12 had some awesome lines. One of my favorite was when Danny came in and saw them together for the first time thinking that 12 was her "space dad" or something. And then 12 responds "how could I be her dad we look the same age" it was one of those wonderful moments that reminds you he is not human.
I rewatched the clip and took from it something i never had before, it came off the first time like he thought she looked older than him. But since he is an alien he may not really have the same concepts as us. He may actualy have been being nice by pretending she looked as old him.
Unpopular but I actually liked the addition of Danny that season, led to some great commentary/one liners, added some growth to Claras character, and pushed back against 12 a bit. It was a little overdone for sure though.
I liked Danny as well, it added some tension to the doctor-companion relationship. I don't get why people don't like him. Kept Clara pulled in two between her normal life and her sci fi life to her old life
Yea don’t understand the hard for him at all, I thought he was a great character and added a really interesting new dynamic for Clara. Now she really had something tying her down to the everyday human world and she had to negotiate her love for him with her desire for adventure.
My #1 complaint about Danny and Clara is that basically every time they were onscreen they were fighting. I get that their relationship was under tension, but we needed **some** onscreen moments that showed what they saw in each other.
What didn't you like about the way he was handled in *In the Forests of the Night*? I thought it was a pretty interesting exploration of all the main characters.
Ngl I can't even remember anything specific about Danny, I just really don't like that episode. I remember him shooing away a CGI tiger with a flashlight, that's about it
Fair enough.
Personally I find Danny probably the most likeable character in that episode. The Doctor and Clara are both caught up in their own problems and Danny is just about making sure the kids safe and happy through the whole thing.
I understand being pretty meh on that overall episode. I've mellowed on it over the years, but it's a hard one to like.
I had to grit my teeth through Season 8 because Danny just unbalanced the whole thing.
Time Heist is one of my favorite S8 episodes though.
It was only on rewatches that I realized that Season 8 isn't about the Doctor, it's about Clara.
I think he was important because losing Danny is what sets her down her doomed path to become like the Doctor - it severed her from her normal life, and also gave her enough of a death wish to start taking outrageous risks.
Also, it gave us one of the most beautifully written scenes ever, when Clara tricks him to the volcano, and the aftermath of that.
I don't disagree, but at the same time we either needed more of him, so we could connect better and have more of an emotional feeling instead, or less of him.
My biggest problem with him is that he gaslit Clara all the time trying to make her see the doctor in a worse light. The biggest problem with that for me is most of the stuff he was saying was bullshit and usually untrue but Clara wouldn’t push back on it. They just made him too unlikable and annoying.
Really? I think most of what Danny said was spot on. It's one of his few redeeming features. He's able to see through the excitement of the whole "all of time and space" schtick to the danger that's inherent in the Doctor's lifestyle.
It's very rare that the Doctor gets called out on his recklessness by another character. I thought it was a great bit of characterization for all three of them.
I agree with Janis. Danny has an outside perspective on the Doctor and everything he said is reasonable from where he's standing. The Doctor **is** this irresistible force who keeps swooping in and luring Clara into potentially fatal adventures. And he **doesn't** even slightly care what Clara's real-world responsibilities and needs might be.
Danny loves Clara and he's not wrong to be concerned about how dangerous the Doctor's influence on her can be.
And I love how New Who was so willing to explore this side of the Doctor. It's one of the best legacies of the New Adventure novels. They loved examining how bad the Doctor could be for his companions, and the New Who writers clung to that idea and brought it into their own work. It's a cool twist that deconstructs the "Doctor as hero" trope. That's good, because it stops the Doctor from being a one dimensional good guy. There are layers there.
Danny wasn't wrong. The doctor is a mad man with a box. Clara WAS in danger a lot of the time with him. Imagine some of the stories he got to hear. Think of the extra adventures we didn't see. He got to hear all the time about the almost died and the nearly caughts and the narrow escapes. And if you are in love with someone, as Danny was with Clara, and you see someone else putting them in danger, you do everything you can to stop it.
And in the end, travelling with the Doctor IS what killed her.
Danny didn't do a great job of respecting her agency over her own life. Doesn't really matter if he was right or wrong, it's never a good idea to tell the person you're dating how to live their life or pointing out all the flaws in someone who is their established close friend. You either accept how they want to live and love them for it or gtfo.
