that feels companionish.  Again, if it weren’t for the Impossible Girl mystery, I’m not sure if the Doctor would’ve asked her to come with him.

Top Five Big Damn Hero Moments: Donna Noble (Doctor Who)

Oh, Donna… It’s not easy picking a mere five from the tons of wonderful things Donna does during her time as a companion.  She’s brave, clever, tenacious, compassionate, and spectacularly human – these are, for me, Donna’s greatest hits.  (Spoilers, of course.)

Solo Investigation (“Partners in Crime” – Series 4, Episode 1)

After turning down the Doctor’s invitation in “The Runaway Bride,” Donna doesn’t just regret her decision.  She takes matters into her own hands, looking for Doctor-worthy mysteries to investigate.  She hopes to find him again, but she also throws herself into the mysteries, sneaking into buildings, concocting cover stories, and doing some fabulous detective work.  Gotta love it!

Pushing the Lever (“The Fires of Pompeii” – Series 4, Episode 2)

A horrible choice:  let the Pyroviles take over the world, or destroy them at the cost of Pompeii?  This is the terrible decision facing the Doctor, and though he knows what he has to do, the weight of it crushes him.  Time War memories crowd his head as, once again, he’s the one staining his soul to save others… and Donna places her hands on the lever.  She’s never faced anything remotely like this, and the last thing she wants is to see Pompeii destroyed, but in that moment, she bears some of the burden so the Doctor doesn’t have to carry it alone, not again. 

Saving Someone (“The Fires of Pompeii” – Series 4, Episode 2)

How much does Donna rock in “The Fires of Pompeii?”  So much it gets two separate entries!  Throughout the episode, she vehemently opposes the Doctor’s insistence that Pompeii is a fixed point in time and they can’t save the people doomed to die.  She argues with him, repeatedly tries to go around him and change things herself, and even as the air fills with ash, she screams at the people to get out.  And in the end, as the Doctor collapses under the enormity of what they’ve done, she sees what he needs – to save someone.  Not everyone, he can’t, but just someone.  

Supertemp (“The Sontaran Stratagem” – Series 4, Episode 4)

What a fun moment.  In this midst of a wild conspiracy, a bunch of UNIT soldiers, and some obviously alien technology, Donna’s office knowhow leads her to a vital clue.  At the personnel department for the factory they’re investigating, she discovers that the sick-day folder is empty, meaning something is off about the workers.  (And while she describes them as not getting sick, her examples – “hangover, man flu, sneaky little shopping trip” – hit on a bigger point.  It’s not just that the workers don’t get sick; it’s that they don’t act human.  I love that she sees that.)

Changing the Past (“Turn Left” – Series 4, Episode 11)

In a parallel world in which Donna never met the Doctor and instead watched the Earth get ravaged by alien assailants, she still accepts the call from a stranger to travel back in time and heal the world, and she’s so determined that she gives her life for it.  This version of Donna never learned how to be a hero alongside the Doctor, but she dug deep and learned it for herself.