*sigh* I really wish I could understand why the fandom is so hopelessly polarized over Capaldi's era. Every episode is either loved or hated. And the ones that are highly loved are also highly hated. The only episodes anyone seems to be able to agree with are the lukewarm ones.
And I don't mean that "I wish I could understand" part in a derogatory or insulting way. I honestly really want to know why all these episodes seem to have that effect. It would make sense for one or two episodes but the
entire season seems to be doing this. It's so weird.
I'll respond to your points to elaborate on why I liked certain things that you didn't, mostly because I'm a huge dork who's insanely in love with the show and can defend even episodes that I'm not a big fan of, apparently. Just know ahead of time that I don't want this to turn into an ugly debate. (Also, can we try to keep important things in spoiler tags for Books and Rae? That seems to be something we've been neglecting.)
xcalx1dw said
There was so many plot holes....
Elaborate. I didn't see too many.
So many weird edits.
Elaborate on this, too.
I hate courtney, she had no place in the story
She didn't do a ton, that's true - but that's probably for the best considering how new she is and how she was just thrown at us last episode with very little buildup. I honestly like the way they're transitioning a bit gradually instead of giving us a totally Courtney-focused episode, especially since they hinted at the fact that Clara might be gone as a companion (at least temporarily), so the next episode will probably have a lot more of Courtney, and she'll get a bigger place in the story.
Also, the way she was treated in the best episode really does fix a lot of potential problems that could've come up with having her around since you mentioned during our debate about the last episode that you were so certain she'd get into a plot thread about her mouth getting her into trouble and needing to be rescued. That would be the obvious direction to take her, especially on her first adventure when she's not as used to traveling with the Doctor and all the perils that come with it. In fact, they made it pretty clear in this episode that she was kind of frightened by everything going on, which means she's less likely to make some stupid mistake in the future and step near that writing trap later. See? She's already had some character development! So you can't say her presence was completely pointless.
and had horrible lines.
Like what? I enjoyed Courtney's humor. Kind of a breath of fresh air from the more tense moments. I especially loved how she was trying to upload images of the adventure onto Tumblr - makes sense for a modern companion to attempt, and kind of a hilarious thought that I'm surprised had never been brought up before.
Clara overeacts for the one time she has put onto her. (Seriously, the man saves places millions of times and the one time you have to do something you get furious at him, grow up)
What does the Doctor saving the world have to do with what Clara went through during this episode? Why does the Doctor saving the world mean that Clara
shouldn't have gotten upset in this one? If anything, the number of times the Doctor has saved the world makes this episode make even
more sense. Why? Well let's take a look at what the two of them have done in every episode since Clara became a regular companion;
Bells of Saint John: Clara gets uploaded into a wi-fi network, and the Doctor rescues her.
Rings of Akhaten: The Doctor offers the entirety of his Time Lord memories in an attempt to overfeed Akhaten. Clara offers the leaf that brought her parents together which then manages to defeat the thing.
Cold War: Clara and the Doctor both fail at calming down an Ice Warrior and neither of them are really saved until an Ice Warrior ship comes down to pick up their straggler.
Hide: The Doctor gets trapped in a pocket dimension and Clara convinces the TARDIS to help her save him.
Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS: The two of them struggle through hell together and eventually the Doctor uses his timey-whimey skills to fix everything.
The Crimson Horror: After rescuing her from "preservation" and reversing the process, the Doctor and Clara both manage to take care of all the nonsense present in the situation.
Nightmare in Silver: Clara is given the task of "not blowing up the planet" while the Doctor engages in what I guess is both a metaphorical and literal chess match with Mr. Clever. Clara's efforts to keep the situation under wraps are notable though it is the Doctor who ultimately gives the heroes the edge they need to defeat the Cybermen.
The Name of the Doctor: The Great Intelligence tries to kill the Doctor a billion different ways by entering his time line and reversing all his victories. Clara follows him and saves the Doctor's life a billion different ways as she's splintered across his time line.
The Day of the Doctor: Clara just kind of sits the fuck back and watches for a good portion of the time as the Doctor teams up with himself to save Gallifrey.