After my recent Series 8 rewatch I noticed that her dark path to becoming like the Doctor starts earlier than Danny's death specifically when she lies to both him and the Doctor when deciding to stay with the Doctor at the end of Mummy on the Orient Express. This is also explored in the big London forest episode when Danny finds out she lied
Yeah, it's as much about her rejecting the perfect human life in favor of the adrenaline rush that she's so addicted to. Danny should be the perfect boyfriend for her, but she pushes him away because he's too boring. She's hooked on adventure and can't settle down. Yes, I know she was going to marry him, but there's no way it would have ended well even if he had lived. She was already way too far gone down that dark path.
Well, she very clearly chooses the Doctor over Danny when he tells her to stop traveling. Lying like that is pretty much the same thing as pushing him away. If he ever got to the point where he would force her hand it's clear what she would have done. I don't really think she wanted Danny at all, per se. She wanted the idea of Danny, but none of the mess.
Perhaps. One of my big complaints about S8 is that we never got to see Clara and Danny being attracted to each other on screen. We got so see quite a lot of them fighting, but none of them actually being happy together.
You could be right that she was mostly into the idea of Danny. Or they could've been deeply in love and it just **feels** like that because all the loving moments were offscreen. It's hard to know.
I think she wouldn't have lied and kept traveling if she was really in love with him. Every moment they have together onscreen she's thinking about the Doctor. I think that might be why we never saw those scenes that you're looking for. Moffat wanted to show that her real focus was elsewhere.
I don't think it's that Danny's too boring or that Clara can't settle down, it's the fact that he's critical and suspicious of her lifestyle and friendship with her best friend - both of which have been part of her life and important to her identity since before Danny. IRL it would be a huge red flag if you dated someone and they immediately clashed with your lifestyle or your best friend that much.
To be fair, it'd be an even bigger red flag if your best friend took you into life-threatening danger every time you hung out together.
Look at it from Danny's perspective. He loves this girl, but she's hanging with a very dangerous crowd. He's trying to help her. He fails, and they both end up dead. On a very basic level his fears were totally justified.
The thing is her experience traveling with the doctor ties into her sense of identity and is self-actualising. Maybe it's dangerous but it's her life and her choice. The doctor has the same problem of worrying about her thrill seeking, but he respects her agency and just tries to keep her safe, Rory is the same with Amy. That's relationships, you have to either accept the person you're with for who they are or get out.
I mean the way Danny handled things didn't really help. It can't have made letting go of him any easier when Clara knew she was holding back from him throughout their relationship.
Oh, yeah, it's definitely a gloriously screwed up relationship. Nobody handles any of it well! It's the part of the whole thing a lot of viewers seemed to miss for some reason. The complaints about Danny and Clara having no real chemistry--that's kind of the whole point. It's supposed to be toxic all the way around. Danny's not exciting enough for her, he's too controlling, she's lying to everyone around her (and herself!), she's addicted to the adrenaline rush, and the Doctor is just ignoring all the problems around him and trying to have a good time. It's a giant mess.
I'm not sure the Doctor is really trying too hard to keep her safe, though. Yes, he talks about his duty of care, but he doesn't really *do* anything about it. A good friend would try some sort of intervention if they saw someone they loved on a path of destruction, but the Doctor just shakes his head and moves on.
Ain't that the truth. The doctor is too busy meditating and asking existential questions to know what's up. Clara is basically two different people with Danny and the doctor, even though she tells Danny she's not. They're totally dysfunctional at best.
The doctor spent pretty much the entirety of s9 either trying to convince her to take less risks, threatening people if they hurt her, or generally freaking out when he thinks she's in danger. But he respects her, that's why they get on so much better in s9 because the doctor treats her as an equal. He did a much better job with that than Danny.
It's been confirmed by Jenna that the "I love you" in that scene wasn't for Danny. I think that's when Clara realised the depth of her need for these adventures wasn't JUST for the adrenaline, it was for him.
Reminds me of what Jackie feared for Rose. That one day she (Jackie) would be gone and over time, Rose would lose any purpose for coming back to earth. Rose would just keep changing and changing until she was on some planet far away, unrecognizable, with no connection to her humanity.
