Wow.

I think Danny Pink has just become the new Adric

I can't watch series 8 because of him. I've not treat he'd any of it.

He had zero redeeming qualities. He was a petulant, sulky, controlling muppet.

I could have punched my screen every time he called The Doctor, a man who had just spent the previous few centuries on the front line of a war at Trenzalore, a man who up until fairly recently thought himself responsible for wiping out his entire race, Danny Pink had the effing nerve to call this man an officer and repeatedly accuse him of never getting his hands dirty.

He was extremely controlling and manipulative with Clara. Trying repeatedly to get her to chose between himself and the Doctor. And his sulky strops when she didn't behave exactly as he wanted were extremely passive aggressive and controlling.

I was genuinely thrilled when he was killed off. Only to have to put up with him being turned into a Cyber man. And saving the world. All the while his resolve was so strong he was able to over ride the cyber installers and still protect Clara. And Slag off the Doctor a bit. Oh please.

I felt absolutely no sympathy for him at all. And he was one of the main reasons I found series 8 absolutely awful.

I love Clara. And I'm very sad she is leaving. But silver lining - with her gone there is thankfully no chance we'll ever see Danny Pink again.

Are any of you Danny Pink haters secretly Matthew Waterhouse?

I'm so glad other people noticed these things as well. I thought it was just me (and a friend who has mentioned the same.) I have no idea what they were thinking when they wrote the character, (maybe the same thing they were smoking when they cast him) he was just awful.

I also hated the way Clara stayed with him when he insulted the Doctor, the way he did and never pulled him up on it. Or why she was with a guy like that in the first place? Every time they had her say she loved him, I blocked it out. I refuse to believe she did. Boyfriend error is the understatement of the century!!

I really liked series 8 and loved the relationship between the Doctor and Clara and them both coming to terms with his regeneration but Danny certainly put a huge dampener on it. And like I said, I still huff and sigh at his presence when I re - watch it.

I almost threw my remote at my TV, when he was mentioned in Face the Raven


I had to google who that was and no, I'm female.. for a start

Bonnie Langford then?

Considerably younger (Me, not her, that is lol)

BTW it's 'Page' not 'Paige'

He wasn't wrong though. He didn't accuse the Doctor of never getting his hands dirty (that I can recall) but that he blithely put other people in danger - made them take risks that they otherwise wouldn't in order to impress him. Face the Raven made it clear he was right. The old Clara would never have tried to outwit a Quantum Shade on her own.


I think you should force yourself to rewatch. Danny may be quite sensitive and have a temper, but he's as far from controlling as you can get.

Well, I knew he wasn't a favourite, but blimey!

I thought Samuel Anderson was alright playing an ordinary bloke recovering from extraordinary situations (as a soldier) who then found out that the woman he fell for who taught in the same school was a friend of a time travelling alien and constantly put her life in danger. That's going to complicate things!

Thought he was less 'controlling' and more worried that his girlfriend was going to, say, get killed by an alien raven creature on her travels! And as for his attitude towards the Doctor, I thought that was fair enough really. Apart from the 'Clara might get killed' bit, the Doctor was dismissive of him from the off.

Having said that, there wasn't a lot of on screen chemistry going on, really. I could see what they were trying to do with Clara's 'double life' and addiction to the Doctor causing her to lie, but didn't think it was entirely convincing considering said lack of chemistry and, because of the nature of the show, the relationship going from awkward courting to deep love without much shown to indicate that apart from the occasional snuggle on the sofa.

Poor old Danny. Definitely a short straw/fuzzy lollipop/butter side down sort of chap. Yeah, bit like Adric then, I suppose!

Danny didn't know the Doctor, he'd only recently met him, so it's not right to expect Danny to immediately be impressed by the Doctor. We're impressed because we are familiar with the Doctor's history. Danny had no knowledge of that.

Given Danny's personal history it was to be expected that he'd be sensitive and that he'd assume the Doctor was an officer type. His description of the Doctor, as quoted above, was spot on. Only the "officer" bit was off, but again understandable, as the Doctor is a leader.

Finally, the "controlling" thing again. You really need to re-watch with an open mind, because the only thing Danny insisted upon was truth from Clara, and even then he continued with her despite her repeated failures to be totally truthful about her trips with the Doctor.

