How many Claras did you spot in the Hide episode?
Did anyone notice Clara's characteristics and the words she used in the episode?

I've spotted

The Clara that puts her hair to one side
The Clara that speaks very refined and uses fine words
The Clara that appears very child like

so she is showing quite a varied characterisation of Clara, is that normal?

because despite daily reading I have never noticed a thread like this, OK?

We certainly got some foreshadowing of a strange fate awaiting Donna, with River and the Shadow Axis both clearly knowing something. However, that doesn't change the fact that Donna, when she met the Doctor, was a perfectly normal woman, with nothing "timey wimey" about her.

Ace had an arc, with us finding out more as we went about her relationship with her mother and her past. Again though, apart from that she was an Earth girl who'd ended up on an alien world, there was nothing odd about her.

Neither woman had "died twice" nor had they grown up in circumstances manipulated by others for ends that concerned the Doctor.

I agree completely. I thought she was fantastic in Asylum and Snowmen so why wouldn't she be as now? She's still great but I think they're waiting till the reveal to really bring out her character.

As I said in the other post I made in this thread, it isn't just aimed at you, it's everyone who is making the 'Clara is no good threads'. If you've been reading daily and you haven't seen one thread about Clara not being good (most of them using 'she's not normal' as one of their reasons) then you can't have been looking hard enough. Maybe people should just wait and see what happens with the Character, IMO she's already fantastic.

Well this certainly puts a new twist on who is Clara.



Let the speculation begin!

We need more quiet moments with her. Clara and The Doctor seems to be little more than a series of one liners when they're out in the field.

Oswin post-revelation. Clara & the children. Clara and Merry. Clara and Grisenko. Clara and Emma. These are when she has been most interesting as a character.

As entertaining as I do find the Doctor / companion banter, I'm really looking forward to the mystery being addressed and in two weeks time....



... during Nightmare in Silver. I think it will help ground the character a little more. Why I'm all the more excited that she's staying for Series 8. If this was the one-time deal, I would be approaching Moffat's locale with pitchforks and torches.

Yeah I'm as protective as I imagined

I do wish she had stayed as Oswin Oswald, because I don't like the idea of a Victorian or present-day companion. But at least this way, we all got a bit of each. And as for the mystery, I love a mystery and so does the Doctor. He has lost too many people, he isn't in the mood for socialising, he's stated himself Clara is "the only mystery worth solving". He needs this.

I can't help but notice JLC's apparently slightly stilted performance from time to time.

I'm preferring Oswin and Victorian Clara at the moment.

I think she's been good when emoting with other characters when the Doctor's not around. The little girl in TRoA, the Russian professor in CW and the assistant in H.

But Clara's reactions to me read a bit "off" at other times. I think it's because this Clara hasn't quite yet fully accepted the reality of what's happening around her.

I think this'll be resolved when the Doctor finally confronts Clara about the mystery surrounding her.

companion doesnt exist anymore since RTD brought the story back.

What does that mean?

OP - yes, I wish Clara had been a normal person, I am fed up of over complicated companions like Amy Pond. Now we have another "mystery" on our hands with the blessed Trinity that is Clara.

The show should be renamed "The Mysterious Companions of The Doctor"

What is people's problem with mystery? I love the mystery. I didn't like Amy and Rory, but that had nothing to do with the crack in her wall.

Have no problem with mystery, but two complicated companions in a row is just unnecessary, to me. What would have been so wrong about the Doctor meeting an average human (a la Sarah Jane, Rose, Martha) and then seeing them grow into someone extraordinary just from sharing so many wonderful experiences with the Doctor?

That's all I'm getting at, really. In recent time the main emphasis in the show seems to me to be on the companion - I would just like it to be on the Doctor himself.

To counter that, what's so wrong with having a companion which seems normal but has a big mystery behind her? NOTHING!

Absolutely. No need to shout

I cannot take to Clara at all and am not liking her as a companion, I do however find her story intriguing and so no, I do not wish she were just a normal companion, as the mystery surrounding her is the only thing making her watchable for me

I can't take to her either and so far I'm simply not that bothered about her mystery. I liked Victorian Clara and think she might have been good, as a normal but really out of time companion but this one I find it hard to care about.

I've worked out the problem I've had with her now. Some people claimed that Jenna's acting is awful and I just completely disagreed but then after rewatching episodes I wasn't sure if she was as great as I thought. But I've just realised it's the delivery of some lines, like they aren't right for her or they need tweaking, it's sounds as if she doesn't say them how you'd expect to hear them. So I'm hoping that in the future if something she says doesn't sound right, they rewrite the line slightly to suit her/her character better. Obviously this is just what it seems like to me but I'm sure that's it. I think she's a wonderful actress. I love Jenna!

I get where the OP is coming from (I think) and I'm fed up too of the companions having to be something other than ordinary women. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it, before you all jump on me, just that I'm personally fed up with it.

It seems to be a Moffat thing - all his main female characters have to have some great mystery attached to them that the Doctor has to puzzle out, and I'm more than a little bored with that.

The main issue with it for me is that it makes the characters hard to relate to. Rose, or Donna, for example were, at least for most of their time on the show, just normal women like you or I, and thus likeable, easier to relate to etc. These women now with their big mysteries and puzzles aren't likeable at all to me, and I can't relate to them. Rose had her faults, but I did at least care about what happened to her. Amy, River, Clara .. I really couldn't care less what happens to them, sorry.

I'd like the show to be about the Doctor, not the Doctor trying to work out his companion, all the time.