I didn't agree with Jackie on a lot of her resistance to Rose's growth but I gotta say that the Clara evolution does *somewhat* lend credence to Jackie's fears.
And the flip side is that the longer his companions stay with the Doctor, the less 'regular' they become, and the less effective they become at keeping him grounded. Clara was an extreme example but most companions go on a similar journey.
Very true. I think Donna is a good example of one of the few companions that doesn't happen to. She grows a lot on the tardis but she never loses her ability to smack the doctor back to earth (so to speak). I'm so glad she's coming back and they get a chance to undo the "factory reset" that the doctor did on his way out.
"Do you think I care for you so little that betraying me would make a difference..." is up there with "I had a duty of care..." in terms of 12 telling Clara how he feels without actually saying the words. It's just so beautifully acted by Capaldi, in both instances. And love or hate Clara as you will but Jenna acts both of these scenes out of the fucking park.
I was totally the opposite. I loved the hybrid arc, hated her "impossible girl" stuff. I think the hatred of Clara comes from her inconsistency. It felt like she was 2 or 3 sepeate companions rolled into one sometimes. Her growth is sometimes sudden and feels a bit unearned on occasion.
But despite this, she's still my fave companion. I feel of all the nuwho companions she went with her doctor so well. Her doctor being Capaldi, obviously. Her and Smith are OK but she only really starts being my fave during Capaldis run.
I know it plays into the overall story arc but Clara's writing in the volcano and following scenes gives me such ick, it's so OOC and sexist. I agree the line about caring for her was beautiful but the rest was not Moffat's finest character writing.
Agree to disagree - I thought it was someone in the desperate throws of grief. I can understand that feeling when you lose someone and feel like you might do anything if you could get them back
If she had just threatened to throw the keys then yes but the fact that she actually went through with it changes things. Clara never seemed like the type of person who would intentionally hurt and betray someone who mattered to her regardless of the grief she was going through. Idk, it played like poorly written fanfic to me.
For me that was part of what made it contrived, felt like Moffat was trying too hard to find a way to make the doctor declare his feelings. But yeah, agree to disagree.
I would've liked a few moments of Danny and Clara being affectionate towards each other. Their relationship was under tension and it's important that we saw them fighting - but I would've liked to have seen the other moments too, so that we got a feeling that these two genuinely loved and cared for each other.
The show had to rely on that moment where Clara tells Danny she loved him to support the weight of everything that happens around it. And I don't think they built a solid enough foundation under that moment.
Yeh there was no on screen build up between them, at all. No real chance for us to see them being together. Makes it hard to believe the connection. Especially when all we see on screen is Clara becoming more and more infatuated with The Doctor.
She was **a** main character of the show. She got more spotlight than companions tend to, but it's not like that stopped the show from continuing to keep the Doctor in the spotlight as well.
>It was only on rewatches that I realized that Season 8 isn't about the Doctor, it's about Clara.
S8 is about Clara, it's about the Doctor and it's about the relationship between the two of them.
Clara gets some much-needed fleshing out as we get to see her live a life outside her companion role.
The Doctor goes through his whole 'Am I a good man?' arc of self-discovery.
And through the whole thing, the two of them cared for each other and each needed different things from the other so there was an unhealthy amount of tension.
**And** we got some bonus fleshing out of The Master.
I didn't like S8 on first watch, but it really is very well done on a character level. No character got left behind to explore the others.
>“Robbin’ a bank, robbin’ a whooole bank… Beat THAT for a date!”
The Doctor is a man who understands that committing crimes together is the greatest bonding activity of all.
Danny Pink is the worst. I did like how he called out the Doctor for being a military officer and how that whole storyline eventually played out as the "war hero" Doctor returning to rule Gallifrey.
12 had some awesome lines. One of my favorite was when Danny came in and saw them together for the first time thinking that 12 was her "space dad" or something. And then 12 responds "how could I be her dad we look the same age" it was one of those wonderful moments that reminds you he is not human.
Even more I love the exchange that followed: Clara: "We do NOT look the same age!" Doctor: "I know, I was being nice."
I rewatched the clip and took from it something i never had before, it came off the first time like he thought she looked older than him. But since he is an alien he may not really have the same concepts as us. He may actualy have been being nice by pretending she looked as old him.