Danny was a genuine, heroic, caring guy and his only fault was a chip on his shoulder about "officer" types.

I can't say I was huge fan of Danny. Playing the character with a permanent cold was a bold move.

I'm going to throw River Song into the mix. I love Alex Kingston but the performance and the writing for this character just makes me want to throw the TV out of the window.

Sorry but I'll respectfully disagree.

I have no intention of ever watching series 8 again.

My reply to you is almost the same as my previous post replying to Lyceum.

As I said, specifically regarding insulting the Doctor, Danny didn't have the benefit of the same knowledge of the Doctor that we have or Clara (had). Over all, given his history, Danny's behaviour is wholly understandable, even heroic.

He was a nice character, hugely misunderstood by some Danny haters here.

If you watch again with an open mind, free from your misconceptions, I think you'll see that.

Then maybe he should have kept his mouth shut. You are right, he didn't know the Doctor nor his history but to go off at him and insult him, the way he did, was insulting to Clara as well. Does he think she'd have continued to travel with him if he was any of the things Danny said?

He was clearly trying to change Clara's mind about the Doctor. Like he thought she wasn't clever enough to judge for herself.


He'd known him for all of 5 minutes! We were lead to believe (in an earlier scene) that Clara had explained everything to him, about the Doctor. So why does he think his opinion (based on a few encounters) is more worthy and should be used to change Clara's opinion? (after she'd been with the Doctor for years)

He was a passive aggressive, controlling d*ck and watching again will do nothing but cement my feelings over him.

I have to disagree with some of these opinion. For me, Danny Pink was a knob of the highest order. Find it baffling that anyone can say he was a nice regular bloke.

You could see it right away from their date in episode 4 that he had a short fuse. Clara was cracking a couple of harmless quips only to be shouted down by the human Ikea table. He was a manipulative and emotional bully who tried to force Clara to decide between him and the man for whom she has been through the greatest ordeals of her life with. If he respected Clara in any way shape or form then he would have respected her decision to be friends with the Doctor.

There was nothing protective about him. He was trying to get things his own way and threw a strop when he didn't.

I loved series 8. But he did his almighty best to ruin it. Woefully miscast and even more woefully written.

That's part of the reason I disliked him so much.

Surely Clara will have told him all about the doctor. All about how he's saved the earth and the universe time after time. All about how he sacrificed everything (or so he thought as he didn't know he would get another regeneration cycle) to once again do so and spent centuries defending the universe against enemies the likes of which Danny couldn't even dream off.

Surely Clara told him all of this.

And still he looked down his nose at The Doctor and acted like he was superior in every way.

Yes the Doctors companions may act irrationally in a way they wouldn't were they not the doctors companions. But The Doctor has a pretty cracking track record when it comes to saving his friends from any danger they encounter.

Danny threw a strop every time things didn't go his way and Made Clara feel bad when she didn't behave exactly as he wanted.

He was a gigantic prick without a single redeeming quality.

I have to agree with the Danny haters or at least the Danny dislikers. The way he flipped during those early exchanges with Clara from dorky, bashful guy to cold and clinical was odd...

The biggest problem was the complete lack of chemistry between Jenna/Clara and Danny/Samuel. Her chemistry with first Matt/11 then Peter/12 was SO much better that it made the Clara/Danny relationship hard to believe. I don't know whether that was the character - Danny was a bit of a plot device really - or the actor.

I think there were one heck of a lot of things that Clara didn't tell the poor b*gger, to be honest. (Which Clara wasn't rather often.)

I don't know, it's not as if I thought he was a great character so am not that invested in him,, but considering how he was treated (constantly lied to by someone he loved; patronised by her friend; the one who put her in mortal danger; his ultimate fate and his actions in the concluding story of the series...) I think people are being pretty harsh on him, really. He even had a chance to come back, but saved the kid he'd killed in error and who's death had haunted him. What a barsteward!

The actor. Definitely the actor. You cannot blame Jenna for not having chemistry with that massive plank. Like you say, she had loads with Matt and to my surprise, (wasn't happy with the casting of Capaldi in the beginning, I admit) Peter.

She has proven herself to be a great actress and I'm afraid the blame for the Danny/Clara scenes rest solely on his shoulders.

