Right, after last week‘s short, “I hate the companions” tangent, I need to go on a bit of a rant. I’ve spent the week hearing, “Oh, but Clara is the best companion, she’s much better than everyone else.” Shtoom! I will make you like the Daleks and I will wage a long and awful war against you and your kind, you horrible cretins. I will concede that Jenna Coleman is brilliant; she’s a great actress and is wonderful for the role of a companion. She just looks like she belongs in that position even when she’s not. She’s fantastic, bubbly, and fun. Clara is a horribly written pile of horse bunkum fed through an editor who had never seen the show before.

Do you know what she is? Clara is Michael Burnham, a regular boring human in a sci-fi show, written and constructed to be inconceivably the best at everything for no good reason while it is brushed off as “Mystery.” What was proper Clara’s job when we first meet her in “The Bells of Saint John?” She was a nanny, then she was a bit of nothing for a while (or it seemed that way), and she became a teacher. At what point in that is she this brilliant piece of humanity that can fly the T.A.R.D.I.S alone AND the “ordinary girl” that’s down to earth and entirely normal? She’s a horrible pile of tripe!

Let’s take this back, Doctor Who released back in 1996 with what I’d argue is possibly the second-worst Master I’ve seen after Chibnall’s exposition-athon. At the end of that film, the Doctor swans off and goes about his life via Big Finish, comics, and books. The 8th Doctor has a bit of a word with a priestess, she kind-of forces a regeneration and we get the next Doctor… Who is not Christopher Eccleston, as my editor Alexx is probably thinking. Instead, a good man goes to war, a long war that causes him to use a Dalek whisk of death to write “No More.” He is The War Doctor, as John Hurt’s fantastic portrayal would be called.

The War Doctor did one big transgression. One thing that haunted him, his successor, and the two following that incarnation. 9 rocks up in “Rose” and delivers that beautiful fun and energetic chat that turns magnificently to showcase what he has just done. The reason that the first series is so fun and bubbly is that the War Doctor had just committed what he saw as double-mass genocide. It is not just genocide of the upside-down Nazi dustbins, but he killed his own people. He just murdered every single Gallifreyan child. Why? It was the right thing to do, the only way to end the war.

Skip ahead, jumping straight past “The Day of the Doctor,” and “The Time of the Doctor,” all the way to Series 8. Moffat and Capaldi spent the entire 12-episode run leading up to that moment, that reason we’ve gone through all of this. What does 12 do? He asks Clara, “am I a good man?” YES! You removed a planet, its people, and your long-standing enemy entirely. You brought that planet and its people back, and you spent several hundred years of your life marooned on one planet defending a village from every-single enemy you’ve ever had. Of course, you are a good man, you’ve devoted 2,000-years of your life defending people and never asked for anything in return.

What Rose did was somewhat simple in explanation. She anchored the Doctor back to what he was pre-genocide and gave him humanity. Martha gave him an equal, and Donna… Well, this is where we’re a bit caught up. Donna was slightly what Clara becomes; a mystery wrapped in old newspaper and a soggy dog turd used as tape. Donna gave/gives (in a few episodes) him a bit more sadness again, which I don’t care for in the slightest. Amy (very much Wendy Darling) gave him child-like wonder and adventure, and that takes us back to Clara.

Clara wasn’t adventure. She wasn’t in it for all the same reasons as others; Coleman states on the convention circuit, “She has a rule that he must drop her off in the same minute she left.” Rose was a bit “domestic,” shall we say, but she was in it for the adventure and let go of her life. Why is it vital for companions to do that? No one returns the same as they left. Clara was trying to keep both her domestic life and T.A.R.D.I.S life up in the air, even if the T.A.R.D.I.S needs four hands to lift it. At least, that’s what the BBC’s health and safety team said. I’m not going to feel sad for her poorly written mystery and inability to juggle.

My point is, if your writing is the equivalent of “Oh, Clara can do that. She’s now the lead character anyway,” you are a crap writer or you aren’t writing with sense. That is you using plot convenience. You are not solving the problem or being clever, you are “big red button(-ing)” your story. So what happened to the next companion? Oh, gay Bill who would almost always have to awkwardly poke the “Hey look, I am gay, I like women, you can’t hate Doctor Who for not being LGBTQ+ because I’m gay and I’ll mention it all the time.” That Bill?

I like Bill (sometimes) but Moffat and Capaldi ruined her entire series in “Thin Ice” when that kid drowns. Bill is concerned; Meanwhile, the sod with two hearts cares more about his plot convenience toy, otherwise known as the Sonic Screwdriver. Between that, being told that a show previously ran by a gay man (these four series) and the first serial released in 1963 was directed by a gay man is only NOW accepting of the gays (along with caring about Clara) I have a seething hatred for series 10 in many ways. Moffat and Capaldi should have taken Clara and gotten on their bike after “The Zygon Inversion” speech.