The Time of the Doctor: The Doctor fights off virtually every creature he's ever fought for what is implied to be several centuries and, while Clara wanted to help, he has the TARDIS send her away for a while. When she returns, the Doctor is nearing the end of his life and she convinces the crack in the wall to send more regeneration energy so he can keep living.
Deep Breath: Once the Doctor regains most of his sanity, the two of them team up to defeat the maintenance crew of the S.S. Marie Antoinette.
Into the Dalek: The two of them shrink down and go inside a Dalek in an attempt to "fix" him. That plan goes awry but even after the Dalek starts rampaging, a combination of both their efforts manages to at least stop Rusty from killing more humans.
Robot of Sherwood: The Doctor, despite being tied up with Robin Hood for so much of the episode, still plays a major part in fixing the whole thing. Clara was also good for gathering information in this episode, so it's not like she didn't do anything, at least.
Listen: A lot of this episode is spent with the Doctor targeting various conflicts and giving Clara a means of transportation as she does most of the work setting things right by talking to young Pink, Doctor, etc.
Time Heist: The Doctor kind of created the conflict that he put everyone through in this episode but, thanks to the memory wipe, he was at least trying his hardest to complete the mission and Clara was right there next to him the whole time about it.
The Caretaker: The Doctor acts like a bit of an asshat while taking care of the alien problem completely by himself and actually kind of tries to shove Clara to the side most of the time, though she's still clearly concerned about the whole thing even if she does get sidetracked by the whole Danny plot as her conflict in the latter half of the episode really revolves around getting the Doctor to accept him - but that's a totally different can of worms from the whole "save the world" idea.
So, why do I bring all this up? To point out that Clara has
never been in the sort of situation that happened in this most recent episode.
To simplify this argument a bit, let’s group all these episodes based on what general situation Clara was thrown into. Some of these episodes fall into somewhat of a gray area so I guess it’s debatable which category they fall into, but for sake of argument I kind of have to place them all somewhere so just bear with me on that one.
Type 1: Bells of Saint John, Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS, Day of the Doctor. These are all episodes in which the Doctor either has to rescue Clara, or the Doctor just does considerably more of the work
Type 2: Rings of Akhaten, Cold War, Crimson Horror, Nightmare in Silver, Deep Breath, Into the Dalek, Robot of Sherwood, Time Heist. In these episodes, the effort put forth by both of them seems to be about equal. Clara’s pulling her weight, here.
Type 3: Hide, Name of the Doctor, Time of the Doctor, Listen. These episodes have the distinction of being episodes in which Clara seems to do more of the work. Or, at the very least, winds up saving the Doctor’s life during the climax as opposed to the other way around.
The Caretaker doesn’t exactly fit into one of these categories, but I’ll talk more about that one later.
Now, you said the reason why Clara (unjustly) got upset was because she had to “do things on her own” for the first time. But, evidently, there are only a small number of episodes in which Clara doesn’t pull her own weight. So, that doesn’t make any sense here.
Now, in the Type 2 episodes, the Doctor and Clara did roughly the same amount of work. In the Type 3 episodes, Clara did
more and saved the Doctor’s life. In the Caretaker, Clara
wanted to help but the Doctor clearly didn’t want Clara to get involved. She’s clearly used to doing things on her own, so, why is she upset?
Because this is the only episode in which the Doctor essentially
abandoned her, leaving her to take things into her own hands,
and the only time when she was forced to make a serious moral decision in that way.
In nearly all the other episodes, the Doctor has stayed by Clara’s side and helped her through whatever they were facing. The only exceptions to this are the Type 3 episodes, in which the Doctor was either incapacitated or just really distracted by something else and so didn’t have much of a choice but to leave her to do things, or the Caretaker in which the Doctor was specifically trying to leave Clara
out of the conflict, which is kind of the opposite of what happened here, where the Doctor
consciously made the decision to leave Clara and do things on her own. He could’ve helped her, but
specifically chose not to.