I will be 'nice' to the actor and say the character didn't help, neither the writing for him nor the forced relationship between him and Clara. They go on one date in one episode and then she loves him in the next? Stupid.

I have to disagree with that assessment of Danny. I find it baffling that anyone can think he was a manipulative, emotional bully.

Simply expecting honesty in a relationship is not manipulative, nor bullying nor controlling. It's just necessary for any healthy relationship.

He did get annoyed - when he thought Clara had been prying and touched upon something he was sensitive about because of his past. And Clara reacted too. By leaving "in a strop" (and we know she was a control freak, but she did it so nicely ). Relationships cut both ways and Danny knew he'd made a mistake and had over reacted to an innocent remark, far quicker than Clara. If you say Danny threw a strop, then you have to be just as critical towards Clara and her insensitivity towards Danny at that point.

It's ironic the one thing he insisted upon, and said he would end it if he didn't get, was honesty from Clara. He didn't get honesty. Clara repeatedly lied to him, and still he stuck with her. And we know how well that worked out for him.

He didn't like her travelling with the Doctor. If she'd simply told him she wanted to continue with that, he'd have accepted it. He didn't like it because it was dangerous. He was ultimately proven to be correct.

Mitchell & Webb as those annoying ********* robots.

He had a history with "the officer class" and that made him over sensitive and over react towards anything that smacked of that. Made him think he saw things in the Doctor that Clara hadn't.

It's not clear from what was shown, but I don't think there'd been much time for Clara to fully explain the Doctor and his past. Barely enough time for her to begin explaining her relationship with the Doctor.

Can you imagine Clara's first conversation with Danny about the Doctor?

"Well. He's not the first. He's the twelfth. Or thirteenth. It's difficult to explain. And he's not human. He's a Timelord. With two hearts. Oh, I'm not the first either. Or maybe I am? Anyway, I've got these splinters, scattered through the Doctor's past, who's at least a thousand years old by the way, but I don't really remember them. Did I mention he's got a box that's bigger on the inside, and it's a time machine? Oh, yeah, and space too. It can go anywhere you want. Mostly. And it looks like a Police Box. Don't ask me to explain why, or what a Police Box is. Now... what else should I mention?"

Exit Danny, stage left, in a hurry!

"A beginning is a very difficult time". Especially in relationships.

Well, Danny got converted into a Cyberman whilst still being conscious of his feelings for Clara, and she got 'killed' by an intergalactic Raven after becoming too confident, mixed with, possibly, a bit of an unconscious death wish. Some relationships just don't end up well!

(It's that old, old story...to channel Kryten for a bit. )

No. It's not clear. This was the exchange we were given;

CLARA: What do you think? Say something.
DANNY: So, there's an alien, that used to look like Adrian. Then he turned into a Scottish caretaker and every now and then, when I'm not looking, you elope with him.

But if she went as far as explaining about the previous Doctor, I think it's safe to assume she told Danny that she'd been with him for a few years (I believe her book said she was 24 when she started traveling and Strax said she was 27 in Deep Breath.)

But it does not change the fact that Danny does not know the Doctor, not even had enough of a first impression to go spouting his mouth off and trying to turn Clara against him. I'm not saying he couldn't have formed a first impression but not wise to spout off about it when that's all you have of someone, a brief first impression.

Figuring that Clara, probably, did tell him how long she'd been with the Doctor, (if not much else) you'd think he'd respect her opinion of the Doctor and realise she knows him better than he does.

That's true enough. It was unwise, especially in our eyes since we know the Doctor's past (at least until SM re-writes it! ). He was over sensitive. He was a soldier, who expected to fulfill the male stereotype, to be strong and protective. And he felt massive guilt at killing that child and massive anger towards the officers who'd placed him in that position, without the resources to fulfill his expected role. I think "respecting Clara's more informed opinion" wasn't a factor and wouldn't even have occured to him. He saw what he thought was a problem, dived in and tried to solve it, and largely got it wrong.

Is it such a bad thing that he chose to try and protect Clara, at that point? He went in, guns blazing (metaphorically!), and was (mostly) wrong. It was a simple mistake, not indicative of a major character flaw.

The fact is, ultimately he was right. Clara did die, in part, because of travelling with the Doctor.