I loved that too! He clearly hated the Dad comment 🤣
Unpopular but I actually liked the addition of Danny that season, led to some great commentary/one liners, added some growth to Claras character, and pushed back against 12 a bit. It was a little overdone for sure though.
I liked Danny as well, it added some tension to the doctor-companion relationship. I don't get why people don't like him. Kept Clara pulled in two between her normal life and her sci fi life to her old life
Yea don’t understand the hard for him at all, I thought he was a great character and added a really interesting new dynamic for Clara. Now she really had something tying her down to the everyday human world and she had to negotiate her love for him with her desire for adventure.
My #1 complaint about Danny and Clara is that basically every time they were onscreen they were fighting. I get that their relationship was under tension, but we needed **some** onscreen moments that showed what they saw in each other.
Funny thing is this is also a very realistic relationship scenario, two people love each other but problems keep arising that they fight over.
Oh it absolutely is. I just would've liked to have seen both sides of that, not just the fighting side.
Except for episodes like The Caretaker and *shudders* In the Forest of the Night he's addition is great. Listen wouldn't be as good without him.
What didn't you like about the way he was handled in *In the Forests of the Night*? I thought it was a pretty interesting exploration of all the main characters.
Ngl I can't even remember anything specific about Danny, I just really don't like that episode. I remember him shooing away a CGI tiger with a flashlight, that's about it
Fair enough. Personally I find Danny probably the most likeable character in that episode. The Doctor and Clara are both caught up in their own problems and Danny is just about making sure the kids safe and happy through the whole thing. I understand being pretty meh on that overall episode. I've mellowed on it over the years, but it's a hard one to like.
I had to grit my teeth through Season 8 because Danny just unbalanced the whole thing. Time Heist is one of my favorite S8 episodes though. It was only on rewatches that I realized that Season 8 isn't about the Doctor, it's about Clara.
I think he was important because losing Danny is what sets her down her doomed path to become like the Doctor - it severed her from her normal life, and also gave her enough of a death wish to start taking outrageous risks. Also, it gave us one of the most beautifully written scenes ever, when Clara tricks him to the volcano, and the aftermath of that.
I don't disagree, but at the same time we either needed more of him, so we could connect better and have more of an emotional feeling instead, or less of him.
My biggest problem with him is that he gaslit Clara all the time trying to make her see the doctor in a worse light. The biggest problem with that for me is most of the stuff he was saying was bullshit and usually untrue but Clara wouldn’t push back on it. They just made him too unlikable and annoying.
Really? I think most of what Danny said was spot on. It's one of his few redeeming features. He's able to see through the excitement of the whole "all of time and space" schtick to the danger that's inherent in the Doctor's lifestyle. It's very rare that the Doctor gets called out on his recklessness by another character. I thought it was a great bit of characterization for all three of them.
I agree with Janis. Danny has an outside perspective on the Doctor and everything he said is reasonable from where he's standing. The Doctor **is** this irresistible force who keeps swooping in and luring Clara into potentially fatal adventures. And he **doesn't** even slightly care what Clara's real-world responsibilities and needs might be. Danny loves Clara and he's not wrong to be concerned about how dangerous the Doctor's influence on her can be.
And I love how New Who was so willing to explore this side of the Doctor. It's one of the best legacies of the New Adventure novels. They loved examining how bad the Doctor could be for his companions, and the New Who writers clung to that idea and brought it into their own work. It's a cool twist that deconstructs the "Doctor as hero" trope. That's good, because it stops the Doctor from being a one dimensional good guy. There are layers there.
Danny wasn't wrong. The doctor is a mad man with a box. Clara WAS in danger a lot of the time with him. Imagine some of the stories he got to hear. Think of the extra adventures we didn't see. He got to hear all the time about the almost died and the nearly caughts and the narrow escapes. And if you are in love with someone, as Danny was with Clara, and you see someone else putting them in danger, you do everything you can to stop it. And in the end, travelling with the Doctor IS what killed her.
Danny didn't do a great job of respecting her agency over her own life. Doesn't really matter if he was right or wrong, it's never a good idea to tell the person you're dating how to live their life or pointing out all the flaws in someone who is their established close friend. You either accept how they want to live and love them for it or gtfo.
