Steven Moffat
has come in for a lot of criticism since taking charge of Doctor Who – somewhat
bafflingly, to my mind – but I’ve always admired his scriptwriting and I still
do. Less given to sentimentality than Russell T. Davies, he has led the series with humour,
verve and intelligence. The plots get a bit convoluted sometimes, but there are
worse sins. Matt Smith did a fine job as the previous Doctor, but the excellent
Peter Capaldi is – quite rightly – bringing a new edge to the role. Moffat’s
priorities look good to me.
But – since
its re-launch in 2005, the writing for Doctor Who has regularly gone wrong in one
significant way: its handling of the companions.
After two
episodes of Series 8, Danny Pink looks good, and I’m rather hoping that Journey
Blue will not be abandoned by the Doctor after all. But Clara – ah, Clara…
Leaving aside
the deeply misguided storyline in which the Doctor supposedly fell in love with
Rose Tyler, (Davies, no!) the companions have too often been drained of their
wonder at the Doctor's universe and installed with a whiny species of
self-satisfied insolence, as if untouched by any sense of the mysteries they
have been shown. They stay too much their same
old selves, in the most extraordinary circumstances. To me, that's also
unrealistic, in a damaging sense (and before anyone says, ‘Realistic? This is
sci-fi!’ I would say that sci-fi especially
demands psychological authenticity if
it is to achieve narrative
authenticity).
Dispiritingly,
I suspect that this is because the writers intuitively perceive the offspring of
contemporary society to be self-obsessed, lacking in humility and apparently
incapable of having respect for anything they don't or can't be bothered to
understand – and then write the characters accordingly. I have an awful feeling
(oh say it ain’t so) that they are trying to write ‘normal’ characters, to
which we, as members of that benighted society, can ‘relate’.
Don't do
that. Neither children nor adults need it.
Clara has
been a lost opportunity in this respect, because she was far and away the most
promising companion since the re-launch. In effect, when they picked which Clara Oswald to settle on, they
picked the wrong one. Her first incarnations were much more interesting: she
was intelligent, with a mystery of her own. Now, despite her charms, of which there
are many for sure, this ‘teacher’-variant is too often just another human
arrogant enough to hold on to her seemingly uninterested attitude – long after
the Doctor, I reckon, would have lost patience with it.
The Silurian
Vastra, played by the wonderful Neve McIntosh, is a lively addition to the
Whoniverse – as is/was the not-quite-human River Song: both Moffat creations.
For the Doctor’s
regular companion(s), can’t we have more interesting humans, too?
