Random Pondering is where I think about something for awhile until I decide it's worth writing about. I might not come to a real conclusion on anything I'm thinking about, but I feel like sharing my thoughts. Tonight I decided to share my thoughts on how the new series of Doctor Who has been handling Companion Introductions. There will be some spoilers if you're not completely caught up on the series, so I'd turn away if that's the case.
As I mentioned in my last Personal Log, Doctor Who came back with Series 7 Part 2, finally introducing Clara Oswald as a real companion - as opposed to the last two incarnations which died. Considering I hadn't seen a new Doctor Who episode in awhile, my mind kept coming back to this episode and I ended up comparing it to one of my favourite episodes - namely the last Companion introduction episode: The Eleventh Hour. This of course led to me thinking about the introductions of Companions in general, and here we are. Basically, as I was thinking about all this, I realized they've handled Companion introductions differently since Series 1 brought us the Ninth Doctor and Rose. Let's start there. Oh, and if you're quite well-versed in the introduction episodes, feel free to skip the next five paragraphs.
Rose was the first episode of the reincarnation (or even "regeneration") of Doctor Who, which had been off the air for... a long time. Personally, I am quite glad they brought it back, but that's off-topic. Rose begins with, well, Rose apparently going about doing things she does every day. Only by the end of it, she can't find someone she's expecting to be around. Instead, plastic mannequins attack, The Doctor shows up, and the two of them run out of the building before The Doctor blows it up. Rose goes home, the explosion is on the news, but it all seems to be over. Except that The Doctor manages to track the hand of a mannequin back to her apartment, where he shows up the next morning. The two of them track down the source through London, find the "mother brain" of it all, destroy it and go home. Rose decides to travel with The Doctor though, since she has no job, and as her mother puts it, no life. Why not, right?
Refresher one complete, let's move on. Martha is the next Companion, who appears in Smith and Jones. She works at a hospital, and meets a strange man - The Doctor - on the street briefly, but passes it off as simply a strange occurrence. She sees him again however in the hospital, and he has no idea what she's talking about when she talks about their meeting on the street. However, all of this isn't nearly as strange as the fact that before long, the entire hospital is sent to the moon. And then invaded by aliens. The aliens are looking for a "plasmavore", which I guess is kind of like a vampire. Sadly, the plasmavore shows up as "human" since it partook of the head doctor. Then, the aliens try to take out The Doctor simply because he's "non-human". Luckily The Doctor manages to trick the plasmavore into drinking his blood, and the Martha proves the plasmavore is actually non-human. Their job done, the aliens send the hospital back to Earth, and The Doctor disappears. Martha ends up at her brother's birthday party, but it turns into a fight, so she leaves and finds the TARDIS and The Doctor outside. She joins him on his travels.
One more before I get onto my point, although this one's a bit tricky. Donna first shows up at the end of Doomsday, but her introduction is truly in The Runaway Bride. Apparently she managed to teleport herself into the TARDIS from her wedding reception. The Doctor begins escorting her back, but evil, robotic Santas try to kidnap her, and he has to rescue her. Eventually, they make it back to the reception, but the Santas track Donna down there too, so they make another run for it. Finally, The Doctor tracks down the cause of all this with the help of Donna's fiance, who happens to be in on all of it. "It" being the Racnoss, a thought-to-be-extinct species of spider-like things. They refuse to back off, so The Doctor begins drowning them, and Donna has to practically drag him out, since he wanted to watch them suffer for what they were doing (namely, consuming all humans). Donna however turns down the invitation to go time traveling. At least until she begins regretting this in Partners in Crime and begins investigating strange occurrences hoping they'd meet up again. They do, they solve a problem with walking fat, and she finally joins up with him.
Okay, so that's Part 1. I feel a skimming at least would do you well. Let's move on to Part 2, with the Eleventh Doctor and his first Companion, Amy. The Eleventh Hour is probably my favourite episode of Doctor Who. It begins exactly where Series 4 and the Tenth Doctor left off - The Doctor regenerating in the TARDIS over Earth. The process is violent however, which breaks the TARDIS, causing it to crash in the lawn of one Amelia Pond, age 7. She heads out to meet him, and he finds himself hungry, so the two of them attempt to get some food made up. This doesn't go well until The Doctor settles on fish fingers and custard. Amelia then talks about a strange crack in her wall, which The Doctor finds very interesting. However, he needs to fix the TARDIS first, which requires a short time jump, so off he goes, promising to be back to take Amelia on wonderful travels. Unfortunately, he comes back not 12 minutes later, but rather 12 years. The Doctor also realizes there's a perception filter over a room in Amelia's - now known as Amy - room hiding a nasty alien. The TARDIS is still repairing itself, and his Sonic Screwdriver is broken, meaning he must deal with the alien - and those after it - without much to work with. Along the way we meet Rory, who joins up later, and, despite him being super awesome, doesn't really factor into the point I'll be making eventually. In the end, The Doctor prevails, makes another time jump, once again missteps and shows up only two years later, but Amy's willing to come along anyway.
