Leave Well Enough Alone? Part 5: Clara Oswald
Guest contributor James Kirkland concludes looking at companions’ departures and their returns.
And so we reach the latest companion to have two exits. Clara’s first exit and second exit were only separated by two weeks. A much shorter time then any of the other companion’s return. But did that smaller timeframe change how her second ending was perceived?
Clara’s first ending came in Face the Raven. Her growing Doctor-like tendencies drove her to take things one step further than even the Doctor could fix, and her life was taken by a Quantum Shade. This ending was the perfect end to the story of a woman who was taking on traits of a being she could never fully emulate. The episode that followed, Heaven Sent, showed that when the Doctor makes what seems like a snap decision it is actually carefully planned out. His mind works much faster than a human mind, allowing him to make those types of decisions much quicker. Clara’s path throughout Series 8 was driving her to this point. The point when she’d take things further than she should. The death also worked because of how mundane it was. She didn’t die to save the world or the universe, or all reality. She died to save a friend, a young father. She died a heroic death in the end, one she faced bravely after pulling the Doctor back from the edge of his morality. Her young, promising life came to a tragic end in the simplest way…
…Two episodes later, however, Clara was saved from her immediate death. Using a Gallifreyan Extraction Chamber, the Doctor pulls her from Trap Street between the final two heartbeats of her life. The Doctor then went on a rampage to try and save her, ending with him having all memories of her erased. This also left Clara effectively immortal, and with her own TARDIS. She would one day have to return to the moment of her death, but chose to do so “the long way around”. This ending was, too, a fitting ending to the story of Clara becoming more like the Doctor by actually, in essence, having her become the Doctor. Now she was free to have adventures across all of time and space with her own companion until the moment she chooses to face the Raven again.
And so, should well enough have been left alone with Clara? It is a strange situation. Because the events of Face the Raven still happened. Clara still took things too far and made a foolish decision that cost her her life. That is how her life ends, and it is the death that is waiting for her. Of course, inevitable death is waiting for every living thing. Clara, however, now gets to choose the day her life ends. But in my opinion, Clara’s second ending, fitting though it may be, if hobbled by what many probably see as the ending’s biggest positive: ambiguity. Because we are never told how long Clara takes to return to her death. Is she adventuring for several months? Years? Centuries? Millenia? And, while the extraction process left her immortal, and her death is fixed point in time, we are never told the extent of that. Does that mean she can only die to the Quantum Shade, effectively making her invincible as well? Can she walk between a battle between the Daleks and the Cyberiad without fear of death? Or is she one mistimed blink away from having a Weeping Angel snap her neck and cause time to begin to deteriorate?
There are so many unanswered questions in this second ending that I think it, in a way, robs the first death of some if its tragedy, because part of the tragedy of her death was that she died a young and unfulfilled life. She was cut down in her prime with so much more she could have achieved. But now she is seemingly left with all the time she chooses to do anything she chooses until she chooses to die. So while her death is, in effect, unaltered, all the time we don’t see between those last two heartbeats change the way her death is perceived. We now know her death is not a tragedy of a life cut short by someone trying to be more than they are, but a life filled with possibly thousands of years of adventures we may never see. And that change in perception does damage the initial ending. Nowhere near as irreparably as the cases of Rose and Donna, but still enough to dilute it. If we had been told how long she had until she had to return to her death, say two months, it would have maintained enough of that tragedy to still make the first death effective.
Verdict: So, in the case of Clara Oswald, I believe her Face the Raven ending should have remained her final appearance. Well enough should have been left alone.
Series Conclusion
So, when it comes to the return of a companion, where does this all leave us? Should companions never return outside their initial departure? No. I don’t believe that is the case. So long as the return is handled well enough that it doesn’t damage the ending that came before it, I believe a companion’s return can be a great thing. But, when their return dilutes or completely overrides what came before, particularly when what came before was incredibly powerful and/or fitting, it is to the detriment of the characters and their story.
If Rose had’ve returned in Series 4 and then been returned to the alternate world without the Meta-Crisis Doctor, it wouldn’t have destroyed her first ending. If Donna had’ve either died from remembering the Doctor and her adventures or never remembered at all, and not have been given that Lotto ticket, it wouldn’t have damaged hers either. And if Clara had’ve been given a defined time limit on her adventures, or had’ve returned to her death by the end of Hell Bent, it wouldn’t have diluted hers.
And that’s why companion returns should take their cues from Martha and Amy, in my opinion. They should celebrate or build upon what came before them, not try to change them for something different. Because if every time a companion returns they have their initial endings changed, we will reach a point where we never want to see them again so that they maintain the strength of their first endings.