Additionally, in all the cases where large amounts of pressure were put on Clara, she at least knew what it was she wanted to do. Save the world, save the Doctor, show a Dalek what love is — whatever the case was. She understood the goal, and the hard part was just figuring out how to reach that goal. In this case, she
doesn’t know what to do, and that’s exactly the problem. The conflict in this episode was completely shrouded with moral ambiguity, and Clara had almost no idea which choice was the right one. And not only was it a difficult decision, but she had the fate of an entire planet as well as what the Doctor claimed could’ve been the last of its species all resting on her shoulders. That is an
absurd amount of pressure and an
unimaginably stressful situation to make a decision about — and she’s never faced that sort of thing before, alone or not. And when she did need to make a decision that insane, the Doctor left her, forcing the entire thing onto her shoulders.
Now, whether or not the Doctor was justified in all this is a completely different can of worms. Point is: in Clara’s eyes, the Doctor waited until the absolute worst possible time to flat-out refuse to help her, and forced her to make a choice that could’ve potentially resulted in the destruction of her entire home planet. And she has
every right to be upset about something like that.
What the hell were the spiders? What was the point.
Probably a red herring. They made it seem like the spiders would be the focus of the episode and the cause of the whole gravity issue, probably so we’d be less likely to see the whole egg thing coming. I agree it would’ve been nice for them to tie them into the rest of the episode more, but at least they justified their existence by comparing them to bacteria.
What was the point of the other two characters.
Um… well one of them was there so that there’d be a clear counter-argument to the notion that the creature should live, as she was clearly very concerned with preserving life on earth, regardless of the cost. That’s a pretty clear reason for her to exist, at least.
Are you saying that Doctor Who isn’t allowed to have side-characters that only exist for one episode? Because they’ve had characters that served far less purpose already.
HOW THE HELL WAS ANOTHER MOON POPPED OUT SO FAST
I will admit, that is a plothole, especially since the new one was the same size as the hatchling. However, I consider that a small detail, and not one that kills the episode, exactly.
Also…WHY WASN'T IT THE SPACE WHALE...IT WOULD OF MADE SO MUCH SENSE DAMMIT!
Ok, a wasted opportunity for a callback to an earlier episode is mildly disappointing, but not exactly a moral sin that makes the whole episode terrible.
I will admit I was expecting it to be a space whale, as well, but the Doctor had already said that he had no clue what creature would hatch from it and that, because of that, it might be the last of its kind. The Doctor’s clearly already familiar with the concept of space whales, so if this matched what he knew about them, then he probably wouldn’t have said that.
Also, whales don’t hatch from eggs. I realize this is a “space whale” and so all bets are kind of out the window regarding their reproduction, but, perhaps the writers were anticipating that if it hatched and a whale came out, people would be ranting and raving about why
that didn’t make sense. Also they might’ve went with the design they did because it’s more beautiful than a baby whale and therefore adds to the emotional weight of the scene. Really, there are a lot of reasons why they could’ve gone with something different. They weren’t exactly obligated to use a space whale and not having one really doesn’t hurt the plot of the episode at all.
He said it would change everything, nothing happened.
Firstly: he said it
could change everything. That was the whole point of the conflict. No one knew what could happen if they let that thing live. For all they knew, that thing
could’ve chosen to attack the earth immediately after hatching. The uncertainty was exactly why it was such a difficult decision to make. Of course, the Doctor
also said that letting the thing hatch might
not result in anything bad happening, and that letting it live might be worth the risk. Not knowing was the
whole point of the climax. If the Doctor
knew that the earth would be destroyed, he probably would’ve had some second-thoughts about leaving Clara to fix everything.
Secondly: It
did change things; it just didn’t result in the destruction of humanity. The Doctor said at the end of the episode that seeing this was what would inspire humanity to leave earth and explore other planets. I can imagine that watching the Moon hatch into a giant alien would spark quite a bit of interest in space exploration in the minds of all those earthlings, don’t you? This was a pivotal moment in earth history. And
that was also the Doctor’s point. Whether or not that thing was going to destroy earth, it’s hard to deny that it would most likely be a rather massive event in history.
Also the next episode looks crap.
That’s neither here nor there. I admit it doesn’t seem like the most interesting episode in the world to me, either, but it does look like it might be our first non-Clara episode (at least for a while). So, that’s something.
Also: I now kind of hate myself for reasons that I can’t quite explain.