And finally we come to The Bells of Saint John. The Doctor has put himself in seclusion to try and determine where - or rather when - the third incarnation of Clara Oswald will appear. Ironically, this was at the suggestion of a quite young Clara herself, thus his not recognizing her. Clara cannot "find the internet", and so calls a help line she got at a shop. This causes the TARDIS' external phone to ring, which The Doctor picks up. He can't believe he's helping someone in 2013 with an internet problem while he's in 1207 until Clara says "Run You Clever Boy And Remember". This phrase was repeated by her two previous incarnations, although this time it's as a mnemonic for the WiFi password. He quickly travels to 2013 to meet Clara, but of course she has no memory of him. However, during that time she had accessed the "strange WiFi connection" and after closing the door in The Doctor's face, gets her soul sucked into a "spoonhead". The Doctor manages to reverse the process before it completes, puts her to bed, and then gets to work analyzing the spoonhead robot and keeping guard over the house so that she stays safe. Of course things get worse, Clara gets computer knowledge, manages to hack into something The Doctor can't, gets her soul sucked out anyway, and then The Doctor not only releases Clara, but everyone else who'd been sucked up.
Okay, stop skipping here if you had been. Now, I hope you've at least skimmed, because a refresher is always nice. The thing I find interesting with these introduction episodes is that they've slowly become less about the Companion and more about The Doctor and some strange mystery surrounding the Companion. Rose took place completely from Rose's point of view, never once focusing on The Doctor unless Rose was there, or about to be. As far as a mystery surrounding the Companion, the "Bad Wolf" storyline was only barely teased in Rose, and was completely forgettable until "Bad Wolf" showed up more later. The mystery was revealed part way through the Series, rather than being a plot point right off the bat. Martha had no mystery at all, but again, Smith and Jones was from her perspective, not The Doctor's, which allowed them the time travel shenanigans at the beginning and end of the episode. Things start to change a little with Donna's appearance in The Runaway Bride. This is the first introduction episode that is from The Doctor's perspective, and brings back a mystery surrounding the Companion, although it's specifically for that one episode. After that, Donna is as "simple" as Martha. She's also the only Companion so far to get two introduction episodes, with Partners in Crime being a shared point of view between the two of them. This makes Donna's introduction the perfect bridge into my main realization about the shift in the introduction episodes' focus. After Donna comes Amy, who gets no point of view at all aside from her prayer to Santa in her room - right before the TARDIS crashes into her lawn. Then it's right back to The Doctor's point of view, where it stays for the rest of the episode. Also, the crack in the wall becomes a recurring plot point that centers on Amy, which is all taken care of in The Pandorica Opens and The Big Bang, the two-part Series finale. Amy being the center point of strangeness continues into Series 6 however, starting with The Rebel Flesh with her pregnancy/non-pregnancy, which all leads to River Song actually being Amy and Rory's daughter. After that it more focuses on The Doctor and River, rather than Amy, but she's still technically the cause of it all.
Finally, the "worst" case of this is Clara. Not only does she appear in two episodes before finally becoming a companion, but her entire mystery is set up while Amy's still around, a whole half season before she finally comes on board. To be fair, a lot of The Snowmen is from Clara's point of view, which makes up for the "problem" of the recent point of view shift. The Bells of Saint John however goes right back to The Doctor's point of view, and pretty much stays there. In fact, I feel that we learn little of Clara, since the only thing she really does is hack into The Shard, but she can only do that because she was given computer skills. Sure, we've seen two other versions of her already, but who's to say how different they are from this third version? I feel that was the biggest let-down of this newest introduction episode. The other ones either had The Doctor spending some "quality time" with the new Companion and/or had the Companion help out in a major way. I feel the first wasn't really done, and the second was a cheat, since Clara didn't actually have the skills to help in the way she did, she was given them. This, I think, is the perfect example of my point of this point of view shift being a problem. If Clara had been the focus, if the episode had been from her point of view, I think her introduction would have been more interesting. I don't really care that much if she's got a strange mystery surrounding her, but I do have a problem if it's being used to replace effort that would otherwise go into making Clara herself more interesting. Throwing a mystery onto the character does not make it more interesting, it just makes for plot lines. Thankfully, we have at least another half a Series to get to know her, and likely another one after that, so here's hoping we get to know more about Clara before diving into her mystery.
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