Originally Posted by saralund:
“I think I may be the only person in the universe without the surname 'Moffat' who really likes Danny Pink and enjoys his wise down-to-earthness.”
See, I didn't really mind Danny as a character.
I recall hearing, when PC first got the job, that the show was going to start reflecting the old Hartnell era, where DW was a sort of eccentric old uncle and you have a couple of younger people doing all the running around.
In that sort of situation, it might've been quite interesting to have Danny along for the ride, being all down-to-Earth and criticising anything morally ambiguous that DW gets up to.
The biggest problem with Danny was, IMO, more because of poor writing than anything else.
If you think back to how the relationship between Rory and Amy was portrayed, and how it had an impact on DW, it all seemed fairly "natural".
You never really felt like you were being asked to accept anything that came as a surprise.
With Clara and Danny, it seemed like one minute there was a bit of flirty banter at school and, perhaps, a couple of curries in front of the TV and then, the next minute, he's off saving the world out of love for Clara and she's prepared to die for the bloke she loves with all her heart. Apparently.
Seems like they were always too busy writing Clara as the sassy, wisecracking, smart-ass to ever have time to flesh out her relationship with Danny but
then they're asking the audience to accept that they made decisions that affected the whole universe based on this deeply-felt but completely invisible relationship which we're supposed to believe existed even though we never really
saw it.