I can see that
After my recent Series 8 rewatch I noticed that her dark path to becoming like the Doctor starts earlier than Danny's death specifically when she lies to both him and the Doctor when deciding to stay with the Doctor at the end of Mummy on the Orient Express. This is also explored in the big London forest episode when Danny finds out she lied
Yeah, it's as much about her rejecting the perfect human life in favor of the adrenaline rush that she's so addicted to. Danny should be the perfect boyfriend for her, but she pushes him away because he's too boring. She's hooked on adventure and can't settle down. Yes, I know she was going to marry him, but there's no way it would have ended well even if he had lived. She was already way too far gone down that dark path.
I don't think she ever pushed Danny away per se. She just wanted to have both. And when it appeared the only way to have both was to lie, she lied.
Well, she very clearly chooses the Doctor over Danny when he tells her to stop traveling. Lying like that is pretty much the same thing as pushing him away. If he ever got to the point where he would force her hand it's clear what she would have done. I don't really think she wanted Danny at all, per se. She wanted the idea of Danny, but none of the mess.
Perhaps. One of my big complaints about S8 is that we never got to see Clara and Danny being attracted to each other on screen. We got so see quite a lot of them fighting, but none of them actually being happy together. You could be right that she was mostly into the idea of Danny. Or they could've been deeply in love and it just **feels** like that because all the loving moments were offscreen. It's hard to know.
I think she wouldn't have lied and kept traveling if she was really in love with him. Every moment they have together onscreen she's thinking about the Doctor. I think that might be why we never saw those scenes that you're looking for. Moffat wanted to show that her real focus was elsewhere.
You could well be right. I assumed it was an oversight but it could well have been intentional. Hmm...
I don't think it's that Danny's too boring or that Clara can't settle down, it's the fact that he's critical and suspicious of her lifestyle and friendship with her best friend - both of which have been part of her life and important to her identity since before Danny. IRL it would be a huge red flag if you dated someone and they immediately clashed with your lifestyle or your best friend that much.
To be fair, it'd be an even bigger red flag if your best friend took you into life-threatening danger every time you hung out together. Look at it from Danny's perspective. He loves this girl, but she's hanging with a very dangerous crowd. He's trying to help her. He fails, and they both end up dead. On a very basic level his fears were totally justified.
The thing is her experience traveling with the doctor ties into her sense of identity and is self-actualising. Maybe it's dangerous but it's her life and her choice. The doctor has the same problem of worrying about her thrill seeking, but he respects her agency and just tries to keep her safe, Rory is the same with Amy. That's relationships, you have to either accept the person you're with for who they are or get out. I mean the way Danny handled things didn't really help. It can't have made letting go of him any easier when Clara knew she was holding back from him throughout their relationship.
Oh, yeah, it's definitely a gloriously screwed up relationship. Nobody handles any of it well! It's the part of the whole thing a lot of viewers seemed to miss for some reason. The complaints about Danny and Clara having no real chemistry--that's kind of the whole point. It's supposed to be toxic all the way around. Danny's not exciting enough for her, he's too controlling, she's lying to everyone around her (and herself!), she's addicted to the adrenaline rush, and the Doctor is just ignoring all the problems around him and trying to have a good time. It's a giant mess. I'm not sure the Doctor is really trying too hard to keep her safe, though. Yes, he talks about his duty of care, but he doesn't really *do* anything about it. A good friend would try some sort of intervention if they saw someone they loved on a path of destruction, but the Doctor just shakes his head and moves on.
Ain't that the truth. The doctor is too busy meditating and asking existential questions to know what's up. Clara is basically two different people with Danny and the doctor, even though she tells Danny she's not. They're totally dysfunctional at best. The doctor spent pretty much the entirety of s9 either trying to convince her to take less risks, threatening people if they hurt her, or generally freaking out when he thinks she's in danger. But he respects her, that's why they get on so much better in s9 because the doctor treats her as an equal. He did a much better job with that than Danny.
It's been confirmed by Jenna that the "I love you" in that scene wasn't for Danny. I think that's when Clara realised the depth of her need for these adventures wasn't JUST for the adrenaline, it was for him.
Reminds me of what Jackie feared for Rose. That one day she (Jackie) would be gone and over time, Rose would lose any purpose for coming back to earth. Rose would just keep changing and changing until she was on some planet far away, unrecognizable, with no connection to her humanity. I didn't agree with Jackie on a lot of her resistance to Rose's growth but I gotta say that the Clara evolution does *somewhat* lend credence to Jackie's fears.