This brings us to the current useless two and Graham. Mandip Gill is wonderful, excited, and full of great performances when she’s given the chance but Yas is bloody useless. Half the time she forgets she’s a cop, and when she does it is at the least opportune time to show authority in a situation. Speaking of opportune timing, dyspraxia isn’t fancy short-hand for “a case of the wobblies.” You can’t just pull out “Ryan has dyspraxia at this ladder,” but not when throwing a ball across a canyon the size of the Wearmouth bridge. In two whole series, there was one episode where they showed their worth as characters… and it was because of their skin tone.

My problem here is that Yas, Ryan, and Clara don’t have a set “this is what I will do” idea in any situation. They are like Mario, a character so bland and featureless that you could see them saving a child from a Dalek one day, and the next going out to play tennis with the same Dalek. There is no consistency, no logic to the character and nothing that tells you beforehand how they will react. Graham? He’d knock out a racist, should be able to navigate anywhere on earth (it’s The Knowledge), and he’d give anything to have his wife back. Personally, I’d like to return one PC Yasmin Khan and one Ryan Sinclair for one distinguished and elegant Grace O’Brien, please!

Why did I go on that very long and tiresome walk around the history of The Doctor and why there is a need to be a strong companion in the show? Because of “The Doctor’s Daughter,” an episode I don’t love the same way I do “Smith and Jones” or “Rose”. However, I do enjoy it for obvious reasons. Georgia Tennant (née Moffett) is exactly what Doctor Who is all about; adventure, light, and bubbly personalities, mixed in a frantic and sometimes dark world. She should be great at it. She’s the daughter of Peter Moffett, otherwise known as Peter Davison – the 5th Doctor.

Jenny is the Doctor’s daughter reproduced from a single-cell following a quick sci-fi jabber machine, thus he’s both mummy and daddy. He really is her mummy. Which every time I talk about this episode, I keep trying to make it weird because (as the last names imply) she’s the daughter of 5 and the wife of 10. It is inconsequential, but nonetheless it is a strange and wonderful moment of Who connecting people and doing strange things.

The episode itself, well, it is fine. The problem I think I’d have with it is that if Jenny wasn’t as fun to be around, Donna wasn’t the useful one, and Martha wasn’t here for one last ride asking the right questions, I’d probably find it very dull. It is almost as if, and I’m about to have a very big Max Capricorn-style smirk, the companions are what keep the show fun and on its toes. This is why I did the very long rant. Sometimes, the episode or the arc you are writing needs proper context. That is perfectly showcased here with Jenny.

Though Rose has humanized him back when he had those ears and came from the north and Martha showed him that sometimes humans can be smart too, he still (in his mind) killed every child on Gallifrey. His daughter is gone. His granddaughter is gone. His past selves are gone His best friend? Also gone. Now, he has a daughter with Time Lord D.N.A. He is pushing her away, much like the humanoids and the Hath and she’s been cloned and fed this understanding that there is only war and you must fight it. We’ve seen three series where he’s tried to forget all those screams of terror, those pleas for help, and the dying gasp of every one of his people. She is what he’s been running from.

I’ve just said it, but Donna is actually useful again. Lacking a proper standout role as Jenny takes number 1 priority in the plot, she actually does all the working out and questioning the Doctor is busy not thinking about thanks to Jenny. See, this is how to get your Clara or Clara-like to solve the problem. He needs to be distracted by a blonde. Meanwhile, he still does all the important bits with the sonic screwdriver, Martha asks the alien humanoid-fish people (the Hath) the right questions, and the villains are just there.

It is hard to call either side of the little play war villains. Nigel Terry’s Cobb and clones are just idiots with guns, while the Hath are equally stupid but defending themselves. Cobb is meant to be the worst because he kills Jenny at the end, but again he’s just a senseless child and nothing more. He was bred to do one thing: learn and further instill hatred to continue mindless killing that will never be questioned. He’s nothing more than a dog chasing its tail. He’s only villainous because he has conviction in his actions, and his actions get a beloved and scintillating character killed.

As a whole the episode works well, though is held together with strong companions and one-off TV characters. Though it could use a lot more punching up from the hath and human-ish side, there is a good idea under there for a longer and more detailed story. The issue is, I’ve got a feeling that if the episode were to focus more on their mini-war and pull focus from Jenny, I’d be bored. The pacing of bouching between Martha’s Hath focused view and two-sided coin of an A plot showcasing a bit of B when with the Doctor, Jenny, and Donna, kept the episode alive. Though it was a bit too messy to stay on the clone wars of Hath and Human; it was only made worse by the Sontarans only being an episode before.

Fun, quirky, and playing with both the light and darker themes of Who, I can’t fault it too much. I’d say it was a bad episode but to be fair, I know I’ll want to come back for Georgia’s brilliant, almost Buffy Summers-like performance. I can’t wait to get to that point in the millions of Big Finish Productions episodes that she shows up again. Next week I get to moan about not liking the Agatha Christie episode.

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Doctor Who "The Doctor's Daughter"

7.5

Score

7.5/10

Pros

• Jenny is brilliant fun, and Georgia's performance is fantastic.
• The pacing kept the episode afloat well-enough.

Cons

• The clone wars are a bit crap.
• You could plant trees in those plot holes.