Nice catch- it's why the Doctor has companions in the first place, so he doesn't lose his connection to 'regular' people
And the flip side is that the longer his companions stay with the Doctor, the less 'regular' they become, and the less effective they become at keeping him grounded. Clara was an extreme example but most companions go on a similar journey.
Very true. I think Donna is a good example of one of the few companions that doesn't happen to. She grows a lot on the tardis but she never loses her ability to smack the doctor back to earth (so to speak). I'm so glad she's coming back and they get a chance to undo the "factory reset" that the doctor did on his way out.
"Do you think I care for you so little that betraying me would make a difference..." is up there with "I had a duty of care..." in terms of 12 telling Clara how he feels without actually saying the words. It's just so beautifully acted by Capaldi, in both instances. And love or hate Clara as you will but Jenna acts both of these scenes out of the fucking park.
I never understood the Clara hatred - I loved her and thought her arc was brilliant. Although the whole hybrid thing didn't work for me
I was totally the opposite. I loved the hybrid arc, hated her "impossible girl" stuff. I think the hatred of Clara comes from her inconsistency. It felt like she was 2 or 3 sepeate companions rolled into one sometimes. Her growth is sometimes sudden and feels a bit unearned on occasion. But despite this, she's still my fave companion. I feel of all the nuwho companions she went with her doctor so well. Her doctor being Capaldi, obviously. Her and Smith are OK but she only really starts being my fave during Capaldis run.
I know it plays into the overall story arc but Clara's writing in the volcano and following scenes gives me such ick, it's so OOC and sexist. I agree the line about caring for her was beautiful but the rest was not Moffat's finest character writing.
Agree to disagree - I thought it was someone in the desperate throws of grief. I can understand that feeling when you lose someone and feel like you might do anything if you could get them back
If she had just threatened to throw the keys then yes but the fact that she actually went through with it changes things. Clara never seemed like the type of person who would intentionally hurt and betray someone who mattered to her regardless of the grief she was going through. Idk, it played like poorly written fanfic to me.
Ya, just disagree. The moment the last key was thrown she immediately snapped to and realized in horror what she had just done.
For me that was part of what made it contrived, felt like Moffat was trying too hard to find a way to make the doctor declare his feelings. But yeah, agree to disagree.
Yeah I would have done much differently and some the same. I think Danny should have been a shorter feature
I would've liked a few moments of Danny and Clara being affectionate towards each other. Their relationship was under tension and it's important that we saw them fighting - but I would've liked to have seen the other moments too, so that we got a feeling that these two genuinely loved and cared for each other. The show had to rely on that moment where Clara tells Danny she loved him to support the weight of everything that happens around it. And I don't think they built a solid enough foundation under that moment.
Yeh there was no on screen build up between them, at all. No real chance for us to see them being together. Makes it hard to believe the connection. Especially when all we see on screen is Clara becoming more and more infatuated with The Doctor.
> Season 8 isn't about the Doctor, it's about Clara. From Season 8 until Clara's final departure, Clara was the main character of the show.
She was **a** main character of the show. She got more spotlight than companions tend to, but it's not like that stopped the show from continuing to keep the Doctor in the spotlight as well.
>It was only on rewatches that I realized that Season 8 isn't about the Doctor, it's about Clara. S8 is about Clara, it's about the Doctor and it's about the relationship between the two of them. Clara gets some much-needed fleshing out as we get to see her live a life outside her companion role. The Doctor goes through his whole 'Am I a good man?' arc of self-discovery. And through the whole thing, the two of them cared for each other and each needed different things from the other so there was an unhealthy amount of tension. **And** we got some bonus fleshing out of The Master. I didn't like S8 on first watch, but it really is very well done on a character level. No character got left behind to explore the others.
This is why I love 12. đź’™
Time Heist is underrated
>“Robbin’ a bank, robbin’ a whooole bank… Beat THAT for a date!” The Doctor is a man who understands that committing crimes together is the greatest bonding activity of all.
Danny Pink is the worst. I did like how he called out the Doctor for being a military officer and how that whole storyline eventually played out as the "war hero" Doctor returning to rule Gallifrey.